Music Dash

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  Gameplay

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  Starting Screen

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  Game Over

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  Development in Unity

Inspiration

Our initial hackathon idea was to do something with a game. We also realized that we all had a fond passion for music and that's when we thought to ourselves, why aren't there more games that play around with the background music? That's when we started to brainstorm ideas on how the game could interact with the music, and soon all the details for what we now know as Music Dash started coming together.

What it does

The game uses the Spotify API to get a thorough audio analysis of the song that is playing in the background. For this demo the song chose was "Mr. Blue Sky" by Electric Light Orchestra. Due to the time constraints, the factor used to determine how the game looked was the length of each bar to keep things simple. Every time a new bar starts, a new platform is created. You will notice this in the gameplay where the new platforms appear synced up to the music.

How we built it

The development was done using Unity using both the GUI to manipulate the sprites and collision boxes, while Microsoft Visual Studio was used to program with C# and add additional functionalities to the entities in Unity, such as the movement of the player and the control over when the platforms were created.

Challenges we ran into

We encountered issues when trying to incorporate the Spotify API. Firstly was finding a way for the API to be accessed using C#, and thankful NuGet was a good solution. The other major problem was syncing the music to the creation of the platforms, mainly the part of delaying the creation of the platforms. The WatiForSeconds function turned out to be quite complicated for those of us on the team who were new to C#, with keywords such as yield and IEnumerator being unfamiliar. However through perseverance and research, these issues were resolved.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We came up with a creative idea that hasn't been explored much in the mainstream gaming industry.

What we learned

The basics of Unity and game development and how flexible of a tool it can be with the help of assets and add-ons from the internet

What's next for Music Dash

Using more complicated metrics from the music, such as the frequency, to determine more elements of the game such as frequency of enemies, the height of platforms, movement speed, etc. In general, we hope to make the game be much more in harmony with the music.

Built With

• c#
• spotify
• unity