In this section, we modify our very first game. Robot Finds Kitten is a quiet, simple game of exploration and robots. Our robot's kitten is lost and he needs to navigate through a vast land to find her.
Download this file and save it to your mobile games folder.
Unzip the folder and open the Corona Simulator. Using the File > Open menu,
select the main.lua from robotfindskitten. Use Command + Shift + O on Mac OS
or Control + Shift + O on Windows to open the main.lua file in Brackets. The
code is also available with an explanation on this web page.
Play the game a few times. Is there a pattern in where the obstacles are placed? What sayings you see for each obstacle? Is the kitten behind the same obstacle each time?
The code for showing sayings starts on line 335. Take a quick look and see if you understand it. Try explaining what it does to someone nearby.
Once you've got a handle on it, use the search (Command + F on Mac OS and
Control + F on Windows) to find the uses of saying:update.
What did you notice about where we use it. Where does the new text for the saying come from?
The obstacles are created starting at line 396. Try changing one of the sayings and replay the game. Change the sayings around until you like all of them.
Let's add a few more hiding places. Where do you think a kitten would hide? Go onto the internet and find some small images and save them to your robotfindskitten folder. Try to add your own obstacles using the existing ones as a template.
Make sure that you add the hasKitten and put methods to your obstacles and
make sure you give each a numerical index as well as a name it can be chosen to
hid the kitten.
Lastly, update the maximum random number generated to hide the kitten on line 431 to the same as the number you gave to the last obstacle.
I chose to place obstacles in specific squares but you could set it up to be random, just like the kitten. You should make sure to check that no two obstacles try and take the same space. You could also create a biiiiig list of sayings and give each obstacle a random one at the start of the game. All of these things would make the game more dynamic, interesting, and fun. Pick one of them and try it.
Check out the source repository