This Is the Droid You Are Looking For

Remember Luke? He works with instructor Andrew as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. Luke’s a big Star Wars fan, so after noticing that Project Spark’s Goblin Bruiser character looks a little like Yoda, he and Andrew began putting together a Star Wars-inspired video game complete with Jedi, Stormtroopers, light sabers, and now, R2D2!

Droids play an important role in Star Wars, so Luke decided to add R2 before coding Force powers. There’s no premade R2D2 prop in Project Spark, but Luke assembled other, unrelated props to make a custom character that’s the spitting image of the Skywalkers’ faithful droid friend. To do this, he scrolled through the prop gallery, picked the most likely objects, and added them to his world, where he could then position them in proper relation to each other. Next, a little tinkering in the Character Studio allowed him to color the props to match R2D2. To finish off, Luke “glued” the props together into an assembly, so the objects behave as one entity. Check out the results! Luke’s Project Spark R2 looks just like the real R2.

Since the real R2’s got brains as well as looks, Luke and Andrew gave the Project Spark R2 a Logic Cube brain to hold all its movement and attack Kode. Inside the brain, they added tiles that tell the game engine to move R2 in relation to the Jedi player. Unless R2 detects an enemy presence, it follows the Jedi – but if it does detect the presence of enemies, it takes a break from following the player and attacks the enemies on his behalf. Better still, R2’s currently invulnerable, so if the Jedi wants he can let R2 handle all the Stormtroopers while he hangs out and watches! This R2 can even “zap” enemies (notice the electric effect) just like the real R2 would. As a final touch, Luke and Andrew Koded R2’s different prop parts to move or rotate when the droid is in motion, so that the character gets that familiar “tip” of its main body when rolling forward.

Awesome work, Luke! Your custom prop assembly looks and acts just like R2D2! It’s exciting watching you learn how to build a game you love. Thank you for sharing your progress with us! We look forward to seeing how you and Andrew conquer your next challenge.