Marvelous Marbles

User Code & Projects
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I promised to write something about Marvelous Marbles. So here is a quick summary:

Marvelous Marbles is a marble run maker (simulator?):

After watching marble run videos on Youtube while brushing my son’s teeth, I was struck by how few computer rendered videos there were. The project started out as an experiment to see whether it would be possible to make a marble run in the SDK (the answer is “Yes, sort of”.). I then decided to try Blender and made some pieces. It worked quite well. The most limiting factor I found was snapping. Simple grid snapping didn’t do it. So, of course there was only one thing I could do. Make an editor myself.

In addition to being cross-platform, it now also has VR support.

Shameless marketing:

Marvelous Marbles

https://gamejolt.com/games/Marvelous_Marbles/788181

https://twitter.com/MarvlousMarbles

Some community acknowledgements:

For basic project setup, I use: GitHub - Monkey-Droid/Cross-platform-template: A cross-platform template game for jMonkeyEngine providing compatibility for both desktop and android environments.
In addition I have a separate ‘assets’ project, linked to an ant project due to the “matdef issue” (Resolved: Improve ProjectAssetManager's Gradle support by peedeeboy · Pull Request #448 · jMonkeyEngine/sdk · GitHub).

The project wouldn’t have been possible without Bullet, and I quickly switched to GitHub - stephengold/Minie: Integrate Bullet Physics and V-HACD into jMonkeyEngine projects. (code has New BSD license)

Additional VR functionality comes from GitHub - oneMillionWorlds/Tamarin: A VR utilities library for JMonkeyEngine

I use a batch exporter from Blender, and then a bash script using GitHub - Simsilica/JmeConvert: A command line utility for converting models to J3O and copying their dependencies to a new target structure. to convert all the assets in one go.

Although there aren’t many effects yet, I decided to go with GitHub - Jeddic/particlemonkey: A particle Emitter library for jME (I may have a PR for some things)

For Steam integration, GitHub - code-disaster/steamworks4j: A thin Java wrapper to access the Steamworks API

I’m using my own Macaq Script · GitHub for scripted things

I also decided to roll my own UI library. Whether good or bad, I’m not sure, but I like the control.

Thank you, all. I hope I didn’t forget anyone.

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Wishlisted!

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This sounds great. Let us know when it’s released!

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New video on Youtube:

And TikTok!

I’m in the process of polishing the editor experience, added undo functionality. There’s no better way to find bugs than to actually try to make something real :slight_smile:

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Amen to that.

It’s one of the reasons I tell new devs that until they’ve finished a project that they don’t know what it takes to finish a project. Always more to do than you think there will be… even given knowing that already.

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Well, there’s one thing that’s even better, and that is letting other people use your software.
I could use some help with testing this on various systems. Especially some Mac or VR users.
Please PM me if you’re interested.

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The game has been released!

Special thanks to @richtea and @peedeeboy for testing.

The last couple of weeks have been quite grueling and I’m currently trying to muster up some energy to do proper marketing. :sleepy:

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Congratulations on the release! I’ve already begun spreading the URL around…

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