Play Junkyard
This is what you are building. Stack of crates, one heavy stone ball, and a mouse. It took sixteen crates and eight lines of code, and you will have built all of it by the end of Activity 1.5.
Controls: click anywhere to launch the ball. That is the whole control scheme.
What's In Here
Nothing in this game is decoration. Every part of it is one of the five activities in this section.
| What you can see | Where you build it |
|---|---|
| Anything at all on screen | Activity 1.1 |
| Crates sitting where you put them, at the size you chose | Activity 1.2 |
| Crates that fall, land, and lean on each other | Activity 1.3 |
| Sixteen crates that are all the same crate | Activity 1.4 |
| A ball that answers your mouse and wrecks the stack | Activity 1.5 |
Notice what the game is not doing. Nothing keeps score. Nothing can be won or lost. No crate knows it was hit. The engine is running gravity and collisions, and everything you find satisfying about knocking the stack over comes out of that for free.
That will not be true of the next game you build. Worth remembering when you get there.
Before You Build
Play it for two minutes, then be ready to answer these out loud. No writing, nothing to submit.
- Where did you aim the second time, and why was it different from the first?
- This game has no score and no way to win. Why is it still worth two minutes?
- Name one thing you would add. Keep it to one, and keep it small enough to build in a day.
Hold onto your answer to the third one. Some of them are already built as DLC for this game, and the rest are fair game once you can write the code.