Introduction to the Game Engine – Making a Simple Ball Game

These tutorials show how to make a simple ball game using the Blender game engine.

The game consists of a ball resting on a board, by pressing the arrow keys the board rotates and the ball rolls. The object of the game is to score points by rolling the ball into holes made in the board.

Making the Board

Finished file, game board – boardTut15.blend

Using Logic Bricks

Starting file – logicTut1.blend
End file – logicTut14.blend

The key points of this tutorial are –

how to change to the game logic layout
how to change to the game engine render
how to create logic bricks – sensors, controllers and actuators
how to set physics properties for the objects used in the game

In detail –

The movement of plane is set up in the logic editor window, setting up keyboard sensors and linking them to motion actuators (sensing events and linking to event handling routines).
The sphere is added to the scene and its physics property is set to rigid body.

Developing a Simple Ball Game by Adding a Score

Starting file – logicTut14.blend
End file – scoreTut12.blend

This tutorial shows how to develop the simple ball game by adding a score

Key Points –

How to make an object behave as a proximity sensor to detect if the ball goes through a hole.
How to make an object broadcast a message.
How to make an object listen for a message.
How to create a property for an object.
How to create an actuator to update a property.
How to create an actuator to restart a scene.

In Detail –

An object is created (cylinder) and a ‘near’ sensor logic brick is added to it. When any object (the ball) gets within a specified distance to the object a signal is sent. The signal causes a message actuator to send a message and a scene actuator to restart.
Another object is added (an empty) to listen for the message and when received, it sends a signal to a property actuator that updates the score.