RPP3: Daily Dev Blog Post 06

Welcome to Day 6!

Now that we have our level and basic character movement set up, it's time to get into the fun stuff! Mechanics are not only how the game works, but are the "core gameplay" aspects of the game, which is what makes up the majority of how a player spends their time in game. For example, a core mechanic of "Horizon: Zero Dawn" is exploration of the world. For our game, our core mechanic will have to do with the frog's tongue.

Remember yesterday's post, when I mentioned that our hero frog doesn't have any thumbs? Turns out that's not a problem! He can just throw out his tongue, grab any nearby object, and fling it where he likes! Of course, this takes some skill. It also takes skill to code this mechanic into a game. That's where our programmers come in!

First thing's first: when the tongue is at rest inside our main character's mouth, it needs to be hidden. No one wants to see that! Then, in order for the player to be able to control when the tongue shoots out, we need to map the action to a button. I'm sure most of you have played online games and have tapped the spacebar to get your character to jump. Well, that's code! Once that's done, we have to make sure the tongue has the ability to interact with objects in the environment. There's always something for a programmer to do! Without them, there'd be no game!

See you tomorrow for another Daily Dev update, where we'll be integrating everything we've done so far! Maybe we'll even end up with a playable game!

Today's bonus content is a peek inside Visual Studio and the code of our game, courtesy of our programmer, Michael. Visual Studio is a commonly used coding platform, and is the go-to for many of the Technical Design students here at FIEA.