Space Shooter: Phase 1 — Framework

Learning Unity in a hands-off environment can be downright exhausting. You can fully expect to spend an hour double and triple checking your code, wondering what phantom change along the way broke your entire project, only to find that a single letter was miscapitalized, sending everything into mayhem.

Of course, the silver lining to GameDevHQ’s hands-off approach to Unity instruction is the pay-off when you type a few lines of code, knowing it’ll work, and it just works. It just works, and the sense of accomplishment following these moments of realization is only empowered by every ounce of frustration you felt along the way.

At four days in, embarrassingly enough, I’m finally regaining what once felt like a natural understanding of basic Unity & C# Language. Today was long, but things were clicking. How could I walk away from that? Those like me who enjoy applying creativity to their work will find a bounty in the upcoming Framework and Core Programming sections. Be reasonable, but don’t be afraid to get lost in your projects! The elbow grease can pay in dividends.

Below, my attempt at some of the features requested in the Framework Section of 2D Game Development.

Warp Drive, displayed in the bottom left, charges up as you move. When full, it allows you to dash through space, momentarily shielded, destroying all enemies in your path and firing lasers as you go. Use wisely!

Upon being damaged, the camera shakes randomly in one of two ways, through zoom and rotational features

You can now make use of Heal power-ups which restore your lives, displayed in the top left

Ammo is now limited, shown in the top right. It flashes when empty and can be restored by a power-up.

The Shield power-up now has three charges, as shown in the top left, over the Lives indicator