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Junior Programmer: Create with Code 1

Introduction

In the last milestone, you got your first chance to play with the Unity engine and do some basic scripting. You also learned how to build a scene and how things are structured within Unity. Now, with this next milestone, you will actually start to build things with code in a more organized way than you did in the first milestone. In this milestone, you’ll start to utilize and understand the Unity API, how exactly variables and data types work, and what control and logic structures do. You’ll also have a chance to learn about effective project management skills if that interests you as well. This unit will help set a strong foundation in place for you to continue building your scripting skills.

Goals

To complete this milestone, you should be able to demonstrate the following skills:

  • Unity Editor
    • Understand and follow typical Unity workflows (new objects, new scripts).
  • Scripting
    • Understand and utilize variables.
    • Call and write basic functions.
    • Code comprehension (can you read code?)
    • Understand and utilize basic logic structures.
    • Code in a readable, standard, fashion
  • Basic Debugging Skills; Use basic debugging techniques to manage and fix bugs in your code.

Learning Objectives

StandardDescription
3A-AP-13Create prototypes that use algorithms to solve computational problems by leveraging prior student knowledge and personal interests.
3B-AP-16Demonstrate code reuse by creating programming solutions using libraries and APIs.
3A-AP-21Evaluate and refine computational artifacts to make them more usable and accessible. (Debugging Process)
3A-CS-03Develop guidelines that convey systematic troubleshooting strategies that others can use to identify and fix errors.

Content

Again, you will use Unity Learn for your educational materials for this milestone. Last time, you made your way through the Unity Essentials pathway. This time, you will be starting the main pathway, Unity Learn’s Junior Programmer pathway. This pathway will take you through all aspects of coding in Unity, and it will give you a great base to start developing games from.

For this milestone, you will work through the “Junior Programmer: Create with Code 1” mission, which will give you the coding fundamentals you need to continue through the rest of the program.

Recommended

  • Project: Getting Started
  • Project: Unit 1 – Player Control
  • Project: Unit 2 – Basic Gameplay

Optional

  • Tutorial: Introduction to project management and teamwork

Milestone Project

Your milestone project for this milestone won’t be as “set in stone” as other milestone tasks, as Unity offers polished, informative, and entertaining microgames which fit well with the content you learned in this chapter. Following the microgames tutorial (link), you should pick a microgame and develop a custom game of your choice!

A screenshot from the karting minigame. (credit: Unity)

You are allowed to choose one of three options:

  • Karting Microgame: A Mario Kart-style game where you race around a track and customize how the race works.
  • 2D Platformer: A 2D platformer game where you can get more information on how level design works.
  • LEGO Microgame: Create your own 3D platformer game where you use LEGO pieces to build a world.

Select a game, create a new project (following the directions in the microgames tutorial), and start to develop.

Whatever microgame you choose, you need to accomplish each of the following things:

  • You need to finish implementing the microgame (following directions within the Unity tutorial)
  • You need to add a new feature into the microgame (item pickups, extra movement, a new level, etc)
  • You need to iterate on your project. You should share a prototype with peers or your mentor/teacher, get feedback, and change your initial version.

Once you’ve gotten through those three things, you have successfully made it through this milestone! This milestone is important to give you a strong foundation, and you’ll continue building on it in milestone 4.

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