Allison
About Me
My name is Allison Valji and I am a freshman at DHS. Some things I enjoy doing include, playing softball, sailing, skiing, and baking. My favorite subjects at school are math, biology, and Idea. When deciding on my project, I first turned to my interests. As I was brainstorming, I discovered that I was a lot more interested in trying something new. Something I had always wanted to do, but never seemed to find the time to do, was learn how to code. With this, I decided I would learn how to code and create a game for my project.
My Project
My project is a coding project where my end goal is to code a game. I will learn to code using the coding language C# and the game engine Unity, and create a game using this knowledge. I will also create a series of videos on a Youtube channel detailing my learning process. In order to do this, I will first learn the basics of C# and Unity by watching and taking notes on tutorials. Once I have learned the basics, I will launch into planning my game and eventually making it.
Mentor
My mentor is Matt Bruce. Mr. Bruce (father to Thatcher (9th) and Aiden (6th)) has spent his entire career as a programmer. He spent 8 years at Morgan Stanley running the team and building the code for the trading and risk systems for bonds, loans, credit derivatives and structured credit. Those were written in java and C#. He ran a high frequency trading group at d.e. shaw for another 8 years, also working in java and C#. He then went to instagram for 3 years where he built their search - so if you ever search for someone or something on instagram, you might be running his code. Mr. Bruce now works at Citadel where he runs an elite software development team.
FINAL GAME
Click here for link to game instructions
Click here for the link to download the game (Windows only)
Click here for link to download instructions
Email valjia@darienps.org with any questions!
Progress Update Viedos
Final Reflection
If I were to reflect on this project, I would say that overall it went well. I was happy with the outcome, as I completed my original goal to make a game. However, the one thing I would change is my time management. I spent a lot of time researching and planning, so that by the time I started working on my game, I could only make one level. Additionally, some of the research I did at the beginning of the year, I didn’t end up using. This is mostly because I didn’t really know the direction I wanted to go with this project soon enough. Due to this, the advice I would give to next year’s students would be to figure out what you want your final product to be (very specifically) as soon as you can. In some cases, like mine, this may mean getting a mentor sooner, so they he/she can help you figure this out. I always knew that I wanted a game, but if I planned it out first, and figured out that I wanted a platformer game first, then I might have had more time. If I got my mentor sooner (I didn’t get one till January), then this may have been easier. However, my project was a daunting task, so there is no way to know if I would have had time anyways.
Furthermore, I would say overall I learned a lot from this project. I took on a very daunting task, and feel that I therefore got the most out of this program. The more work one puts in, the more they get out of it. I learned something completely new, and I hope I can continue this in the future. I plan to make more games, and continue to learn. Next time I make a game I want to learn how to do the graphics myself. Also, another useful skill I learned was time management. To do this year-long project, I had to manage my time carefully. This is something that I can carry on into the future for other school projects. Especially, for the three year ASR program I will be participating in next year. Overall I really enjoyed this program and I hope future students do to!
Mini-Goal #6
Plan: First and foremost, I would like to finish my game. This means making the level (which is mostly just the ground since the player and enemies are done). I will hopefully get this done in first week with a little jump start at the end of break. In the second week, I want to add any finishing touches to my game and meet with my mentor for a final time to make sure it is how I would like it and/or fix any remaining problems. The second part of this cycle will be putting together my achievers night presentation. I will gather materials during break and in weeks 1 and 2 (trifold, construction paper, title letters and table cloth). Then my final week will be designated to typing and printing out text, printing out images, and putting the whole trifold together. This is definetly a lot to get done so I will have to put in a lot of work over these last couple weeks.
NO PRP FOR THIS MINI-GOAL
REFLECTION IN FINAL REFLECTION
Mini-Goal #5
Plan: For my fifth mini-goal, I plan to get the bulk of my game done. This means just getting as much as I can done, including player movement/animation, enemy movement/animation, and as many level designs and backgrounds as I can. I will also be continuing with the tutorials as needed to make my game. These are my main goals for this cycle but I will also be continuing my ongoing goals of communicating with my mentor- especially now that I'm making my game- and making progress update videos as necessary.
