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Leaving the city to head to the obstacles!
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Try not to hit the birds while zooming through.
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The reset run screen after hitting a bird.
Inspiration
When I heard the word "future", I immediately thought of every kid's dream: flying cars! Then, I imagined a sort of simulation or training system for these cars (since there are likely a lot of people fitter to drive on the road than in the air), similar to that of racecar drivers or pilots. Through imagining a sort of utopia/dystopian world, I was able to come up with the concepts of the project and apply that to the overall design of the game, its looks, and how it works.
What it does
This application provides the player with a 2D endless runner experience, so it keeps going on and on and on and so does the score on the top right-hand side of the screen. The player must use their up and down arrows to dodge the incoming birds to make sure they and their car can make it to their final destination. The birds come in at random locations every set increment of time. This game also occurs in the future, of which I have created a small letter for some context (check the Canva link). Basically, classism is very prominent in the future, and to combat that, the society that created the flying cars, which further increased levels of classism, decided to create this simulator. Not only does this simulator allow everyone to experience flying in a car and can get people interested to give them goals, but it is also very helpful for your license since it reminds you just how fast things can change while you are in the air. In some cases, if your score on the sim is high enough, you can get grants from the society themselves for a downpayment on a flying car.
How we built it
First, I created all of the necessary assets using Autodraw, Canva, Pixlr, and other background removers to keep everything good looking. This part took a while but it was rewarding since I was able to see a good vision of my project. Afterward, I drafted the letter to give myself a good vision of what exactly this project was supposed to be doing. Then, I went into Unity to actually create the game, which also took some time since I was very unfamiliar with the platform. However, the process really sped up once I got accustomed to it and was able to focus on developing itself. There was lots of elbow grease put into this project, but I think I did a good job considering my previous experiences!
Challenges we ran into
My first challenge was not having any experience drawing assets, and no supplies to properly draw with (like a suitable tablet or stylus). Plus, digital drawings aren't exactly my forte when I do use those supplies. To circumvent this, I used Google Autodraw to come up with basic icons that I was able to modify and put together to fit my vision, minimizing the actual amount of drawing that I did. When I was coding, of course, I did run into my fair share of errors. I deleted my first version of this project because I thought I couldn't zoom out of where I was (I just had to click the camera button). Then, my obstacle prefabs stopped getting deleted when they moved offscreen, at which point I had to redo the entire process of saving the prefab again (but I grew more confident in my skills during the process). There were also various errors along the way, but I was able to overcome most of them!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud that I was not only able to complete my first-ever project in Unity and my first big project in C# since I tried to learn it in a few weeks last year. I was also able to overcome all of the errors that were thrown at me and stayed patient with my code in order to create a final working project that I feel confident submitting! I have submitted many hackathon projects that I regretted submitting since I didn't get to finish up everything I could, but I did not feel the same way about this one! Plus, this entire genre is so different from what I normally do with Web Development, so a big thank you to the hackathon producers for the great theme :)
What we learned
I learned that taking the plunge doesn't necessarily mean that you will fail. My whole life, I have never liked taking risks. What this hackathon has taught me is that, if I know inside that it is more than possible for me to succeed, I should do it. Not only that, but I also learned more technical things, like navigating Unity (which I have been wanting to do for quite some time but have just never really had the time to properly work on). And, since I haven't used C# in such a long time, this project was a great refresher for me since I did use quite a couple of scripts throughout the entire process. I was also able to navigate the web and find some pretty nice asset-designing resources that I couldn't have been able to discover otherwise.
What's next for Fly for the Future
More stages with different types of obstacles! For example, maybe I could do a stage set during the night with other flying cars being the obstacle. I would also like to find a way to incorporate actual voices and things into the project to create a more realistic experience of being in the future and at the mercy of a car company. This could create a more engaging experience for an otherwise very simple game.
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