Swift Playgrounds: World Grid

Hello, my name is Douglas Walker. Today we are going to check out some really useful tips that might give us a better understanding of how are layout and grid will work, when we first begin moving through our world grid.

Now, we're using our iPad in landscape-view because we have found that we have much more screen space available to us. And when we're using VoiceOver, all of our elements are much easier for us to navigate.

Now one really important thing to know is that our screen is laid out in cardinal directions. And we can think of this much like our typical map. So this means that the top of our iPad is considered north and, of course, the bottom of our iPad will be our south. And of course this means that the right side of our iPad will be our east and, last but not least, that means the left side of our iPad here is the west.

Now all of this will really make a lot more sense once we begin moving our character through our world grid here. So how about we check out how everything is laid out within our world grid?      

Now our grid is laid out in a series of rows and columns. And our rows and columns are laid out very much like the apps on our iPad's home screen. However when we flip left and right, instead of moving to the left or right through our rows, we'll actually move up and down, by columns.     

I know, right? Kind of different. But our layout really will begin to make much more sense, once we start moving through our world grid here. So, let's do it.     

We'll just touch here in the bottom left-hand corner of our world grid.     

And we'll just touch:

VoiceOver: Column zero. Row zero. Block at height zero. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Great. So here we are on row zero, column zero. However we also heard VoiceOver announce that we're on a block, at height zero. So it's also important to know that we do have one more variable here.

Okay, we're actually traveling through a three-dimensional world here. So we also have levels, or what Apple calls heights. And we can kind of think of our heights, maybe, as different floors in our house or even different levels in an apartment building.      

Anyway, it's important to know that we have five rows and five columns here in our puzzle grid. And we can always have VoiceOver repeat our grid location, if we like, with just a simple single-finger double tap. So let's go ahead and just repeat our location here.    

And we'll just single-finger double tap:

VoiceOver: Column zero. Row zero. Block at height zero.

Douglas Walker: Perfect. And again, we are told that were are on row zero, column zero here. And on a block at height zero. So our bottom row here, of course, is row zero. And our first column here is column zero.   

And we can think of height zero, of course, as our lowest floor. Now remember as we begin flicking to our right, we'll actually start moving up our column zero, here. And we'll move up to row one, and then row two, all the way up to row four. And as we keep right flicking, we'll progress up column one, and then column two, three and four.

So let's go ahead and give it a try. We'll just right flick, just one time, here.      

And we'll right flick:

VoiceOver: Column zero. Row one. Block at height zero. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Great. So we move up our column in our world grid, and we're now on column zero, row one. And we were told that we're still at our height zero, which again, is our lowest level. And that's pretty great.      

Now, VoiceOver keeps announcing that we have action hints available to us. And this really is important because our actions will actually give us the location of our character, our gems, and our other elements that are within our world grid here.     

Now we aren't going to explore our actions today, because we just so happen to have a Swift Playgrounds video called "Custom Rotor and Actions." And it does a pretty good job of getting us quickly up and running with exactly how our custom rotor actions work, here in our world grid.    

All right, we do have a character location here in column two of our world grid. And our character's name is Byte. I know, right? That's pretty great. And we also have a goal location, here in column two as well. And this is where we would go to, of course, collect our gem.      

Now we could just right flick all through our world grid here to finally move to our character here in column two. However for the sake of time, we'll go ahead and just simply touch Byte, here, in column two, row one.    

And we'll just touch Byte:

VoiceOver: Column two. Row one. Start marker at height zero facing north. Byte at height zero facing north. Double tap to switch characters. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Great. And again, VoiceOver gave us a lot of really good information. We were told that we're on column two here, row one. We were also told that we're at our start location. VoiceOver announced that our character, Byte, is also at our current grid location. And we were told that Byte is actually facing north, or towards the top of our iPad here, which is really great.      

So, yeah, a lot of really good information here. Okay, we know that our gym is also here in column two and is actually, here, in row four. So how about we quickly just right flick up our column here until we find our gym.      

And so we'll just right flick here:

VoiceOver: Column two. Row two. Block at height zero. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Column two here, row two.

VoiceOver: Column two. Row three. Stairs leading to height one from row two. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Okay we found some stairs, so we're actually headed up to the next height here.      

So we'll right flick again:

VoiceOver: Column two. Row four. Gem at height one. Actions available.

Douglas Walker: Okay. And again, VoiceOver, has given us some good information here. We're told that we're still in column two, row four. However we've actually, again, moved up one level to height one. And this is great because we have also located our gem. And there you go!      

I tell you, it does take a little time to really get the hang of how our world grid here is all laid out. However, with just a little practice, we'll soon be moving our friend Byte here all through our world grid.     

Again, my name is Douglas Walker. Take care and I'll see you next time.