10/30 - 11/2

Nathan Matarazzo
Nov 3, 2023
2 min read

This week I made a minigame on my video game project. It is a platformer minigame, and a player can reach it if both players end the game with a score of 0 to 0. It took me a while to perfect the movement system, and I spent a few days working out the bugs in the movement system. I added a plethora of different functions in the movement system, so, for example, the player will fall slower if they are in contact with a wall, so the player can kind of slide down the wall. There is also a dash mechanic where the player can dash in a direction in mid air, as well as a wall jump mechanic that took me multiple class periods to figure out, but once I did, it ran really smooth with the game's engine. Usually, when making this video game, it has been difficult for me to find tutorials or instructions on what I'm trying to do, because there aren't really a ton of videos on YouTube about making a 2D basketball game in Unity. However, there are a lot of videos talking about making platformers in Unity. I kind of ran into the reverse problem I had before, because I've been trying my best to rely on myself and my understanding of Unity's engine rather than just copying and pasting the code from a tutorial. So, this movement system that I made for my mini game is completely original and custom made, and even though it was harder and took me longer than if I had copied code from the internet, I think that this was the right decision, because it expanded my knowledge of coding and Unity, and I can also feel more proud of it, since it is completely original. It is also easier for me to work out bugs in the code, because I have a larger understanding of it, since I was the one who wrote the code.

Since I was using a kinematic rigidbody for both player characters in the mini game, I had to make my own physics as well as my own collision detection system, and how certain collisions will affect the player characters.