Flower Plower is an arcade maze runner where you use a tractor to plant and harvest flowers. Score enough points and you can create new areas on the map. Shape the layout of the maze to maximize your combos and achieve high scores. Just don’t run over your sheep!
Prototype
Progress is coming along nicely on the prototype version of flower plower.
The basic mechanics of driving a tractor around planting and harvesting flowers are in place as this high quality but low file-size webm video will show
Recording videos and producing good quality web-friendly videos has been a learning curve. The current process is as follows:
- Record the screen using Open Broadcaster Software
- Edit the video using Power Director
- Convert to the video to webm using FFMPEG (My version of Power Director does not support webm).
It’s a slow process but it works!
Regression Testing
There’s currently a bug that occurs when the player changes direction when between two tiles.
As part of my new commitment to following some sort of Software Engineering practice I decided to make a test to re-create the bug before even attempting to fix it:
I had to redesign the input handling so that it would be possible to control the tractor via test scripts. The code is a lot stronger as a result!
I used the Command Pattern to encapsulate any calls to Unity’s Input methods. It helps reduce coupling and now it’s possible to create some sort of replay system if I decide to.
Creating a test that recreates the bug before attempting to fix it is a nice way to approach the problem as it gives you a chance to figure out exactly what the problem is before poking in code.
Unity’s Test Runner is great for executing testings from within the editor. It’s satisfying to watch all the tests run…