Development Blog 3 - Unity: Create with Code Unit 01

Unity is a game development engine that my students will be using to develop their own games, so it was probably time I took a stab.

I played with the software a little bit at the beginning of lockdown, but kept hitting a roadblock with the tutorials I was following and so kept giving up.

I had some free time so I decided to hammer out one of Unity's own tutorials, 'Create With Code'. It's an extensive course that not only teaches you the basics of Unity, but encourages you to development your own micro-game alongside it.

This Unit covered coding Player Movement, and started to encourage the development of the game. Looking at the Prototypes on the course, a lot of them revolve around endless runners or points-focused games, so I decided to create something like that.

I had the idea to create an 'endless-faller', where a superhero was diving to catch the damsel in distress, and avoid a collapsing building as he does so. Will it be remotely realistic? No, but hopefully it'll be fun for a first attempt.

The Unit itself was really good. It covered some of the programming language, and although it hasn't totally sunk in yet, I was not only able to code some basic four directional movement with some rotation, but it also gives you a debug task. The prototype is deliberately bugged and you have to try and fix it using what you've learnt, as well as an additional 'bonus' challenge.

The hints for this were pretty blatant, but it still made me feel like I had accomplished something.

Hopefully, as the course continues, the programming will start to become more obvious through repetition.