Hi! I am Kuixi Song, a student who comes from Nanjing University, China. I am a fan of Apple since high school, and because I major in software engineering, I decided to devote myself to iOS development since the beginning of 2016. And, on last year's WWDC, the ARKit drew my attention, thus I made some research on it. So this year, I created a target shooting game for my submission. This game is inspired by an old game which I played when I was in junior school. The game ran on Wii, and you use your lever to aim at the targets and shoot them. So, with the power of ARKit, I wonder whether I can use the iPad as a gun and do the same thing. Finally, with the combination of ARKit and SceneKit, I created one on my own. With these awesome kits, I can generate the targets and score labels quickly. They also made it possible to simulate the real world well, for example, the targets are affected by gravity and the explosion effect after targets are hit. I also use RunLoop and Grand Central Dispatch technique to generate the targets periodically. Besides, in order to make this game more interesting, I used the AudioToolBox to add sound effects (which are all under CC0 license) to some actions. Furthermore, to make it a smooth and interactive process for users (like you :P) to experience, I used the PlaygroundSupport framework to add features exclusive to Playground on iPad, like realtime code editor, hints and page jumps.
As a student majored in software engineering, I “have to” almost code everyday. But as the quote marks indicate, I enjoy the whole process. I love coding. Unlike other students, I prefer doing some side projects besides the course projects to playing video games. So I began delving into iOS development in Jan. 2016, and I enjoy the process from designing, coding to testing and delivering apps. By now, I have launched 4 apps on App Store, including a Japanese vocabulary app, a ToDo app, an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) client and a client to help students in Nanjing University (where I study in) log on WLAN conveniently. These apps have accumulated some users since launching, and their suggestions and encouragement have greatly motivated me to add new features to the apps, make them better and learn more advanced skills to enhance them. That is where my pleasure in coding comes from. Also, I enjoy contributing to the open source community. Since the beginning of works on ARKit, I have made some interesting projects and open sourced them on GitHub. For example, I used ARKit to show a user's daily GitHub commit numbers (the green blocks) in 3D bars, which looks cool. Besides, inspired by the simple but classic game “Breakout”, I made a new version using SpriteKit on macOS. The most unique feature about this version is that you can use your Touch Bar on MacBook to control the paddle, move it from left to right just with your finger's one simple swipe. These projects have acquired some stars, and this also pushed me to learn more about coding and sharing, especially on iOS or macOS. In conclusion, in my opinion, the best thing of being a programmer is that you can do almost everything with your own creativity and proficiency, and convert lots of impossibles into possibles. For instance, if there is no good (of course, good or bad is judged by individuals) weather forecast app in App Store, just make one by yourself. And when others use your products and get benefits from them, that is the most valuable thing to me.