Midterm project First draft – Introduction to Interactive Media

For my midterm project, I want to create a fruit ninja game but instead of cutting fruits, I want the user to cut flowers. Simulating you’re cutting flowers from a garden.

This first week I wanted to work on the hardware of the game.

I have the backbone of the game coded. Starting with the instructions display, the game which ellipses simulate the flowers and triangles simulate insects which simulates bombs. I started with a simple design so that it would be easier for me to code and understand every step.

It was a bit challenging for me to understand and to add the GameObject class.

Everything that moves or shows on the screen in your game, such fruits or bombs, is designed after the GameObject class. This is why it’s helpful:

In simple terms, GameObject is like the basic DNA for all the items in the game. It makes creating and managing game items easier and more organized.

Saves Time: It avoids writing repetitive code for common game item functions, such as moving or displaying on the screen. All items can use it after you write it once in GameObject.
Maintains Order: It assists you in maintaining the clean code of your game. Aware of the locations of the common elements
Facilitates Modifications & Simple to Add New Content: Modifying an attribute that should be shared by all items (such as movement) only requires making a change in GameObject; all items will then update accordingly.

Another thing that I had to learn was to increase difficulty as the user sliced flowers. I added this feature to my GameObject class.

This formula allows for dynamic adjustment of the game’s difficulty or pace, making objects fall faster or slower based on the speedMultiplier value.

Accordingly, if the game is playing at 60 frames per second (fps), the object will glide smoothly down the screen because its y location will be updated 60 times in a second.

this.y += this.speed * speedMultiplier;

Furthermore, I had to add a lot of If statements such as If an ellipse was not cut – game over or if a triangle was cut then – game over.

A handle function handles particular tasks within the code. For example, handleFruits() in a game might add new fruits, update their positions, and check if you missed any, all in one place. It ensures that everything that has to happen with fruits is done correctly and helps keep your code neat.

function handleFruits() {
  if (frameCount % 60 === 0) { //60(fps) a new EllipseFruit object is added to the fruits array every second. 
    fruits.push(new EllipseFruit());
  }
  for (let i = fruits.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
    fruits[i].update(); //Updates the position or state of the fruit 
    fruits[i].display(); //Draws the fruit on the screen 
    if (fruits[i].offScreen()) {
      gameOver = true; // End the game if any fruit goes off-screen
      break; // Exit the loop to immediately handle game over
    }
  }
}

Next steps:

This next week I’ll work on improving the game and make it more aesthetic. I need to add the pictures of the flowers and change the cursor to some scissors. I have to add some music so that every time the user cuts a flower there is a sound in the background. Lastly, I have to figure out how to display the instructions first with the fullscreen option.

Bibliography:

https://p5js.org/es/reference/#/p5.PeakDetect/update

https://p5js.org/es/reference/#/p5/createButton

https://p5js.org/es/reference/#/p5.Score

https://p5js.org/es/reference/#/p5/keyIsPressed

https://p5js.org/es/reference/#/p5/pop

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