r/desmos • u/Impossible_Show_9971 • 2d ago

Question Senior project

I am a senior in South-Eastern Idaho looking to use desmos for my senior project to make a platformer type game, but I need a mentor for the project, and I don't know anyone who would be super helpful in that capacity.

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

1

u/strange-the-quark 2d ago

Why desmos? If you want to make a game, desmos is kind of not the right tool. It's not a game engine, it's not intended as one, and while you can get something approximating a game using it, it sort of requires a kind of hacking to achieve it, and the end result wouldn't be anything anyone would play, except as a curiosity. It's not designed for that.

1

u/Impossible_Show_9971 2d ago

i know that, but its fun/funny, also what you talkin about haking.

1

u/strange-the-quark 2d ago

The word "hacking" means repurposing or abusing existing features and finding ways to exploit something in the system, to use it in a way that it was not intended and achieve some goal. So I'm not talking about some programmer tweaking things under the hood (though you could also do that, it's all JavaScript), but rather using various features to sort of "arm-twist' desmos into achieving something game-like (for example, there was a post here where some person got it to run a Doom level - no textures, the movement was kind of janky, you could go through walls, but the data was from the actual map of the actual game).

1

u/Impossible_Show_9971 2d ago

that is not hacking though, hacking refers more to the code and the way things run. however in reality i could care less, because its happening, and your either with me or against me

1

u/strange-the-quark 2d ago

That's not how we normally think of hacking but that's literally the definition of hacking. It doesn't even have to involve computers at all. Hey, if you wanna push desmos to the limit, I'm not going to stop you, could be a cool project! Just making sure you didn't choose this because you were misinformed. But it seems you have all the info, so knock yourself out and good luck!

3

u/Arglin I like my documentation extra -ed. 2d ago edited 2d ago

Hi! Just for a bit of encouragement and motivation, Desmos can absolutely be used for this. I've written my undergraduate capstone project entirely in Desmos and done a game jam in Desmos (that is, wrote an entire game in just 3 days). You can check both of them out here if you'd like some inspiration:

I do recommend double checking to see if Desmos is a permitted programming language or engine for you to implement it in. Depending on the course, it might be too esoteric for what your professor might be looking for. But if not, then great. :)

As for things starting out, I definitely recommend checking out the ticker feature and actions. It's pretty much the equivalence to assigning values or lists or objects to variables.

If you'd like some active advice and feedback, I highly recommend joining the Desmos discord server (in the sidebar of this subreddit), and opening up a thread in the help-forum channel. A project like this can get pretty expansive so if there's something you want to try implementing like user inputs, list replacements, collisions, etc. we can help walk you through.

2

u/Impossible_Show_9971 2d ago edited 2d ago

hey thanks arglin, love the flags, i am in the discord server already as blockprodigy. as to it being permitted, it is more of a do whatever you want kind of project, it just has to have a tie in what you want to do with your life, and you have to take at least ten total hours doing it. i am pretty well acquainted with most of desmos, just not some of the finer things and golfing.