Rolling Along

Here is another screenshot from the marble test game (aka "Marbleland"). The yellow blocks constitute the playing field, while the green tile in the middle is the start tile. The red tiles scattered about are "powerup" tiles, but those will likely change.

Despite the appearance of this as a marble game, the models (blocks) could easily be swapped out and instead of marbles (not pictured here), one could use animated characters. This particular playing field took about 2-3 hours to design/assemble, but would have gone much faster had I implemented some more features (such as cut and paste) in the level builder tool. The blocks were built using Blender and PaintShop Pro and those took additional 6-8 hours.

The engine also has basic physics capabilities built into every model. Each object has mass, velocity, and acceleration properties. I haven't used any physics yet in this particular project, although I will test that to see what effect it has on rendering speed. I will also probably attempt to simulate friction at some point.

Were I to actually ship this game at some point stage it would need:

• Sharper differences between the blocks and the blue playing field below (i.e. shadows)
• Game mechanics/goals that differentiate it from Marble Madness
• Different enemies other than black marbles, green puddles, green Slinky-things, etc.
• Add things like chutes, elevators, etc.

Marble Madness was a platform/racing/isometric-view game. This one is fully 3-D, which opens a lot of new possibilities and allows for a changing point of view, such as the one found in Switchball, Monkeyball, or Hamsterball. Speaking of Switchball, it is possible I could add very basic cloth simulation with the water mesh capabilities I added to the engine last year.

Next up: Putting marbles onto the blocks and setting up basic AI for the enemies.