King of the Lanes

Meet Antony! He works with instructor Andrew A. as part of Game-U’s New Jersey Accelerate program, building his knowledge of programming and game mechanics. Using Project Spark, a 3D game editor, Antony creates games of his own to learn new concepts and techniques. Check out his most recent adventure – a bowling alley!

Every game needs an environment, so Antony used Spark’s Paint, Biome, and Prop tools to set up his outdoor bowling alley. After applying the Temperate Woodland biome to the empty world he created, Antony painted two bowling “lanes” with a checkerboard texture to distinguish them from the rest of the terrain. He also searched the prop gallery for three particular objects, a bottle, a coin, and a ball, that will interact with each other or the player during gameplay. Since all of Project Spark’s props – including the player – come with “Brains” that the game developer can code, Antony next put those props to work by programming them with a sets of instructions.

Instructions, or code, control how a prop behaves. So inside the player’s brain, Antony coded the player to throw the ball prop he selected rather than the default prop (a fireball). When the ball strikes the bottle, which plays the role of a bowling pin, the bottle topples. Antony wanted the player to be rewarded with a coin every time he successfully knocks over a pin, so he and instructor Andrew experimented with different systems to detect a fallen pin. After some trial and error, they set up the pins above invisible objects that sense when a pin no longer occupies its original position, and react to the change by spawning a coin. Once the player, using the ball, knocks over all the pins, he can collect all the coins and boost his score!

Well done, Antony! We know you’re not finished with this project yet, but we’re still impressed with your progress. Keep practicing code! We’re excited to see what mechanics you implement next. Stay in touch!