I’m learning the Blender Game Engine, and I’d like to do a tennis game as my first project. Basically it’s a Pong game of course. There would be just one player, playing the computer.
First, are there any tutorials for a Pong game (in 2.5x and up) to get me started, and second, will I be able to do all the scoring and stuff within the game engine? I don’t want to learn Python or anything complicated.
Thanks,
Mick Berg.
I have two BGE video tutorial series: One that covers the development of a basic “Turret Defense” game (this is a logic brick only game), and one that covers the development of a basic “Tunnel Runner” game (this involves Python).
Eventually, you will have to learn Python, if you plan to make games of even slightly higher complexity.
It’s really not as hard as you think. It does take time, but once you get, it really opens up a whole new area of possibilities.
Actually I started your turret defense tutorial immediately after I posted. You have done a good job.
Still looking for a starter tutorial for a Pong game though.
Thanks,
Mick.
To be honest you’d use python. Because, it is just a case of reflections etc.
Oh well then, that’s probably the end of that.
I spent a long time with PlayBasic a few years ago, and if I wanted to program I’d go back to that. I’ll continue to use Blender for my railway-sim content creation though.
Thanks anyway,
Mick Berg.
You don’t have to in this case. If you use the physics, but disable world gravity, I’m sure it would work!
If you want to make Pong through logic bricks, a DVD called Zero to Hero is coming out that covers it,'I can’t link now but search the forum.
if you want the computer player to do anything, python is a requirement. also, python is a lot lighter an the CPU than Blender’s logic bricks. Of course, this may not be an issue when making a simple game like pong, but if you plan on making any game with any program I can pretty much guarantee you’ll have to use some kind of scripting language.
Are you sure? From what I’ve seen, PlayBasic uses, I’m guessing, basic as a programming language. I’m not sure how powerful Basic is, but from what I’ve seen on PlayBasic’s site, Basic’s somewhat simplistic. It might be easier to use, but Python is a very powerful language that has a lot of capabilities - many, many features, and you can import outside Python modules into the BGE. In addition, Python can translate into other game engines and frameworks, like Pygame, Pyglet, Panda3D, etc.
Also, PlayBasic’s 2D, while Blender’s 3D. I’m not saying any one is better than the other, but that’s just something I noticed.
EDIT: Also, you might want to try turning off gravity and upping the ball’s restitution to 1 and friction to 0. Python would be the best solution, but that should work for a simple solution.
Hi.
There seems to be disagreement on whether it can be done or not.
What would be required is, I think;
The paddles would be the tennis players.
A ball would need to be spawned from the position of the serving player (paddle) for each point.
The player’s paddle would be controlled by the usual keyboard commands.
The computer’s paddle would try to make contact with the ball with a bit of randomness added.
Once the ball went outside the court area, the point would be over, and the score would be incremented according to which paddle last hit the ball and where it bounced.
The scoring would need to be converted to tennis scoring (15,30,40, etc) before it is displayed on the screen. But the actual scoring could be simple, (1,2,3,etc.)
I would not bother with changing ends after each game as it would be complicated and not add anything to the gameplay.
Could these things be done without Python?
Solarlune, if Python is more challenging to learn than Playbasic, I wouldn’t want to undertake it at this time.
Thanks,
Mick.
Seems to be only a framework at the moment.
Mick.
Sure
I think you already did a lot of the first step: describe what you want to achieve.
Now split them down to even smaller bits and pieces.
The most things can be implemented with logic bricks.
There might be a few situations when Python would be the better option. But I can’t see a reason for huge python code blocks.