Hello! My name is Amogh Patnaik and I go to 212 Academy. This year, my class is participating in Genius Hour. This blog will showcase my research and learning on a topic that I chose. I chose to study about programming because I like to code, and you can make anything you want to make if you put the time into it.

     I will use the Unity game engine to create a ping pong game (pong), which will be my final product. This game will showcase all the skills I have learned through my research. A game engine is a tool or app that makes it easier to create a game, using mini tools such as player movement and animations. Unity is a very popular game engine that many programmers use to create both 2D and 3D games, and it has many tools and templates to help you do this. I will present my game on the web using WebGL technology. I have 3 inquiry-based questions that I want to find the answer to. The first question I asked myself is "How do I make a GUI?" This means making a main menu for a game. The second question was "How do I make an AI bot to play against the player in 1-player mode?" Finally, I asked, "How do I publish my game to different platforms like Windows and Mac."

This week, I started by researching ways to make a text gameObject, or sprite that changes dynamically with changes in different players' scores. To make this score display, I needed to initialize 2 variables for player1 and player2 scores and set them to 0. Inside the update function, which is called once per frame, I had the game check for when the ball collided with the players' goals on either side and increase the score of the opposing player when a collision occurred. I used this code to check for collisions and attached it to the left wall:

private void OnCollisionEnter2D (Collision2D collision)

{

    player2Score++;

}

To create the score display on the screen, I used the code: public Text Scoreboard; This created a text sprite named Scoreboard that was public, meaning it could be referenced by other scripts. Next, in an empty sprite, I added the line of code that allowed the game to update the scoreboard text with the players' scores. This was: Scoreboard.text = player1Score.ToString() + " - " + player2Score.ToString(); After that, the scoreboard system was working, so I moved on to other parts of the game. I researched ways to publish my game to the web using a simple process. I discovered that Unity Connect is a site that hosts web-based unity projects that people have published and the process to publish a project is simple and free. Unfortunately, by then I had run out of time to research, so I decided to continue my research on Unity Connect next week.

My Unity project files were corrupted. I tried to recover my lost code but in the end, I couldn't get the code back, and I lost the options menu and 1 player game mode. I then decided to leave out the options menu for now, since I didn't really need it for the game to work, and I had to leave the 1 player game code for later because this week's goal was to start work on the presentation for my TED talk. I wanted to use Google Slides because I was familiar with it, so I created a new google slides presentation and started my work. I chose to use 1 slide for 1 week, and in each slide, I summarized my experience with lots of images contributing to the visuals of the slides. I finished the introduction by the time I had to stop. Next week, I hope to finish 4-5 more slides and write my script.

This week, I started by going right into creating my dialogue for the presentation and further developing my google slides for weeks 2-4 and further on.  Then I remade the 1-player mode and made the enemy bot easier to beat. I also uploaded my final unity game to unity connect but I had a problem. The game that was published was too small of a window to properly show everything in the game. The sides of the screen were cut off and the top was too short. I searched up many different wordings of my problem until I found out that the aspect ratio was wrong. The aspect ratio is the ratio of the screen width to screen height. It is found by dividing width by height. My aspect ratio was too small so i tried to increase it but Unity Connect did not offer an option for increasing aspect ratio of the game, only the screen. Just then I remembered about another game publishing tool called itch.io, in which I already had an account. I changed the aspect ratio there and successfully uploaded my project. It is now downloadable at https://spaceshark123.itch.io/pong-1 . After that was sorted I chose to include this setback in my slides and so I did. I also added a part about the advantage of NTI days which gave me more time to work on my project. This, although it was a disadvantage for some people, was a positive for me. I finished my speech and slides and rehearsed my lines 3 times. Then, I thought of answers for common questions people might ask me. Then, that was it, and I was finally ready and prepared.

This week, I recorded my TED talk and posted it to youtube so people can see it. I think I did well at talking loudly and clearly, though the audio quality of my recorder made it sound bad. I also think I did well on explaining my process and setbacks as well as showing all the features of my game. If I had the opportunity to deliver my TED talk again, I would talk slower, and try to improve the audio and video quality before recording. What I liked most about Genius Hour is that you can choose to learn about whatever you want, instead of having to choose from pre-made topics. The most challenging part about Genius Hour was that you have a time limit, so even if you have lots of setbacks, you still somehow have to catch up so you finish in the deadline. As I said in my presentation, in the future, I hope to further work on and expand my game by adding features like online multiplayer, a stable fps, and by remaking my options menu and 4-player mode. I don't have any more doubt about the Unity Game Engine like I did before, and I hope that I keep learning about Unity in the future.