Learning the Ropes: Circus of Blobland

When I enrolled to study at SAE in May of 2018, I was very apprehensive. I hadn't made any games or done programming in a long time and so whether I was going to be able to handle the course I signed up for or not was a big concern for me. In the end, when I did enrol and get through the first trimester, I passed all my units, having obtained distinctions for a few of them.

Out of all of the units in in my first trimester, the one in which I performed the best was my "Introduction to Scripting" unit. The unit mostly consisted of assessments requiring several small tasks to be completed that involved different scripting concepts such as declaring and assigning several different types of variables, getting a game object to move using velocity and Unity's in-built variables, creating functions involving different mathematical calculations, parsing one type of variable to another, and displaying variables to the console and to UI text objects.

The third and final assignment that we were given as a part of this unit, was for us to create a full, complete physics based game that took advantage of Unity's in-built physics engine. For my assignment, I decided to create a circus-themed physics game, also using the cartoon theme of “Blobland” for the location and storyline of the game; one which I have used previously in several of the games I have created. I decided to name the game Circus of Blobland.

In the game, the player takes control of a cannon and must aim and fire the cannon at the correct angle, to send a circus performer in the correct direction, to allow them to gain the highest amount of points possible whilst performing a circus trick, and they must land on a target at the end of the trick. There are several ways to earn points by having the main character interact with different physics objects. The number of points earned are added to the final score at the end of the trick.

Creating this game was a great learning experience for me. I learned a great deal about Unity and how to use its editor and its functions. The assignment taught me skills and provided me with information that will help me develop my skills further as a game designer. It helped me consolidate an understanding of various concepts that I had previously struggled with, such as the “AddForce” function, the “GetComponent” function, the “OnCollisionEnter2D” and “OnTriggerEnter2D” functions, and the manipulation of various in-game physics parameters and properties on game objects, such as an objects “RigidBody2D” and “BoxCollider” components. I also learnt a new skill when creating my swing object, as I learned about the “FixedJoint” and “HingeJoint” components and the “.connectedBody” parameter when calculating the collision of the player object with the swing, and I gained a better understanding of parsing whilst using the “Int.ToString()” code to write the score to the screen.

Overall I learned a lot of things about Unity and how to use it, and this project helped me fully understand, consolidate, practically apply, and remember the things I learned during my first trimester.