Alphabet Soup

[UPDATE: I implemented some of the advice given in this thread. Moving around letters should be a little less awkward now, and they can no longer be dragged out of the bowl. I've updated some of the textures, including the soup itself. I'm attaching a new screenshot, but leaving the old one for comparison. Universal Binary is updated. Are words being recognized on anyones computer? It works fine on my machine, but others seem to be having trouble, I'm wondering if its working for anyone at all!]

This is my second project in Unity. My first attempt was the little bowling game I posted a few weeks ago.

This project was more heavy on the scripting side. I was using JavaScript, but for my upcoming projects I'm going to try C# instead. The fact that JavaScript is not strongly-typed can get very irriating at times.

Anyhow, let me know what you think!

 

Wouldn't have a webplayer version by chance?

~t

 

No, I didn't figure out how to do a webplayer version. The problem is that the game uses an external dictionary file that is loaded up on startup. You can't have external files with a webplayer as far as I know.

Does Unity have a way of packaging raw data files along with your other assets, and provide a means of accessing those files during run-time?

 

You can type the JavaScript used in Unity so it is resolved at compile time instead of run time. Also, JavaScript in Unity will infer file types at compile time if possible if the variable is not explicitly typed.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. var distance = 3.0;
3.  

will be typed as a float at compile type instead of defering type resolution at run time.

 

Yes I realize this, but the benefit of a real strong-typed language is that it enforces proper decleration. The fact that Javascript can resolve types at compile time _if_ you remember to initialize them is of little help, because if you forget to intialize them you won't find out until later on.

Furthermore Javascript promotes sloppy programming, and leaves the programmer doubting their own code.

 

Looks really neat although that "soup" looks placeholderish. Is it supposed to recognize words? It never did here. Also the rigidbody dragging is kind of annoying at times.

 

Yeah it should recognize horizontal words, they will start glittering and then jump out of the soup, making other letters fall down.

Yup the dragging is a little awkward, it's mostly because the letters don't follow the mouse directly, the mouse just exerts physical forces on them in the direction that it is being dragged. I wasn't sure how to do it otherwise, it is recommended to move rigidbodys by forces only, so I can' just translate to the current position of the mouse pointer.

 

I would say use a bigger force and give the rigidbodies more drag. They aren't having frction with the soup surface are they? They shouldn't, drag would be a lot better.

I tried again and I still can't get them to dissapear.

 

Interesting, it looks like the english dictionary file is not being read correctly. I'll take a look at it later.

 

Whatever that is

I would hardly say it promotes sloppy programming. You can do sloppy programming in any language. Some would say the choice of whether to type gives you flexibility. There are some problems that are much easier to solve with dynamic typing.

 

The cookies look a bit unhealty to me.