This week, I am getting started on my Individual Learning Endeavor (ILE) for my final. For this project, I am partnered up with Bobby and we are learning how to code a basic video game. We both have limited knowledge on coding, so this is a bit of a challenge. Our plan is to work backwards; by copying the game code and reverse engineering the game, we will be able to figure out what certain commands are. As well, we will tinker with the game and add our own spin on it and be able to demonstrate what we have learned. The method we will be doing this is by using Pygame, a program that allows us to create our own games in Python. We chose Pygame over other programs like Unity because it is easier to learn and manipulate when you have limited coding knowledge. I hope to use this as my foundation for my Senior Internship, where I want to work with a group to create our own video game from scratch. By using the knowledge I will acquire from this, I hope to establish a basic understanding of general coding. Even knowing basic commands or how certain things work will prove to be beneficial because as of now, I have close to zero knowledge about coding.
Image courtesy of https://wingware.com/doc/howtos/pygame
0 Comments
Over the past week, Bob and I have been working on creating our own house in this program called "Sweethome 3D". I found Sweethome to be extremely fun to use, especially once I got going and understood how to use it. Although I have never done anything related to architecture, I got lost in the program and wanted to use it as much as possible until we finally finished constructing our house. We started out slow, as on the first day we could barely figure out how to build a four wall room with a ceiling and floor. However, by the end, we had a fully furnished three level house, with everything ranging from a kitchen, to bathroom, to even a "dungeon" for the bad guests. On the first floor, you would enter the house through the study room, which had bookshelves, desks, and a spiral staircase that led up to the second floor. If you were to continue through the study, you would enter the bathroom, which was the first room we made. It had grass textured walls, with a wooden toilet, and windows all around it for minimum privacy. As it was the first room we created, it was sort of a joke to see how hideous we could make it, but fortunately we made the other rooms of the house actually realistic. The final room on the first floor was the kitchen. It was very basic, and there was nothing special about it but it was fully furnished at least. Moving up to the second floor, the stairs lead to a small cozy room with soft chairs, a piano, and an old TV unit. Arguably, it was the most appealing house because it was so small there was little room to mess it up. Next to that, was the one master bedroom, complete with a king sized bed, flat screen TV, fireplace, a laptop, and even a small aquarium. Moving up to the final floor, it is basically the attic/mancave. It had a bunk bed, sofa, TV, and a dresser. Again, like the kitchen, it was nothing special.
Overall I highly enjoyed using Sweethome and all of its perks. I would recommend it to literally anybody because it is not rocket science and you can pick it up pretty quickly. It is free to download and allows for hours of entertainment. http://www.sweethome3d.com/ Image courtesy of http://www.sweethome3d.com/ Last week, we had the chance to work with a program called "Sonic Pi" which combines coding with music. I have little experience in both, but I found myself enjoying playing around with it. I partnered up with Bobby, and we created a few different songs from the samples that were given. We changed the amplitude and frequency of certain sounds, and we ended up making a "song" that sounded like the inside of a factory. I think we changed everything to have the number "1", so this included bass, sleep, and bpm. There were repetitive clanking sounds with bells ringing that really made it seem like some industrial beat. Along with creating that beat, we experimented with the different sample tracks they gave us. With a limit of 300 lines of code, we tried to mix and mash all of the samples together. Surprisingly, we came out with a song with an actual rhythm. Of course we had to tinker to try and make it sound cohesive, but overall it turned out to be a fairly catchy song even though I know nothing about music or coding. I would recommend Sonic Pi to anyone who's trying to kill some time and enjoy themselves in the process.
|