3/26/2024 - Interests and Goals

[insyri]

Whenever starting out learning anything, it's a good practice to start with what you want to do with it. In computer science, that usually takes the form of creating applications, websites, or games. For example, creating a game on Roblox or Unity, or building a website for your personal blog, or even programming robots on Arduinos. The possibilities are limitless, and so, I would like you all to take a moment and think about what you want to create while learning. This will be a good motivator and behave as a subconscious desire to come back and try again. If you believe in its beauty, it'll work.

When you're done thinking about that, tell me the following things:

1. What is it that you want to make? Describe it as you're pitching it to me.
2. Do you have any ideas on how you want to make this? For example, is there a specific programming language that you have in mind to learn and make with it? It's okay not to know this part! I'll help you brainstorm on your options.
3. What are your learning goals? Nothing big is expected! We're focusing on the little goals. For example, if you're thinking about making a game, one goal could be to learn how to make a player teleport into the sky when it touches a part.

After, I'll help you out by providing resources to help you get started with your endeavors. It is recommended to learn a little bit of theory first. Within the resources channel, I listed up a bunch of resources to start learning how to code here, including lectures from MIT and Harvard. But if that doesn't sound like fun, going head first works too! I'll be willing to work alongside you to get you started as well.

On Friday maybe, I'm thinking about showing you how to start it as well. I'll teach you a bit of the ins and outs of your environment and how to get it all set up. And next week, I think we'll go over that bit in class together!

[Dururun]

1. I want to make a game that is much more involved as the cursor guides the character's movements rather than a mouse. The keyboard would supplement the mouse for actions that can't be taken or that wouldn't be practical for a mouse, such as jumping. The ideal version of this game would be a fighting game where the movements are entirely unique since each cursor movement (clicking and dragging to move) would move the limbs, unique since it would be like writing cursive on-screen. There would also be a reversal at times of stuff like blocking, where the area that is vulnerable is chosen instead of the area to be protected. Stuff like that and more.
2. Lua since I intend on having it be on Roblox. The main reason is for the simple designs of the avatars and the vast community, which would be very hard to replicate or compete against on a different platform. I am aware that it might be tedious since I would have to deal with Roblox (which I heard is tedious though I have no experience myself). For things that aren't Roblox I would like to learn how to use Python.
3. To learn how to effectively map the mouse to the character, I could work towards making their arm move to create paintings while being realistically limited by physics (I don't want a disembodied hand) with their body ideally bracing by stepping forward with one leg, for example, so that they wouldn't fall over. That or just working the animations for it so that they aren't too block-y. Not entirely sure what the first baby step would be.

[insyri]

I did a bit of research on what could kick start your idea. I think if you could provide me a visual aid of some sort- we can talk about it in person- I could find some specific resources that could help with that. I'm thinking that vectors and vector manipulations are going to be big here, since this sounds like a mathematical problem to me. Tomorrow, I'll provide you with some resources on Lua and Roblox in general.