Project: Create a 3D physics based video game

What I learned: text style and graphic style coding becomes disorganized quickly

Duration: 1-2 months

Age 15

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The game consisted of a Minecraft character being shot from a cannon with a wing suit in an attempt to reach his destination.This was the combination of what I knew, Python coding, and what I wanted to do, 3D + physics. Blender is an open source 3D modeling/prototype game engine program based mainly on Python. Blender also included “logic bricks” as an alternative to text style coding. In attempting to use both, the game got very disorganized and difficult to debug. The program Blender also had a very difficult learning curve taking me 4-5 months to become proficient. The game was an overall milestone in combining what I did know to learn more. Blender was a huge help in many upcoming projects, with smoke simulations, bullet physics, short films, and 3D printing/file exports.

Please Play!  Click Here to Download

 

 

Project: Code a Python-based space video game

What I learned: Backup your backups

Duration 8 months

Age 13

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This was my first seriously coded game. It was coded in Python and the PyGame library extension for graphics. The script was over a thousand lines, with hundreds of sprites. After about 6 months of work I had finished and was preparing to export it to an executable. But while attempting to do so the file was corrupted and 6 months work gone forever. This taught me the very important, but hard to learn lesson of backing up work. The next three months were spent reconstructing the game from scratch. Several important concepts were learned while constructing the game: classes, relative positioning with simulated 3D graphics, and artificial intelligence. The game was set in space in 2.5 dimensions. Alot of work went into camera and parallax movement (inspiration for this website) as this was coded from scratch because the graphics library did not include this. The game was complete with a shop and different types of aliens. The game also has an artificial chat, although very primitive, it would learn slowly and remember from each session to improve.

Click Here To Watch Game Preview