A Month of Progress: Anime Tracker App & Game Development!

Woah! It feels like forever, but it’s only been a single month since my last post!

From continuing the development of my Anime Tracker App 🎥📱, to researching new projects 💡, to putting everything on hold to study for exams 📚, and finally enjoying the end of my first semester at uOttawa 🎉, so much has happened in just one month!

🚀 My Anime Tracker App

My Anime Tracker App has made some important (but hidden) developments. I’ve been transitioning from using a single file to using a database for data storage.

After evaluating options, I chose Google Firebase for its:

Decent free tier ✅
Easy setup and use ⚙️
Cloud database capabilities ☁️ (great for syncing data across multiple Anime Tracker clients!).

As it was my first time using a database and I’m still relatively new to SwiftUI, implementing Firebase took a lot of tutorials, trial and error, and too much time 😅. In the end, I successfully integrated Firebase into my app, but I still need to transfer all of my sample data into the database and update all app pages to use the database.

💻 Learning React & NextJS

This past month, I also started learning React and NextJS.

I followed React’s official tic-tac-toe tutorial 🎮 and learned the basics (Components, Props, and States). Then, I explored NextJS with another tutorial to understand its core concepts.

However, I decided to pause learning React/NextJS for now, as I didn’t have a project to apply these skills to. From experience, I know I learn best when I’m working on a fun and memorable project.

I plan to revisit React and NextJS later by creating a web version of my Anime Tracker App! 🌐

🎮 Game Development Exploration

Recently, during my break, I revisited game development, which originally sparked my interest in software and hardware back in 2016. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Followed a Unity tutorial to create a Flappy Bird clone 🐦. This helped me learn Unity’s interface and how game development works.
Explored Unreal Engine to create a 3D game 🏙️ where the player collects coins and avoids enemies.

✨ After comparing the two engines, I decided to focus on making 2D games in Unity due to its better 2D support and vast number of tutorials.

So far, I’ve:

Created a basic level 🎨.
Implemented player movement scripts and enemy scripts 🎭💻.
Started planning my own 2D game (stay tuned for more details in a future post!).

Now, I’ve got two awesome projects to work on:

My Anime Tracker App 📱🎥
A new 2D game 🎮

Have you made any cool games in Unity before? What projects have you been working on? Let me know below! 👇

📚 Hope everyone did well on their exams and is enjoying their break! 🌟

Check out my Anime Tracker App