ARCADION - Getting Started

Who knew the project setup process could take so long?... I did hahaha. It has been a while since I started a Unity project from scratch and I kind of forgot how long it can take.

PROJECT SETUP

For starters, I created the project repository, and the necessary branches (main, developer, and the one ill be working on) I did this using GitHub. Next, I cloned the repo onto my machine. Next, I did the Git LFS setup (I don't plan on this being a big project but, you never know where things might go so I did it anyway). I made sure to add '.gitignore' and '.gitattributes' files. I created the Unity project, switched the target platform to Android, tweaked some of the unity project settings/preferences, and added a few packages and folders. The initial project setup was complete and thus my first commit and push to the repository.

STARTING THE GAME

I started the project by working on the Ball break game mode. This game mode is similar to the games BBTAN and Ballz. I started by making the ball, and ball launcher with their corresponding scripts. The ball launcher script takes click(tap)-and-hold input and uses it to determine which direction the balls will fire. This script instantiates the balls and adds force to them. The speed of the balls is determined by a speed member variable of the ball script. To top it off I added a LineRenderer to the ball launcher object. This line renderer acts as a preview and shows in which direction the balls will fire.

Now that the balls are able to be fired. It's time to add borders so that they don't fly off the screen. I created and added borders at the top and sides of the viewing area.

Now that we have borders and shooting balls, it was time to add bounce. This was fairly simple to accomplish all I did was add a Physics2D Material to the walls and ball prefab.

Now I have basic shooting and bouncing functionality for the Ball break game mode

Game running

Ball Script

Launching the ball

Git LFS (Large File Storage) is a Git extension that reduces the impact of large files in your repository by downloading the relevant versions of them lazily. Git Large File Storage (LFS) replaces large files such as audio samples, videos, datasets, and graphics with text pointers inside Git, while storing the file contents on a remote server like GitHub.com or GitHub Enterprise.

Setting up Git LFS for Unity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09McJ2NL7YM

---

McTiger Raphael

September 09, 2022