Video Game Design and Coding · PLECK lesson

PLECK lesson 31 · suggested week 7, day 1

Define the Meteor Mail loop

Objective. Specify an arcade game in a state-and-event model.

Godot Engine Standard desktop editor 4.7.2-stable, GDScript (Godot 4), Compatibility renderer. Headless Godot 4.7.2.stable.official.ed1daf0bf passed 106 assertions on the supplied scaffolds, including malformed JSON saves. Audio used the Dummy driver and a synthetic WAV, not a speaker. The visual editor, browser export, and signed-in submission were not tested. The desk still does not run a student's own upload.

About 55 minutes. The due date is chosen by a parent.

Meteor Mail spawning, instancing and cleanup

Suggested pace: Recall and predict 5 min; Read instruction and scaffold 12 min; Build or design the assigned artifact 25 min; Run acceptance tests 8 min; Explain and checkpoint 5 min.

Materials: Paper and pencil or a private text document, Local course folder and prior checkpoint, No paid assets or public account required.

Comes after VGC-L030.

Meteor Mail is an original one-screen courier game. The player moves to avoid falling parcels marked as hazards and collects safe deliveries. Plan a thirty-second round with three starting lives and an explicit win when time expires with lives remaining. Loss occurs at zero lives. The early prototype uses plain shapes. Write a state table for Title, Play, Win and Lose, then list which events are legal in each. This prevents score continuing on a game-over screen.

Worked example

A Timer with wait_time 2 creates one hazard per timeout. A hazard traveling 100 pixels/second moves 50 pixels during half a second and is removed after leaving the playfield.

Define the Meteor Mail loop — evidence task

  1. 1. Write a one-page design with controls, win/loss rules, entities and a four-state table.
  2. 2. Mark which events change score, lives and remaining time.

Deliverable. Meteor Mail design page and event table.

Acceptance checks

Understanding question. Should a hazard collision reduce lives on the title screen?

Submit readable text or photos/scans of each numbered design page. Audio explanation may supplement a diagram or text, not replace requested artifacts.

If this is still shaky. Use one manually placed falling hazard before enabling SpawnTimer. Keep the world unscaled and viewport 640 by 360. Start with the first assigned task and re-run its acceptance test before adding the remaining feature.

Optional extra. Compare two spawn intervals while keeping hazard speed fixed. Document one changed parameter, your prediction, and the observed effect; optional, not required for completion.

Name ____________________ Date ____________________