Fishing Jam, Continued

Ok, so not exactly daily updates, but here we go.

Some progress is happening in my Fishing Jam game. This is, as previously stated, a fun project, and a good reminder to me of the value of the game jam from a development perspective.

For me, the game jam is always a learning experience, and a valuable one. Previous to this, the only finished projects I’d done were in Lua using LOVE2d, which is a fine framework. But I’ve decided I want to step up my game, and after investigating a large number of options, went with what I found to be the most flexible and useful: Unity3d. This will probably come as a surprise to nobody, as Unity has long had a reputation for flexibility and accessibility. However, it meant learning what in my mind is a more “real” programming language, as Unity scripting is in JavaScript or C#, and I decided to learn C#. I’ve been playing around with Unity for a few months, but the process of this jam is forcing me to really solve problems in C# and is making me a better programmer. There are few thrills like solving a problem in an elegant way, or on your first try, at least for me.

Anyway, on to the game. Sharketype (working title) will probably first be released as a web game, sometime after this week. I am hoping to polish it into a releasable iOS/Android project (especially now that those licenses are free! Thanks Unity) down the line.

You play a shark swimming around an infinite ocean and eating fish. So far, the shark swims, the coral reefs spawn fish which cluster in schools, and everything’s purplish.

See how purplish?

Moving forward, I hope to make the terrain pac-man like so you can swim forever. I think my ocean floor is big enough where that won’t get boring. Some polish on the reefs, and the hope that they can organically expand. Also the shark doesn’t currently actually EAT the fish, he can just swim near them and give them a menacing glance.