Gem popping mayhem .. thingy

Community Showcases
1

Hey guys,

Just wanted to show you what I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks. I had this crazy idea that I could do a full game on my own and wanted to test it out. The first idea for the game was that I wanted a Collapse -style game, but with enhanced graphics and not with the square gameboard (which I find is not very challenging). To make things more interesting, I decided to do the board completely procedural, ie. it changes to completely random on a new round.

This is what I had:

But I had no idea how to do it in Unity, since this was the first time I had to do it using scripting only. So, after tinkering a couple of hours, I had this:

Yayy, that’s almost playable! But since I did the board procedurally, the tiles appear in random places, so I have to learn how to center it. All in an Array. Yikes.

Once I had the basic tiles drawn to screen, I took a break from coding and did the graphics, this is (if I remember correctly) the 3rd incarnation:

Note the hyperawesome borders around the board. I ordered that wood panelling from China <<-- true story

But I soon realized that gempopping is not fun without some gempopping effects, so I added some particle mayhem in there:

I had the basic gameplay and graphics in place but the code was badly constructed and messy. As I had learned a HUGE amount of Unity’s javascript I decided to clean up everything and rewrite the whole game. Took three and a half days to complete. But it was worth it, performance increased, assets more efficiently named and managed etc:


(Background image not by me, just a template)

Now that it starts to look like a real game, I slapped a title and a splashscreen to it:


(Background image not by me, just a template)

This is the game as it is right now, with color grading and splashy effects. UI is very much incomplete, I have only two boards ready for the actual adventure portion and I’m still having problems with the game detecting the possible moves (it reports that there are no moves sometimes, even though there are), but other than that, I’m really surprised at the speed and simplicity of producing content using Unity. This was and still is a really fun project, since I see the results on the screen immediatly and can adjust things fast and with no fuzz.

Oh, right the images:

Gameplay last night:
http://loadusfx.net/pelit/unityforum/08.jpg
(Again, background image not by me, just a template)

Let’s push the envelope. Remember, this is on the FREE version of Unity, since I don’t have the money yet to get the pro version (which would give me access to cg shader awesomeness):
http://loadusfx.net/pelit/unityforum/09.jpg
(Background image not by me, just a template)

2

So is it a game like bejeweled with irregular table? I want it :slight_smile:

Are you planning to release it for android?

And what is the explanation about the game’s title? :stuck_out_tongue:

3

  • Yes, it’s a bejeweled -style game. And you shall have it. It will be free.

  • I’m planning on releasing it to all Unity’s platforms, but first is desktop and trying to get it to Steam Greenlight.

  • The story of the game takes the player on excavation of an ancient south american cave, which is believed to be one of the legendary caves that originated the nations of the Inca, Aztec and Maya. It is soon discovered that it is one of the seven original caves that originated the whole population and nations of the earth and soon it is discovered that it’s not a cave but a portal to a whole new dimension and the board is the key.

But I think I’ll just focus on getting the actual gameplay working first, I’ll add the storyline last. ^.^

4

Looks really good!

5

Thanks a bunch! ^.^

6

it looks really nice! If you give it out on tablet I’m sure you can make a little buck on it!

7

Good luck with it … what I find really interesting actually is your log here of the steps of progress you made over the course of time, it’s education and inspirational.

8

The game will feature a shop where you can buy powerups and nicknacks to help you on your way, that might bring in a few bucks I hope. : )

9

Thanks so much. I had a big plan to have a developer blog where I would go day-to-day on the progress but I had a few complications. The blog will appear eventually, where I will share some of the blender files and settings, code snippets etc. But I have to wait a few months.