In my freetime I like to develop my own video games and I am currently focusing on mobile games, especially for Android. At the beginning I’ve experimented with different languages and frameworks, but settled on Java since I am most experienced in it. The framework I am using is LibGDX
These days, I work together with some friends that each have different specialities and fields of work, which fit together perfectly. As the software developer I take care of the core game mechanics und pay attention to good and clean code. We are using Trello for organisational tasks and as a Kanban board. Also, we use Google Drive for file sharing and Github as our version control platform.
In our first game “Four Elements” you are the master of the four elements and your task is to protect the ancient Mayan city from destruction by the downfalling elements. You can control the elements in the bottom half of the screen by swiping them with different speeds and directions. Any downfalling elements of the same type that got hit vanish into non-existens. If one of the controlled elements leaves the top of the screen or bounces of the sides more than three times it resets itself to the starting position. If a downfalling element reaches the city the health bar at the top of the screen shrinks a bit and on reaching zero the game is lost. The top left score is calculated by the play time and the elements hit including combo points for multiple hits with the same element. At the end, if broken, a new highscore is saved.
Technical Details:
- Technologien: Java, Git, Tiled, Tools of the LibGDX Frameworks
- Tools: Android Studio
- Frameworks/Libraries:
Personal Development:
Working in a team consisting of people with different jobs really helped me in learning to explain problems and tech-heavy things to non-tech people. Also my project management skills improved a lot and we are continuously finding new ways to improve our productivity. In the past, I used to start programming with only a vague idea in mind and not a structured and well planed plan. Even though I already created class diagrams for my games the undefined game concepts almost always brought in new features and problems that made my diagrams useless and caused more work than necessary.