Marble Kit [RELEASED]

Marble Kit is my first release to the Asset Store and I'm pretty excited about it.
I hope you like it and I'd really appreciate your feedback.

The essential:
Marble Kit is designed for Unity beginners wanting to learn fast how to make games and publish them quickly.

Check out Marble Razr, the demo game!
(the difficulty is maybe a bit steep, sorry for that - I wanted to showcase the main features ).
Cheat code to skip levels: press function key F8:

Marble Razr demo game

Be aware that the 3rd level was made using additional primitives and free textures not included in the kit (see the documentation for what to look for).

It's very easy and fast to create entire games in your own style:
The kit allows you to build your own cool levels in minutes and an entire game in hours. No coding required if you don't want to.
You can make up all the levels completely on your own and they will feel, look and play very differently from other games made with the same kit.
Using free assets from the asset store you can bring nice graphics and your own style to your game easily:

See the documentation for advice where to look for great free assets and tools.

Become a skilled level designer in no time:
This will give beginner developers a perfect training ground to develop one (in my opinion) of the most critical and most neglected skills of game design: level design.
No matter how good your visuals are and how perfect your animations - your game will never be better than your levels are.

Marble Kit makes it easy to create your own levels. Watch this tutorial to see for yourself how to create an entire level from scratch in less than 10 minutes:

Lots of polish included:
I included lots of polish to make the game look good right away: GUI, screenfader, sound, music, particles. So you can show your game to your friends right away.

It always bored me to hell to make the usual boilerplate stuff, so I included it already in the Kit: customizable start, finish and game over screens and a complete level management.


A Kit designed to teach beginners how to make games:
In addition, Marble kit helps Unity starters to understand how entire games are built. There comes an entire tutorial with Marble Kit including a Game Lab and a Coding Workshop if you want to improve these skills. Marble Kit teaches you how to expand the kit itself by building new features for it.
I have 10+ years experience producing training materials. You can check out the documentation for free - check the link below.


Bonus feature: Marble games on mobile devices
I know, Marble games are not really the rage for veteran players, but they are very nice for casual players if the levels are well designed. This is especially true if you play the game on a mobile device steering the ball by tilting the device (gyroscope / accelererometer controls).
Even my wife loved the games I made with Marble Kit on the tablet. And my wife hates (capital HATES :twisted video games in general.
You can download a script (for free) from my website to implement the necessary controls. It is not integrated in the main package, because I have not yet tested it on enough devices to publish it in the official store.

Check out:
- Demo Game
- Video Tutorial
- Website (contains also all kind of blog posts, articles, reviews and stuff for Indie Game Developers)
- Documentation

And of course the asset store link: Marble Kit

 

Looks great. Could you include mobile support (with gyro controlling) ?

 

Hi

At the bottom of the Marble Kit Website you will find a file to download.
It contains a script and a code snippet and a guide how to insert them into the kit to add gyroscope/accelerometer control. It takes just a few minutes to do it. Add some more to tweak the variables (mass, drag) until you like them.

I did not put the scripts in the official package, since the only device I tested it on was an Android tablet and I did not want to disappoint people purchasing the Kit.
Since the porting and the game itself worked so well on the tablet I assume there should be no problem using it on other devices (the scripts use only native Unity calls).

If there is anything else I can help you with - let me know!

 

This just look amazing, I have one silly question..
If I Buy and use the this amazing looking game, how hard it will be to port it to Android-Apple (Pc is already there).

I plan to sell a game soon but I dont whant to go to the Launch with only one game, i will like to put this game as a SNEAK PEAK of our up comming game...

So in order to tweak and ajust (no level making) how long it will take to be ready to sell for mobile devices?

Aldo

 

Hi Aldo

I'm not sure if I understood your question completely. Here's my best guess:

- In order to make the game for Apple you don't need to do anything than change the build settings to Desktop-Mac OSX. No need to change code/assets. Just rebuild the game with the new settings and Unity will produce an Apple installation package. That's the magic of Unity
- If you don't know how to do this, here are some nice and quick tutorials from Unity: http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/editor/build-player-settings, http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/beginner/platform-specific.
- The same applies to Android. I made an Android build (apk) just by switching the build settings. If you have your android device set up and connected correctly, Unity will transfer it automatically to the device and run it there.
- Of course you will need to change the player inputs on a mobile device since there is no keyboard to steer the ball. The best method is to use the accelerometer (gyroscope) of the device, so you can steer the ball by tilting the device. This is by far the most fun way to play the game. All you need to do is to change the Input settings to address the accelerometer instead of keyboard keys. Its a matter of a couple of lines of code. At the bottom of this page: http://playing4real.com/en/marble-kit/ you will find a script containing the required lines of code and an instruction how to do it.
- The kit is ready for commercial use on PC, Apple and Android (Tablet) as it is now. I have used it myself. I have no doubt that the same applied for iOS (iPad), but I have not tested it myself.

I did not understand the part of your question regarding 'I dont want to launch with only one game'. What exactly are you trying to do?

It's up to you, but I would not recommend to sell the game as it is for mobile devices:
- The levels are currently not built for mobile users. First, they are too difficult for use on mobile devices, since the ball steering is much more difficult by tiliting the device than using a keyboard. Also it is too easy to loose the ball right at the start of the levels, since it is unlikely that a player will hold the device perfectly horizontal. So the ball is likely to start rolling before the players have a chance to understand the level. I recommend to design levels the way that the ball will be in a safe position at the start of the level.
- There are only two levels in the demo. They are here for demonstration purposes. They are not indeted to make for a full game.

