My Experience

For this 48-hour game jam, I worked as a Gameplay programmer, where my main focus was to implement the obstacles that the player had to avoid while collecting musical notes.

One of the main challenges during the Jam was to spawn the objects and always make sure they intercept the player while it's falling, while at the same time having different types of obstacles with different speeds and spawn rates. To achieve this, I created a cannon that everytime it shoots, it randomly changes positions around a circular path where the player is the center, allowing it to move closer and farther away.

The next step was to make the obstacles intercept the player no matter where it was on the screen. To do this, I implemented a system using pytagoras theorem to calculate the distance between the cannon and the player, and then using that distance to calculate the time it would take for the obstacle to reach the player based on its speed. At that time, I calculated the velocity vector needed for the obstacle to reach the player in that time, allowing it to always intercept the player, no matter where it was.

Stems from nothing was a great experience where I got a chance to improve my skills as a gameplay programmer while touching math concepts such as trigonometry and vectors to achieve the desired gameplay with a relievable system.