Returned

I've finished The Complete C# Unity Developer 3D course and with that comes a certain degree of anxiety.  As the final lessons approached there was no small amount of self doubt.  Was I ready to fly from the nest?  Could I solve hard problems on my own?  Well, as John Donne said, no man (or woman) is an island.  In the last few days I've returned to working on Rescue Rocket and immediately hit the same wall I faced before, procedural generation.  A very good friend of mine (who happens to be wicked smart) listened patiently and offered sound advice.  My code went from producing three dimensional QR codes like this:

...to properly spacing out the cubes (which will eventually be asteroids) like this:

This method even lets me easily use random sizes AND avoid blowing up my rocket if one tries to spawn on top of it (by simply NOT spawning on top of it).

As you might have guessed, we're moving freely in space now.  The endless mode with gravity will someday be a game option, but this was a suggestion given by two of my sons (and primary playtesters).  I even have "survivors" in the "asteroid" field that I can go rescue, complete with arrows pointing to their locations.

I've been busy.  I also made a new rocket and I'm working on getting the scale just right.

I recall when Kerbal Space Program first implemented EVA they realized the world scale wasn't right.  Everything was too small for the Kerbals to be able to fit inside the capsule (assuming 1 Unity unit = 1 meter).  I'm working on scaling my rocket accurately to avoid that problem from a much earlier stage.

Finally, I was struggling with getting a trigger to work.  I was racking my brain and reached out to the forums where a helpful user by the name of streetwalker helped me work through the problem.  Turns out the colliders didn't have the tag I was checking for, rookie mistake, but now it works exactly as expected.  You can see that thread HERE.  Thanks again, streetwalker.

If you're trying to solve all of your problems in a vacuum I strongly encourage you to reach out to the community, to friends, and ask for help.  Odds are good that someone has had the exact same problem or one very similar and there are plenty of helpful developers eager to share their knowledge.  It feels great to share the solutions to problems we've faced with others.

No man (or woman) is an island.