Maze with Ball Physics

Type: Game

Source: Personal Project

Language: C#

This project is my first serious try to come up with a complete game with the Unity 3D engine. One of my friends introduced me to Super Monkey Ball a while back and I found the game to be very entertaining. Usually when I find a good game, I try to figure out the mechanics and how it is done technically. I also try to single out why is the game fun and what makes it good. Since I spent a lot of time figuring out those details about this game, I had an idea of how to start my own spin on the base idea.

When I started this project I already worked with the Unity engine when I worked at Square Enix Montreal, my choice to use this tool was to improve using Unity at the same time. The good thing is i worked for some time with C# now and I am comfortable with the language. This way I can concentrate in learning the good practices in Unity and create an enjoyable experience for players.

First I wanted to create a simple example of camera control to mimic the effect of moving the entire stage to move the ball. When I succeeded and showed the results to some of my friend, they were quickly interested in the concept so I was happy with the results.

As of now, I am still building mechanics and systems to be used in this game so it is still a project that is in progress. Here are the features that are in a usable state in the project as of now:

• 3D character setup with a robot model found online for prototyping.
• 3D animations that are linked with some gameplay values blend spaces with player speed to blend between walk/run animations.
• Some shader work to render the ball around the character with easy to change parameters.
• Asset packaging setup based on asset bundles for characters, levels and worlds.
• Camera setup that will rotate around the player.
• Skybox asset used to give the idea that the player is found in space.
• Movement system based on the Super Monkey Ball video game for the Nintendo Gamecube.
• A very simple test scene with a slope to test physics.

If you are interested in trying out the movement mechanics of the game, here is a download link to a windows executable. If you would like to try out this on Linux or Mac, please contact me.