Flying Zuzzi Rebuild v2

/ Viorel Petrea / Leave a comment

Hello everyone,

Back in 2015, I released my very first mobile game: Flying Zuzzi.

It was a small project, built with passion, curiosity, and a desire to learn game development. Like many first projects, it wasn’t perfect, but it represented something important: the joy of creating something from nothing.

More than a decade later, I’m excited to announce Flying Zuzzi Rebuild v2.

This is not just a remake. It’s a complete rebuild of the original game using modern tools, new ideas, and the help of AI-assisted development. Most importantly, it’s a return to something I genuinely enjoy: building apps and games.

This time, I’m committed to telling the complete story and releasing all planned episodes of Flying Zuzzi.

The Story

In a small kingdom filled with fluffy and colorful animals, King Zantinii ruled peacefully with his twin children, Princess Zuzzi and Prince Zantos.

Because Zuzzi was born first, she was the rightful heir to the throne. However, her brother never accepted this. Jealous and ambitious, Zantos spent years plotting against his sister.

When King Zantinii passed away, Zantos seized control of the kingdom. He abandoned Zuzzi in the High Gardens of the Rocky Mountains and claimed the throne for himself.

Alone and far from home, Zuzzi begins a journey that will test her courage, lead her to new friends, and ultimately determine the fate of the kingdom.

Episode I: The Beginning of an Adventure

The adventure starts with Zuzzi’s escape.

Players must guide Zuzzi through forests, avoid obstacles, and fly as far as possible while making their way toward freedom.

Simple to play, but challenging to master, Episode I lays the foundation for the adventures ahead.

Episode II: Friends Join the Adventure

No hero succeeds alone.

In Episode II, Zuzzi is joined by her loyal friend Coco. Together they will face new challenges, discover new locations, and continue their quest back to the kingdom.

Episode III: Battle for the Throne

The journey leads to its inevitable conclusion.

Zuzzi must confront Zantos and fight for her rightful place as ruler of the kingdom.

The details remain secret for now, but this chapter will bring the story full circle.

Why Rebuild Flying Zuzzi?

The original Flying Zuzzi was my first step into game development.

Flying Zuzzi Rebuild v2 is about revisiting that idea with years of experience, better technology, and a renewed passion for creating software. AI has helped accelerate development, but the heart of the project remains the same: building fun games and bringing a childhood-inspired story to life.

Support

If you encounter any issues, have suggestions, or simply want to share feedback, please use the support information provided on this page.

Your feedback helps make Flying Zuzzi better and supports the development of future episodes.

What’s Next?

This rebuild is only the beginning.

Development updates, screenshots, behind-the-scenes posts, and future episode announcements will be shared here as the project evolves.

Thank you for being part of the journey.

See you in the skies,

Sitecore® 10 Certified Developer

/ Viorel Petrea / Leave a comment

I am thrilled to announce that I have officially passed the Sitecore 10 Developer Certification! 🎓 This achievement is a testament to my hard work, commitment, and dedication to providing top-notch digital solutions for my clients.

As a Sitecore Certified Developer, I possess the knowledge and skills necessary to build and maintain robust Sitecore solutions that drive business growth and deliver exceptional customer experiences. I am excited to apply this expertise to help my clients achieve their digital goals.

I would like to thank the Sitecore community for providing valuable resources and support throughout my journey towards certification. I look forward to continuing to learn and grow as a Sitecore developer and contribute to the community.

PowerShell ISE in Sitecore to populate data in your meta tags

/ Viorel Petrea / Leave a comment

Hello guys,

Today I wrote my first PowerShell script and it felt amazing. The power of this module in Sitecore is pure genius. It lets you handle large bulk updates in the matter of seconds.

One of our requirements was to complete the Meta Tags of the entire website.

If you can imagine to go page by page it could take a day or more for one person and the risk of doing something wrong increases with the page number.

Luckily we have PowerShell ISE and it works like a charm.

<$homeItem = Get-Item -Path 'master:\content\home'       $allPagesThatHaveMetaTags = $homeItem | Get-ChildItem -recurse | Where-Object {$_.MetaDescription -ne $null }

In the allPagesThatHaveMetaTags we have all items that contain the field the MetaDescription.

Now it a foreach we can go item by item and update the MetaDescription field:

$allPagesThatHaveMetaTags | ForEach-Object {
$pageDescription = 'default meta tag description in case of no article body'
$metaDescriptionItem = 'default text'                                if($_["Text"] -ne $null -and $_["Text"] -ne '')
{
$pageDescription = $_["Text"];
$metaDescriptionItem = 'Text field on the same item';
}
$_.Editing.BeginEdit()
$_["MetaDescription"] = $pageDescription
$_.Editing.EndEdit()
Write-Host 'Item with name ' + $_.Name + 'and ID' + $_.ID + 'has been updated with metadescription from ' + $metaDescriptionItem
}

Whith the &metaDescriptionItem I am creating a log list so I can know which items have default description and which have from the TEXT field.

Regards,

VP

 

Future publish in Sitecore Part 1

/ Viorel Petrea / Leave a comment

Hello,

I think all of us tried this at some point looking at out of the box features and surprise surprise you cannot do it 🙂

So here is my approach and it is a very simple one which can be extended in a much more complex piece of code but for my requirements it will do.

