Status Report #33

     School goes on, progress is slow but going, and I get more excited for my future each day. There's a BYOC at my school today where everybody brings games and computers to a gymnasium and we play video games so I'll be taking the day off to have some long awaited fun. Last year's was an amazing fun time for me and I want to see what memories this one will bring. Here's the 33rd Status Report.

Bug Fixed! ~ Spell Collision (Video)

     I was stuck on this bug for the longest time. I couldn't wrap my mind around why my blast bullets went straight through walls. Silly me forgot to put a rigidbody component on the spell's prefab object. The rigidbody component is the Unity provided code to make physics interaction possible. Now that I'm using it here I have blast spells that hit walls and play an explosion animation before disappearing. I also changed the cooldown rate so you can't let out an endless stream of spells. Now it's just a matter of making the other spells and making something to shoot at.

Here is a video of blast spells in action!

Yotes Games is Leaving iOS (Temporarily) in One Month

     I got an email telling me the end of my iOS developer status is coming. My license expires a month from now I and won't be renewing it until I can afford a new Mac to develop iOS games on. Those things cost about $2000 and I don't plan to get one until Unicorn Quest is out and selling well. It has to be new because the reason my old one doesn't work is its inability to update the OSX past OSX 10. It's literally one year too old to update and the appstore will not allow apps to go to the store unless uploaded by a more recent computer. It's why DragCore never made it.

     The whole closed hardware/software and shopping cycle of Apple products are why I love Android and PC so much more. I'll be focusing on making the best Android games possible before porting to anything else in the near future.

This will be your last chance to get TriGrid and Fish Feaster on iOS for one or two years so download them now if you're an iPhone user and want to see what they're about.

What Schooling Could Be Like (Gamification in Education)

     I recently had another one of my "Why is school still like this!?" episodes and got to thinking about what different ways sound ideal and what consequences there are for breaking the traditional approach.

     Suppose schools ease up on the grading system to lean more towards something that rewards excelling instead of punishing those who can't keep up. It'll stop the countless students who give up because they think they can only fail. Why not have it so that one student who is doing well can lift up the entire class' grade slightly, making the students who would normally be bullied more well liked (more of an  MVP instead of a know-it-all). What if school just focused more on fun instead of cramming and temporary memorization.

     Nobody remembers things in school that didn't involve some kind of fun experience. A boring lecture and a frustrating test are a waste while that one science experiment when the teacher brought in animals will stick with you forever. You didn't understand a particular bit of history until your teacher showed the documentary about the lecture you just had and now it's more clear because you saw it instead of heard it.

     I want to live in a world where we embrace the idea of voluntary learning and positive reinforcement in place of the constant threat of failure. A world where classwork and homework is fun. Where students work together and grades count upwards instead of down. Remove the pressures of school and people will stop giving up. Make a game out of it and everyone will improve on their own terms.

This concept is better explained in this short video about gamifying education.

(Update: Look t that. Another video on the topic came out today!)