Reflection: During mini-goal cycle 5 I got my player running and jumping, got the enemies working, and made it so the player can fire to kill the enemies. I ran into some problems with the enemy movement but was able to fix that with some help from my mentor. I also made three progress update videos. One covering player movement, one for enemies and player firing, and a mentor update video talking about my troubleshooting. I also watched a video about making levels with sprite shape. Sprite shape is the kind of asset I am using for my ground and it involves dragging and shaping the ground into whatever I want as one big blob (this is different from the tile based method that is used in the tutorial I have been using). This means I am ready to make the ground and background and finish up my game in my final mini-goal. I did make a change from making multiple levels to just one. This is because I don't have that much time left as I still have to put together my achivers night presentation. Also, I would rather have one good level that I am proud of instead of a couple of sloppy levels.
Mini-Goal #4
Plan: For my fourth mini-goal, I really plan to start designing my game. First I want to sketch out some ideas so I know what I want the game to be and what I’m going to need to make it. Then I want to start figuring out what the game will look like and what assets I will need. I plan to use assets from the assets store as I am already learning something completely new and have no experience in graphic design. With this plan, I will know what I need to learn to make the game. I will continue to watch the same tutorial video and I may start working on the game as I go if that proves to be easier. The final part to my mini-goal is continuing with the progress updates and communicating with my menor.
Reflection: During this mini-goal cycle I planned my game and set it up to begin working on it. First, I sketched out my ideas for my game on paper. I wanted it to be some sort of space or alien themed game. Then I selected my assets, which are the designs that unity offers so I don't have to draw it myself. From there, I set up my project. I created the project in Unity, imported the assets, and played around with how to set up levels using the assets I chose. The final thing I did was set up Github, which caused a lot of problems. Github allows me to share my project with my mentor, but it was difficult to set up and I got a lot of error messages. After a lot of email communication, my mentor and I eventually just sat down on a zoom call and set it up. Github will now be really helpful with keeping my mentor up to date on my project. Along with all of this, and a little bit of playing of some platformer games for inspiration, I am now ready to start making my game.
Mini-Goal #3
Plan: For my third mini-goal, I want to continue learning C# using the same tutorial video and taking notes. I want to take screenshots and screen recordings of my work to use in my progress update videos, which I plan to make every couple of weeks. The progress update videos include both a part of me speaking and a montage of my screenshots and screen recordings. I will then upload these videos to my YouTube channel and copy the link to the document so they are accessible. Finally, I also want to practice what I have already learned from both past and current mini-goals so I am actually learning and remembering. I will include this in my progress update videos too.
Reflection: For the past number of weeks I have been working mostly on more research and practice. I learned and practiced, Loops, Coroutines, classes, public vs private variables, inheritance, and getting components. I also practiced some previous concepts like functions and conditional statements in order to reinforce those past ideas. Finally, in order to document all of this I made a progress update video talking about and showing my progress. On top of my set goals, I also found a mentor (more above), had my first meeting, and made an update video on the meeting. I think I made a lot of progress in learning the basics, but I still have a lot to learn in terms of being able to actually make a game and designing my game.
Mini-goal #2
Plan: For my second mini-goal I really intend to dive into my project. I am going to watch my tutorial video I found, which is 7 hours long, and take notes on it. Using this I will practice as I watch and create a test run after using that knowledge. Before I start this though, I want to make the switch from documentary to a series of videos. To do this I will set up a Youtube channel and add my first head video to it. With this video, and all future ones, I will edit pictures and screenshots into it in order to really capture the learning process.
Reflection: In my second mini-goal, I accomplished everything I wanted too. I learned the basics of how to interact with the Unity interface and some of the basic components that exist. I then started learning C#, where I learned how to move a character, variables, operations with those variables, functions, and conditional statements. I took notes on what I was learning and took screenshots and screen recordings of my work. I then compiled my screenshots, screen recordings, and some videos of me giving updates on my work into three YouTube progress update videos. An adjustment I had to make was to also have a document with links to these videos so they can be visible to people with access to the document because I want to keep the YouTube videos private. Overall, I think I got a lot done over these past couple of weeks but there is still a lot to learn before I can start making my final game
Mini-goal #1
Reflection: My first mini-goal was to get my bearings on my project as I am a beginner to coding. My goal was to first research some basic documentary skills because my initial goal was to make one large video (this has now been changed to a series of videos on a Youtube channel). I also researched what coding language I am going to use and what platform I am going to code on. I decided to use the language C# because it is good for games and simpler than C++ for beginners. I also decided on the platform Unity because it is known to be the best platform for C#. The final thing I did for my first mini goal was take screenshots of my notes and my first head video. The only real adjustment I made was switching from a big documentary to a series of videos based on the advice from my first PRP. I chose to start here because I am brand new to coding and really wanted to know what I am doing and how I am going to do it before I jump in.