Project 3

I spent some time going through the Piazza discussions regarding Project 3 (arcade game clone), and through the discussions there (as well as the Office Hours discussion Wednesday), I think I have a better feel for how the project should be approached.

To my surprise, I was able to meet the minimum specs and have a working game within just a few hours. Taking things one by one (getting the player to show up on the screen, coordinating movement, preventing the player from falling off the canvas) really did make this a lot simpler than I thought it would be. As the coaches have said, a lot of the background work has been done in the resources and engine JavaScript files, allowing us to concentrate on the app.js file for our code.

Now comes the fun part: customization!

Several students have gone well beyond the requirements, and made some excellent games. The variations have been fun to see, but I'm wanting to stand out a bit, not going too overboard but still making it memorable and fun to play.

I need to come up with a checklist of what I would like to have, and see how realistic it will be. The plan for now is to have it more Udacity themed, including the backstory (why the player does what they do) and the characters involved. I've already gotten permission from Miriam and Mike (two Udacity leaders for our cohort) to use their names as the names of the player options. I was able to modify some of the game assets to represent each person in game.

Cute Udacity shirts, yes? 

I have a lot of other ideas, but I won't detail them out just yet - some things should be left as surprises. I just hope that I don't try to put too much into this, and end up frustrated with the outcome, or spend way too much time on it. The deadline for the project is several months off - and I don't intend to spend THAT much time on it - but I've delayed the start of the project, and really want to make something good.

I know I can pass the evaluation, but now it's all about being Udacious!