I suggest that you add some levels on your own. This will not take you a lot of time. If you check the video tutorial of the kit you will see that I made an entire (small) and complete level in 10 minutes. Make it an hour and you will have a very nice level. Spend a day on making levels and you already have a nice game with a variety of levels in your own style. This will make an awesome teaser for your customers.

Hope this helps. Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.

Cheers and have fun with the kit.

 

Thanks for the Reply!

When I said I dont want to launch only a game, it was just a comment. Im launching a game, but also i will like to show the demo of a game make with this awesome engine you made, im working in that demo.

Sure, i will tweak everything and create whatever I need to make an original fun game with the engine...

I will post a comment in the comment sections of the store, you deserve the Kudos!

Aldo

 

Thanks Aldo

I hope you enjoy your game-making, let me know of the results.
In case you need some further assistance, don't hesitate to post here!

 

Hi,

I really like the kit but am planning on developing the visual elements with landscaping and am having issues with the android build size - the basic build is coming out at over 30Mb with nothing added and all set to defaults.

Are there any obvious ways to reduce this? It's not clear to me where the file size is coming from, as the textures and audio are not great.

Any help much appreciated, thanks.

 

Hi Liese

This is odd. The build size for my Android apk-file for the demo-game that includes the 2 demo levels is just over 10MB. I just re-compiled the kit and it turned out this size again.

Indeed, there is not much in terms of assets. The audio files account for about 2 MB, the rest is almost negligible, since all objects are made out of prefabs.

Can you check the editor log (see here: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/ReducingFilesize.html) where the size comes from? Unity Console, click on the top right corner (three small lines), Open Editor Log.

In uncompressed state the lightmaps and some of the textures (checker.jpg) do take some amount of file size, however they should not translate 1:1 into final build size.
You can try to delete the lightmaps to see if this has an substantial effect on the build size. You can rebuild the lightmaps anytime as described in the documentation. Try the LightmapFar*.* files in the Scenes/Level2 folder first, since they seem to occupy the most space.

As a final measure you can check the Build settings / Android / Texture compression settings. If have them set to 'Don't override'. I did never changed it, since build size was never really an issue.

Let me know if any of these did help you.

 

Hi, thanks for your help and quick response. I found that I was using a development build that bumped up the file size and now have it working with the gyro - is there any more info on this, I may want to speed up the movement rate?

I also keep getting a minor error on import - please see image.



Thanks again,


Liese

 

Hi Liese

I'm glad you got it sorted out.

Indeed I suggest you tweak the movement values until you think it feels right for you.

The main values to adjust are (all can be changed in the inspector):
- normalForce (Ball prefab, Ball Movement script)
- mas (Ball prefab, Rigidbody component)
- drag and angular drag (Ball prefab, Rigidbody component)

Run the game and change the values at runtime, so you will find the right setting quickly. Using Unity Remote helps.

The error you mention is coming from the standard assets. These come from Unity directly and it is Unity maintaining and changing these files.
I copied them into the Marble Kit package for convenience.
Reimporting the assets from Unity should solve the problem.
To do this go to: Asset menu -> Import Package -> Skyboxes.

I hope this helps. Let me know if how you are doing!

cheers
alex

 

Hi Alex,

I'm using terrain for my game and on hitting the water the camera is going through the terrain to get back to the start point which doesn't look great. Any chance you could give some pointers on how to fade out/in the scene as the camera returns to start position, as it does at the beginning of the level?

Thanks,


Liese

 

Hello!

The link to the gyroscope script is showing 404. Can you fix or better to publish script here.

 

Hi

I'm sorry for your trouble.
Officially, the kit is no longer supported, because I did not upgrade to Unity 5, since I moved over to Unreal Engine some time ago. I requested the asset to be taken from the store multiple times, but for some reason it is still active.

The site with the script was taken down and I am unable to recover it. My backups are limited to the original files in the package. My bad.

That said, let's try to get your app running anyway.

1. The script you want to change is the BallMovement.cs
2. The function responsible for the input management is the Update() function
3. Replace the Input.GetAxis methods with Input.acceleration methods
4. The x,y and z axis of the accelerometer does not match the x,y and z axis of the Unity world. So you need to match them by try and error.
Try the following as a start:

directionHorizontal = - Input.acceleration.y
directionVertical = Input.acceleration.x

It could be some other matches, but you will figure it out quickly by try and error. If the ball moves in the wrong direction, change the axis or make it negative.

5. Most likely you want to tweak the values, because the Input values from the accelerometer are lower than the ones returned from the keyboard. Choose a multiplier and test until you find it perfect:

create a public float accMultiplier; at the beginning of the class where all the other variables are and give it a value. Try 100.0 as a start. If the ball reacts to quickly to your tiliting, lower this value and vice versa.

change the Update() function to add the mulitplier:

directionHorizontal = - Input.acceleration.y * accMultiplier;
directionVertical = Input.acceleration.x * accMultiplier;

That should do the trick.
Sorry again for the inconvenience. I will contact unity support to make this clear.

 

Thank you. It's more than enough for me.

 

Hello!
I cant reach the webpage in order to download the gyroscope addon in order to use it on mobile devices.

Can you help?

Aldo