Inspiration
During our junior year of high school, we decided to utilize the Unity game engine for our AP Computer Science Principles performance task and chose Connect 4 as our initial idea. However, we never went along with the idea. When I started thinking about what we should make for this Hackathon, I thought back to finally starting the project, but with a sort of twist, kind of like those videos of cursed images with eerie music playing in the background. And to me, a Connect X board -- a variable board with unbound sizes -- definitely took the cake.
What it does
Connect X stays simple, just like the original. However, the player now faces the threat of a comically sized board corresponding to how many game pieces in a row account for a victory.
How we built it
My partner and I utilized Unity as the main application to create Connect X, utilizing its standard C# library to script various parts of the game together. For the online version of the game, we built the game with WebGL and hosted it on GitHub pages.
Challenges we ran into
Most, if not all of the challenges we ran into were small, unexpected bugs rather than major gameplay issues. Bounding problems, for example, allowed the player to completely walk away from the board and go who-knows-where, a good example of a problem that does not necessarily break the game.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our two biggest accomplishments were definitely the menu visuals, which greatly utilized the Unity post-processing package, and the scalability of the game. To elaborate, Connect X can theoretically have an infinitely sized board, but optimization and player inconvenience would become major problems.
What we learned
My partner and I learned to use Plastic SCM, a version control built into Unity, to simultaneously work on the project together. Furthermore, the unique concepts of programming a Connect 4 game, such as 2D arrays and registering winning game piece formations, combined with the scalability of Connect X, introduced many problems we were both initially uncommon with.
What's next for Connect X
Honestly, probably not much. I think we both realized during the development of this project that while a very large Connect 4 game sounds cool, it fails in its execution for increasingly larger boards. However, the game could become more interesting given some more unique features, such as powerups (or even debuffs) spawning at random coordinates, as suggested by my teammate. If we were to work with Connect X again, we would probably have to rebuild it from the ground up.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.