Autobiographical Game: Get Nini A Work Visa!
Prompt
For Assignment #7, you will design an autobiographical game using all the coding knowledge you've acquired so far. Tell us a story about yourself and your identity.
Design Process
Main Character Design
I wanted the main character to represent myself and my identity so I named her "Nini" (from the two letters in my name Nicky). Ever since I moved to the US back in 2011,
I've been fighting constantly to get a student visa and work visa. Staying in the US is my ultimate goal, to further
my career and immigrate here permanently. However, there are many requirements internationals have to go through before
they can get a work visa. The two major things are: good grades and passed interviews.
Scenes
When planning the scenes, I initially thought I would need just 3: beginning, middle (game play scene), and end scene.
However, after coding the game, I realized I also need a gameover, restart scene. So I added the said scene towards the end of my
code. My middle scene (game play scene) is designed to be very simple, avoid the objects falling from the sky for 30 seconds
and you win! You will have three lives. The reason I chose 30 seconds for the game is because I thought it was a good amount of time
for the user to play around. Anything more than that would make the game boring.
Keyboard Interaction
I wanted Nini's character to be able to move in all directions, horizontally, vertically, and diagnally. I know that I must use the keyIsDown function and map it to the arrows of the keyboard.
Grey Boxing Practice
I found the grey boxing technique very helpful as it helps me structure and think through my code. To me, this is almost like a 'lo-fi' coding experience. Without having to think too much about how it looks, I could focus on makign the game function the way I wanted it to. With the greyboxes ready, revamping the code and inputting images and decoration was a lot easier than trying to do everything at once. Ofcourse there were parts of the code I had to change, but with a great structure ready, it wasn't too hard to debug. You can see my greybox code in action below.
Assignment Reflection
This assignment took me about a week and a half to complete. It was a challenging assignment as I was still uncertain about how object-oriented coding was. Through this experience, I've learned how to plan my code. I have realized that I should've created a class to record all gamestages such as number of lives, number of seconds left, and which scene to switch to. This way, I will not get confused as to where these data were recorded. I will definitely use this knowledge in the future. I hope that this game reflects how I had to navigate through the visa process in America and that the players like the looks and feels of it! This is the first game I've ever created in my life!