Class 79 - The End

Post 160

The End

So once again I have reached the final post of the semester. This time I won't be coming back though. I have now successfully graduated and do not plan on going back to high school.
Throughout both of my courses of Info Tech, I learned a lot. I learned basic coding and how to make animated sprites by putting together sections of images and many other things. This class has been by far one of the best ever. I would highly recommend people who enjoy working with computers to take this class.
This class not only is enjoyable it also allows you to do what you want to do, within reason of course.
The biggest challenge of course is the blogging everyday, now this can be hard, but once you get in the flow its pretty easy.
Obviously I have not completed every post unlike last semester, which is something i'm ashamed to say. The reason this happened is because I fell of the wagon and couldn't get back on for a few days. This is something you really need to be cautious of, because it is incredibly easy to find yourself saying you will do it tomorrow... and tomorrow... and tomorrow... and so on.
And as hard as this class can be, I guarantee that if you find something you actually like to do, you will not regret taking this class.
And remember you can pretty much do anything you want in this class as long as your learning and blogging, this is why its Independent.

Basically over the year I have learned that making games can be anywhere from hilarious to dreadful.
And that its 100% better with friends.
Thank you for giving us one of the best classes ever Mr Bilesky!

Here are some  GIF's and pictures from my posts throughout the year of being an Independent InfoTech Student!

Class 78

Post 159

Class 77

Post 158

Class 76

Post 157

Class 75

Post 156

Class 74 - Still Grass Stuff

Post 155

Still Grass Stuff

Today I want to fix up the dynamic grass, except this time I want to try a new method. My plan is to have it set the image_angle based on which side of the grass you are standing on. This might look choppy though and could be worse than having it not move at all.

So I duplicated the object so I could start over without deleting my old progress in case I didn't like the direction of this new tall grass. My thought process behind this code was it determines the side of the bush your standing on and makes it lean the other way. this gives its a parting effect when the player walks between bushes.


Once again its hard to notice, but it just gives the game an extra bit of immersion that is needed.
Next class I might look into creating a new player character, possibly one that has a higher resolution pushing my game out of the pixel style. I am still undecided on this so I will talk more about my choices next class.

Class 73 - Tall Grass

(Post meant for June, 9th, 2016)

Post 154

Tall Grass

So this class I decided to try and work on dynamic grass. Because recently my sister started to play a game called Stardew valley about farming. But the game is done entirely in pixel art. I looked at the game because she said it was good and happened to notice something very interesting about the tall grass in the game. When the player walks through the grass it shakes and moves out of the way, but this is a cool because the grass is still a 2D sprite. But having this shutter well you walk through just makes the game feel more immersive. So this is the effect I wanted to re-create today.
I started by taking my existing bush sprite and making it a little bit more green. I then made it into a new object called "TallGrass" and began some simple code. The code isn't the best and doesn't really achieve the goal I want, but it will work for now.
Currently the system looks like this. It is very hard to notice and has some issues with returning to its original state, so I will try to polish it up next class.

Class 72 - Even More Dodge Stuff

Post 153

Even More Dodge Stuff

So today I will work on fixing the dodge roll again. So I went back through the code and noticed I made the rookie mistake of writing in one of my variables completely wrong. I had put "Dodgingtimer" instead of "Dodgetimer". This caused some major problems and blew the game up. So I switched it around and corrected my mistakes to find out that the game now does this.


So not only was my variable wrong, the entire bit of code is wrong too. So now I have to go and figure out how to make this work.
So after some serious changes I can finally now say the dodge is working. The first thing I had to fix was the way "dodgeready" was changed to false. Originally I had it change to false whenever the timer wasn't at its 0 value. However this didn't actually work properly. So instead of having it control both aspects of the timer I now only have it control one. So "dodgeready" is set to false when the player hits spacebar instead. I also relocated the code from the previous post into the actual dodge script, which overall just makes more sense.


Here is the working script. Please ignore the labels by those numbers. The top number is "dodgetimer", and the second number is "dodgeready"
1 = True
0 = False

Class 71 - More Crashing

Post 152

More Crashing

So today I wanted to work on the dodge roll cool-down. This started off with a pretty simple idea.


This code basically has a number set to 0, when a value is added to this number a statement becomes false. But the value is constantly being reduced back to 0 over time. Another feature is the number never goes past 0 and doesn't keep removing numbers. The reason I go into the trouble of this is so the game doesn't constantly have to count numbers in the background.
However the code above absolutely failed and had no effect what so ever. So now I have to come up with a way to make it work.


This is my planned solution, adding a new variable "dodgeready". This will allow me to tell the game when its a good time to dodge and a bad time to dodge. Basically it gives me a gateway into other code, so this code can effect things that aren't in the same page, and sometimes not even necessarily in the same object.


so after even more mucking around I manged to screw it up even more.

Now the game just crashes at the "END" of the dodge roll, so it has something to do with the end of the timer, so when the number is reduced to 0 or maybe something else.
Tomorrow I will attempt to fix this problem and have this working.

Class 70 - More Dodge Stuff

Post 151

More Dodge Stuff

The last two posts are currently empty, this is because of Grad events such as, Dry Grad, Prom, and my actual graduation. So sorry for not having them filled out, I hope to post something there eventually in the future, whether i'm still in the class or not.

So today I will attempt to fix last weeks problems with the dodge roll, the main problem being the blood effect when you are hit, even though the damage isn't being applied.


So my first course of action was to add "(dodging = false)" to the end of everything, but that made the game implode. And as far as I can tell its due to the fact I didn't specify where there variable is coming from. When this happens the game has a melt down and just dies.

Sure enough that was the problem, the code now works perfectly. Just ignore the blood in the beginning of the GIF, I got hit because I couldn't tab into the game fast enough.
Next Class I will work on having a cool down, and possibly making the dodge roll in other directions so its more useful.

Class 69

Post 150

Class 67

Post 149