ProjectMars

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  Project Mars Main Icon

** Please note ** The app I am presenting is not 100% complete and is the result of several months of learning and work thus far. However I believe it showcases itself wonderfully and is feature complete!

Inspiration

I've always wanted to make a game and I decided I was finally read to jump into it head first. I used a combination of risk and chess as a basis for figuring out the rules. I felt the app store is really missing a mid-level risk type strategy game. When I could not find one I decided, hey, I can do this myself!

What it does

Provides fun!

How I built it

I've been working at it for about four 5 months now from scratch learning swift and the SpriteKit library. Unfortunately, since I started with zero IOS development knowledge, much of the code is retrospectively bad, but it gets the job done! With stack overflow and sleepless nights I slowly pieced the code together to this point. The other part was of course the graphics which I drew in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. Art was an equally daunting challenge, but it helped me develop some cool skills and in my opinion fairly good 2D art.

Challenges I ran into

I couldn't even list all the challenges I ran into. Though they always seem daunting, I eventually get past them. I would say the one that stands out is state restoration and handling save games. It took me quite a while to finally understand the concept behind what was going on in the background. The feeling I got after it started working was monumental.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Frankly, I think I am most proud that I was able to put this together and push myself to do work on top of school and other responsibilities. It is always easy to sit at home and relax, so pushing myself through this daunting project has been, in my opinion, my greatest accomplishment.

What I learned

I think I mentioned a lot of it above. I learned to love the swift language and really see its brilliance in many areas. Learning 2D art was also very cool and provided days of frustration to me. The fact that I can look back at my first few .swift files and say: "wow this can be done much easier" means I must have learned something!

What's next for ProjectMars

I think save for finishing the game AI, the app is feature complete at this stage. The only huge undertaking left is game AI. After that it becomes a matter of polish and release to the app store. Cannot wait for that first publishing and I am already full of ideas for my next project!

Built With

• swift