In this post we will begin the first real step of the project as we create the game screen – this will consist of a simple text field for user input and a scrollable text view showing the history of messages throughout the game. I will go in-depth on the description of code for the view controller as well as the manager object that records the message history. When we complete this lesson, you should be able to type messages into the text field and see them get appended to the log of messages in the text view.
Advanced
Zork – Intro
I have recently needed to learn Swift at work, so I decided to come up with a new game project to help inspire me. Since I am not using Unity, I wanted something light on art and I decided to look at old text based adventure games, like Zork, and found that it actually held quite a few interesting challenges. Simultaneously I have been intrigued by an architecture pattern called Entity Component System (ECS) which I have really wanted to dabble with for awhile now. Although I am new to both Swift and the ECS pattern, I feel that the results are worth sharing!
Partial Class State Machine
You’ve probably been told before not to re-invent the wheel, but when it comes to my own code I couldn’t disagree more. I love re-inventing the wheel because it helps you understand why things are designed the way they are, and occasionally allows you to make something better. I’m currently “thinking out loud” about a whole new approach to the way I implement state machines that can provide functionality I had been wanting but not thought was possible – until now.
Table View – Completed (Part 6 of 6)
It’s finally time to see how everything works together. In this post we will review the “Table View’s” code. This complex component will utilize the TableViewCell, Spacer, Flow, and Container elements we have already discussed to complete a very flexible component which accomplishes every goal I set out to achieve.
Table View – Container (Part 5 of 6)
The final “variable” implementation of our TableView helps to finish tying everything together. It breaks the four possible flows down into two categories: “Horizontal” or “Vertical”. You can think of this as a “Container”, because it causes the “Content” of the “ScrollRect” to adjust its size as necessary to fit all of the cells we have loaded. In addition, this script is responsible for deciding what kind of Flow to use based on the settings of the “Content” itself.
Table View – Flows (Part 4 of 6)
Just like we broke down the logic for determining the size and relative position of cells, we can also break down the logic for their flow. Should they be arranged from top-to-bottom, or bottom-to-top? How about right-to-left or left-to-right? In this lesson we will create a new interface so that we can easily support any of these options.
Table View – Spacers (Part 3 of 6)
Making a scrolling list of cells isn’t that hard. Making a list that only creates as many cells as is necessary for display is slightly harder. Using a single component which can elegantly handle variations like whether or not the cell size can change or what direction the scrolling will occur, is pretty advanced. The best way to approach this kind of challenge is to break it down into manageable pieces.
Table View – Cells (Part 2 of 6)
A lot of the hard work performed by a table view is related to the reuse of its cells. We will need a component that will help ease the process of positioning those cells once they have been added to the table view. It will also need a way to animate into and out of the table view.
Table View – Intro (Part 1 of 6)
I’ve been hard at work creating a prototype for what I hope will be my next blog project – a networked multiplayer card game like Hearthstone. Creating enough menus to build and manage decks has resulted in the need to make a bunch of table views (scrolling lists of items whether cards, heroes, decks, etc). Although Unity has some pretty nice new tools for UI, there are still improvements I felt compelled to address.
Custom Component Based System
In this post I will present my own implementation of a component-based architecture which closely mimics Unity’s implementation. It really isn’t as hard as one might think. Why would I ever do such a thing? I think I have plenty of good reasons, but I’ll let you decide whether or not its all worth it. As always, feel free to critique!