Steely Taws Puzzle Game

Game Engine Finished Games
1

Howdy y’all

I have a BGE game I’d like to share with you. It is a ball-run puzzle game with some similarities to Switchball but with hopefully a better ability to explore the puzzle world. At this stage there is only the puzzle selector level and one puzzle, but as inclination permits I intend to build some more puzzles for it.

PuzzleNo1b.jpg1920×1020 260 KB

Anyway, without further ado, here is the Models and Games page on my website where you will find download links to the game and supporting information as well as other Blender related projects. At least there I can give you adequate information and images without the 10000 character limit imposed by the BlenderArtists website.

http://www.techmonkeybusiness.com/models-and-games.html

More directly here are links to the relevant Steely Taws Game pages;

The puzzle edition
http://www.techmonkeybusiness.com/steely-taws-puzzle-game-v1.html

and the original development “get-the-controls-working” edition.

http://www.techmonkeybusiness.com/steely-taws-no-quitsies.html

You will find links to downloads from these webpages both in .blend file format and as a windoze executable version for those who just want to play the thing. In each .zip download there is a directory with the textures in it and a README with instructions. I have not packed the textures into the .blend files for efficiency and also to allow easy customisation of the textures.

The blender files were developed on Blender 2.68, but I used the Blender 2.73 API guide as my reference for the python code that I used. This means that as far as I have been able to test, the game works on Blender 2.7x.

I have tested the Windows executable version on an old Windows XP machine without problems. I am presuming the executable is robust enough that it will work under Windows 7 and Windows 8. However no guarantees are given. Please be aware that the game takes a little time to start and for the new level to load when you access that. You will be faced with a blank screen initially, but wait a bit and the game will begin.

Resources and Customisation
For those people interested in building their own puzzles, the component models are discussed on the webpage linked below. You will also find some explanations of the code applied to the various components, and a link to download a compilation of the component .blend files.

http://www.techmonkeybusiness.com/steely-taws-components.html

PuzzleNo1a.jpg1920×876 293 KB

The puzzle
The idea of the puzzle is to find your way to the exit (which will take you back to the puzzle selector level).

The puzzle is designed not to penalise the player for exploring. So look around, figure out what does what and where things are located. There is no time limit.

Should you accidentally fall off the game area, you will drop back onto the starting location, but all the things you have activated will remain as you last left them. Similarly if you drop a box over the edge, a new box will be supplied … just don’t drop them so much, they’re marked fragile OK?

Enjoy.

Attachments


2

Your game looks great, I’m hoping to try it out I don’t have time this weekend though so I will look into it on Monday, I’m excited to try it.

3

Hi!

Positive : A lot of detail.
Negative : Yellow is not my favourite colour!

Also, would be nice to see a video.

Cheers.

4

Got a video you could post?

5

Ah well - if you insist.

Here is a link to a downloadable video captured rather roughly from the game just now. It’s a 36Mb download. It will give you an idea of what it looks like at least.

https://app.box.com/s/ioit11fykdkw9b1ojrlses10vmoto21e

and here too is a youtube edition for easier viewing.

Cheers
H

6

I’ve developed an automatic random level generator for Steely Taws using the Sverchok node geometry add-on. The levels need some hand editing after the auto-generation to be completely playable but they’re great fun to explore


Overview of randomly generated level.


Screenshot from within game

Details Blender Game Generator here

The same method could be used to generate random levels for games with different architecture such as a dungeon game with corridors and stairs.

elfnor

7

nice approach

8

Wow! Randomly generated levels! This game sounds awesome! I plan to try it out later this week

9

What did you use to get the ball to roll?

10

Hi Scalia
I take you are asking me “what is the blender game logic mechanism” that makes the ball roll?

It is a very small script that is activated by the cursor keys or a joystick. The script uses the vector between the camera and the ball to apply forces on the ball in a view-relative direction. In an earlier edition of this game I had steered away from using a script because i was trying to do it completely with logic blocks. Unfortunatley that meant that the controls were very awkward because the forces had to be applied in a global direction. The script sorts this out.

I have put a very detailed explanation and listing of the script on my website. You can find all the details and a whole heap more on these pages.
http://www.techmonkeybusiness.com/steely-taws-no-quitsies.html
On this page scroll down to the “Game Mechanisms” section and you will find all the information you need under the description for the Ball.

The same information as well as descriptions of all of the other active components in the game is described here.
http://www.techmonkeybusiness.com/steely-taws-components.html

There is also a pdf version of the webpage if you want something easier to refer to.

If you are wishing to use this same mechanism in your own game it should be fairly transferable if you use the same sort of logic block structure and the same script. I think you may only need to change the various objects names to reflect the names you have in your game.

Good luck