Game A Week - #3 - Orbital Golf

Here is how the past week went: (Play the game here!)

Monday
I really wanted to integrate a physics engine in order to get all of the benefits one provides.  So, I decided to implement Orbital Golf, a physics heavy golfing game that I had developed a rough prototype of several years ago in Unity.  You can play the old Unity prototype here. I pulled the dart-box2d package into my Dart project, which is a Dart port of Box2D. I then implemented a basic Collider component as well as a rough BoxCollider component.  I managed to get a small box to fall and land on a large static box acting as the ground.

Tuesday
I fixed a major scaling issue with rendering.  I added in a second moving box that bounces off the first box.  I implemented a CircleCollider component and the ability to programmatically create a circle mesh.  I created a simple wrapper around mouse input to allow that as an input option. I then spent hours trying unsuccessfully to detect then the mouse clicks an object.

Wednesday
After continuing to struggle with detecting clicked objects by trying to "unproject" the mouse position as a raycast into the scene, I decided to try going the other direction.  (I was able to successfully unproject the mouse position and create a ray vector pointing into the scene, but detecting the ray hitting objects posed the problem.)  I implemented a temporary Clicker component that projects its own world position into screen space whenever the mouse button is pressed and then sees if it matches (within a range)  the mouse position.  It worked great, and since I only needed to be able to detect clicks on the ball, this works fine for the game.

Thursday
I implemented a Planet component that calculates gravity based upon distance to the planet.  I also implemented a Ball component that uses gravity of surrounding planets to apply forces and move the ball around.

Friday
I made it so that if ball is clicked on, dragged, and then released, it applies a force relative to how much the mouse was dragged in order to fling the ball around.  I added in a simple counter to count how many hits were made. I ran into odd issues with trying to make a "factory" method to generate planets.  It seems like a bug in Dart, but I need to investigate it further before I report it.

I set up a goal circle that is a static Box2D sensor.  I implemented a callback system for when two Box2D objects collider and made it so when the ball and goal touch, it displays a winning message. I also implemented a line renderer to show the force vector to be applied to the ball.  It's very crude, but does the job.

Saturday
I set up a simple level system that can switch between various levels. I also tried working on displaying a trajectory prediction line, but it turns out to be fairly complicated.  I had tried doing a similar thing back with the old Unity version.  You can see there is a prediction line in the Unity version, but it doesn't take into account any collisions or friction with surfaces.  I was hoping to have a superior prediction line with this prototype, but that doesn't appear to be possible for a one week challenge.

Sunday
I decided to change things up a bit and instead of working on gameplay I would try and make it look a little better.  I implemented a Texture2D object and the ability to set textures on a Material.  I wrote a simple new shader that took a single texture.  I found a checkerboard pattern image online and I now have a goal with a checkerboard texture applied to it in order to help it stand out more.

I changed focus once more and I added the ability to make the game go fullscreen using the Fullscreen API. I also added in a wrapper around touch events to be able to get touches on a touchscreen.  These two features together make it work much better on a mobile device, and I tested the game on my Android phone (Galaxy Note 3).

I also made a quick update so that the force line moves along with the ball instead of sitting out in space where you first clicked the ball.

Play the game here!

Final Thoughts
I was quite happy with what I accomplished this week.  I actually had almost the entire week off of work which helped me be more productive.

As usual, there were several features I wish I could have added:

Better scoring - scoring based upon the flight time of the ball divided by the number of hits
Better camera - a camera that uses mouse wheel and pinching to zoom
Prediction line - as you probably read above, I really wanted a line to predict ball trajectory
Non-spherical planets - ovals, simple terrain
Orbiting planets - planets orbiting around other planets as moons
More debris and obstacles - things cluttering the way

To be honest, I'm glad the week is over.  It's good to be able to switch over to a different game every week.  I really like the concept of Orbital Golf  and I believe it has great potential, but there are other ideas I'd love to try out.  I have this next week off of work as well, so hopefully I can whip up something awesome.