This article will be a brief overview of a game I began to build and my experience doing so.
But first: are you in need of a coding community where everyone is extremely friendly, helpful, and offers multiple opportunities to improve your skills? Go to Mintbean.io and join. Seriously. You won’t regret it.
Mintbean has many hackathons going on all the time. I joined one that challenges the individual (or team) to build a game and in doing so your work is posted to a job board where employers can view what you’ve created. As someone who is looking for a job, this is a wonderful and very fun opportunity.
My game:
My goal was to make a game that tests the user’s ability to remember and playback different arrangements of pitches and also strengthen their tonal and visual memory.
You hear (and see) a melody played and you have to repeat it back.
Technologies Used
React & Tone.js
Why did I choose this and not some traditional game like Frogger or Space Invaders?
First, I’ve been a musician all of my life. So it only felt right to combine my skills of software engineering and music!
Second, I had to be careful with what I chose to build in a very short amount of time.
How much time DID I have?
Well this is already a hackathon, so the turnaround is very quick (and therefore I had the same initial short schedule that everyone else did). That’s part of the challenge (and part of the fun)!
❤️ But I’ve just had my first child. ❤️ So with a newborn at home, I did not get to spend nearly the amount of time I wanted to on this. I had to decide quickly and carefully what I could build that would both be a challenge to me and still allow me to have something fun and in working condition. I’m proud of the ability I had to multitask with my new daughter at home.
If I’m able to get the amount of work finished that I did in a short amount of time with a very demanding (but oh-so-adorable!) beautiful newborn baby, then I know that I can be tremendously productive with a real-world schedule (both work and personal).
Try it out!
You can try the game at https://music-memory-game.herokuapp.com/.
Goals
I plan on adding the functionality that keeps track of wrong guesses, apply a limit to them (before the user has to start over), and keep track of how many melodies they got right or wrong. Visually the user will not be able to view the next level of melodies until successfully completing the prior one. A function will be added that will randomly generate melodies as to not have to manually create them and muddy up the code. Users will be able to save their progress and resume their progression at any time
Takeaway
- Mintbean is such a wonderful community that offers great events like this one. If you need a community, I’d suggest to join that one!
- I’ve had years of experience of having to multitask, plan carefully, and know when to choose larger or smaller battles. I think this was another great experience in measuring and weighing out all the possibilities that lay before me.
- Being a dad rocks.
Thoughts? Questions? (Advice for new fathers? 😂)
Leave any thoughts here or feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or through my website.
Thanks for reading!
