How and why I built MISSION MARS!
About me
I am currently a student studying computer science at The Pennsylvania State University. I have 4-5 years of experience of developing in swift. I love to create games, but I also love creating professional applications.
The problem I wanted to solve
I wanted to solve the problem of boredom! I wanted users to have fun and be able to compete with their friends using gamecenter, which was used as a highscore keeper. This allowed friends to challenge eachothers skill to see who could be the best!
What is Misson Mars?
Mission Mars is a game soley written in swift. It is a game where you dodge asteroids along with flaming HOT asteroids that come flying at your spacecraft! In order to get your ship to mars you must be able to maneuver quickly!
Software Used
I used Xcode, Swift, and Spritebuilder to complete this project. I also used iAD (which no longer exists because Apple did away with their advertising service.) I also implemented gamecenter for scoring and sharing with your friends!
The process of building MISSION MARS
I have built Mission Mars with swift and spritebuilder for the iphone. I first started gathering my ideas about what I wanted to create. At the time, flappy bird was a huge hit so I thought, why not replicate something like that, but also be very different at the same time. I also love Space and NASA and wanted to incorportate a space theme to my game.Mission Mars was definately the right path for my app.
Challenges I faced
I faced many challenges. My first challenege was saving the score, I implemented gamecenter to save the highscore, and this also allowed my friends to share their scores! I would research everyday and somedays I would get stuck and work out a problem for a couple days. I would have to step back and think about the best solution possible in order to overcome this obstacale. I also took my time to make sure the user would have the best experience possible during the use of my app.
Key learnings
Swift, Xcode, Cocoa Pods. Building instead of reading, definately is a lot more rewarding and you also learn from experience. I personally learned a lot about professionalism due to submission to the App Store. This was my first real world product and I gained valuable skills that I will use forever.
Tips and advice
Patience is key, and code to learn not just code to build! Take your time, and try to understand everything going on throughout your app. This will be important for your next project! One of my favorite quotes ever "Yesterday you said tomorrow"... Just start coding! Every day you will learn something new so just get after your goal!
Final thoughts and next steps
Keep coding, never give up on your dream!
