When it Clicks

I spent the first part of today finishing up the Variables section in the C# Survival Guide. Being new to code, I completely understand why it’s called a survival guide. Sometimes in the 2D course videos some of these principals are covered and moved on from quickly. We have a game to make, after all. The information in the C# course comes in a little slower, allowing more time for it to absorb. The challenges there were also very helpful for solidifying how these gears work, in my mind. So many things today felt like they made more sense after hearing longer explanations and doing little exercises for practice. I know I will be back in the Survival Guide soon to help me figure out some of the challenges ahead, but I feel ready even now to tackle some more of these challenges.

I dove into the ammunition system, which felt really good and fresh coming from the C# training. I defined my ammo as pubic, because the user needs to know how much ammo they have, and I gave it an “int” reference, because we aren’t shooting any half bullets around here. ;-). Long story short, I handled a lot of code this afternoon that felt like review, and I like that feeling. I have a working ammo system as far as 15 max, 0 min, and every time I fire my ammo goes down by one. Next thing for me is to disable my player lasers when the ammo count hits zero. I also need to get my ammo into my User Interface not just my inspector. I think the ammo powerup should hopefully come together after that as well. I envision a few more custom icons that need to be created.

I did end up finishing my health powerup functionality on the User Interface today. I was working on my “heal” method just under my “damage’’ method, and was probably thinking about them together when I shouldn’t have been. I had been trying to get my engines and life bar to heal visually unsuccessfully. I was thinking too much of how my triggering those images and animations would impact my damage method accessing them as well, when really, they work independently. I focused in on making all of the art and UI interact with my heal method independently of my damage, and that did the trick. I have to stop overthinking some of these things!

I have a few more items to check off this Framework Phase I section, but I feel much more confident now about my ability to get where I need to go.