I have created a cs file with the code:  AutomatedPublish (not sure if its a English word)

public class AutomatedPublish
{
public void FuturePublish(Item[] items, Sitecore.Tasks.CommandItem command, Sitecore.Tasks.ScheduleItem schedule)
{
foreach (var item in items)
{
// The publishOptions determine the source and target database,
// the publish mode and language, and the publish date
Sitecore.Publishing.PublishOptions publishOptions = new Sitecore.Publishing.PublishOptions(
item.Database,
Database.GetDatabase("web"),
Sitecore.Publishing.PublishMode.SingleItem,
item.Languag,System.DateTime.Now);

// Create a publisher with the publishoptions
Sitecore.Publishing.Publisher publisher = new Sitecore.Publishing.Publisher(publishOptions);

// Choose where to publish from
publisher.Options.RootItem = item;

// Publish children as well?
publisher.Options.Deep = false;

// Do the publish!
publisher.Publish();
}
}
}

In sitecore you will have to create the command in the System -> Tasks -> Commands.

Continue reading →

The winter is coming

/ Viorel Petrea / Leave a comment

Hello people,

The winter is coming… and I need to start a new running plan otherwise I will lose my freaking mind in this darkness that lies ahead. Luckily the nike running app has a new look and update so lets give it a go. Because I ran before I started with a 8 week plan which has 4-5 runs a week with an average of 25 km per week. In addition the nike running app integrates with the Nike Training Club. It keeps getting better and better.

Also the app for the apple watch is updated so now you can run without your phone.(Awesome!!) but you will need your phone if you want to track the route with the gps.

I will keep you posted with updates along the plan.

getmorefit

#getmorefit #2016gobigger

 

Flying Zuzzi v1.2

/ Viorel Petrea / Leave a comment

Hello,

You can now play Flying Zuzzi on your iPad just search for the game under iPhone apps in the iPad AppStore. It is not yet a native app but it looks good.

 

IMG_2905

Flying Zuzzi

As I was building this app it occurred to me that I need to add some features to it but was it a good ideea to extend an existing app? is this app to much of a copy? do people only create this Flappy Bird game to gain profit ? where is my passion ? what can I bring to the AppStore to be fresh and new?

This are just a few of the questions to which I try to find answers. So I decided to create a final version of my first app ,Flying Zuzzi and move on to something great. I had plans on how to expand this game and make it better but it will never outpass Flappy Bird and its not my idea which makes me feel sad that I will always be in the shadow of the first developer who created this game.

Moving forward I have some good ideas for games and apps so stay true to your passion and find your own way that will bring you joy and fulfillment.

All the best to you,

Vio

Sitecore fun fact #2

/ Viorel Petrea / Leave a comment

Hello,

Publish with related item will not publish the children of the related item.

Example: Carousel item on the homepage which has a data source a item from a bucket.

  • Homepage Carousel
    • Slide 1
    • Slide 2
    • Slide 3

If you publish your home page with related items but your changes are only on the slides SURPRISE it won’t publish the slides.

This can be easly fixed with a custom pipeline.

Just replace the sitecore existing pipeline code with your custom -> Sitecore.Publishing.Pipelines.GetItemReferences.AddItemLinkReferences


public class AddItemLinkReferences : GetItemReferencesProcessor -> GetReferences()
private System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<Item> GetReferences(Item item, bool sharedOnly)
{
Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
System.Collections.Generic.List<Item> list = new System.Collections.Generic.List<Item>();
ItemLink[] source = item.Links.GetValidLinks();
source = (from link in source
where item.Database.Name.Equals(link.TargetDatabaseName, System.StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)
select link).ToArray<ItemLink>();
if (sharedOnly)
{
source = source.Where(delegate(ItemLink link)
{
Item sourceItem = link.GetSourceItem();
return sourceItem != null && (ID.IsNullOrEmpty(link.SourceFieldID) || sourceItem.Fields[link.SourceFieldID].Shared);
}).ToArray<ItemLink>();
}
System.Collections.Generic.List<Item> list2 = (from link in source
select link.GetTargetItem() into relatedItem
where relatedItem != null
select relatedItem).ToList<Item>();
  System.Collections.Generic.List<Item> list3 = new List<Item>();
            foreach (var itemS in list2)
            {
                list3.Add(itemS);
                if (itemS.HasChildren)
                {
                    list3.AddRange(itemS.Children);
                }
            }
            foreach (Item current in list3)
            {
                list.AddRange(PublishQueue.GetParents(current));
                list.Add(current);
            }
return list.Distinct(new ItemIdComparer());
}
I am open for suggestions if you have a better solution.

Thank you,

Vio

The road to my first app

/ Viorel Petrea / Leave a comment

Hello,

The first time I had my own PC was aroud the year 2000. I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was coming up the stairs when I heard my mom say “Come quick we have a suprise for you”. Thinking it is a toy or a tv I would have never imagined it is a PC. It was 486 PC with a 15 inch monitor all white, all shiny. I think a tear of joy was sitting in the corner of my eye and I was stunned for a few minutes.

Since then I always wanted to unterstand how it works and how can I alter the code and create my own programs. My imagination was working non stop thinking of what I could build  starting from creating cool things and pushing it near to hacking NASA :))

Trying to control the software I attended a highschool with extra courses on Computer Science and there I found pascal program. With this choice I hit a wall because it was never how I imagined it would be.

Four years later I thought I could create robots to interact with the world but yet again I hit wall. After the four years at the university I realized that my dreams and my ideas will never be understood by any school. So I pursued my other passion which was web development which I still enjoy today. But, on the back of my head,  I was always thinking for something that could offer me the chance to build something from my own ideas and imagination, something where the possibilities are endless. And then I found Apple Developer program.

While proving  myself that I can really create games, Flying Zuzzi emerged.

Flying Zuzzi

Flying Zuzzi

Here is a link to the app: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1039702669?mt=8

Thank you for reading,

VP