Day 20: Looking Ahead
Finally! I’m able to show you all the successful implementation of my plasma bombs, as well as the spawning of my second enemy character. It took ages to work out the wave spawning system and was the bane of my existence last week. Perseverance and patience always pay off in coding, and it’s important to keep the end goal in mind even on the toughest of days.
Friday morning was spent working out the bugs in my plasma bomb and spawning system. Come Monday, I’ll be implementing the balanced spawning system I mentioned in a previous blog and starting on creating enemy shields. I even looked a little further down the Phase II checklist and found some tutorials on YouTube that may come in handy later this week — specifically in creating a “smart” enemy that detects and targets the player, as well as making a homing projectile powerup.
In the afternoon, a projects team made up of advanced interns gave a fantastic presentation on a game they created over the past two weeks, entitled Nova Star. From conceptualizing the game to learning new C# coding concepts and overcoming team obstacles, the group had incredibly informative perspectives on what it was like to work on their first team project. They’re a month ahead of me in their software development journey, and it’s exciting to think of where I might me in a month’s time with my own skills.
Following the presentation, GameDevHQ founder Jonathan Weinberger lead a great workshop full of tips and resources on how to network and search for our first career opportunities in software development. I especially found the section on resume building and connecting on LinkedIn with potential employers helpful, and immediately made updates to my profile.
All around, Friday was an inspiring day and left much to think about over the weekend. Crunch time truly begins tomorrow, as I hope to reach the development stage of my final boss in Phase II soon!
