Okay, so today I decided to mess around and try to make a simple “sheep volleyball” game. It sounded funny in my head, and I figured it would be a good way to practice some basic game development stuff.
First, I drew some super rough sketches of what I wanted. Like, stick-figure sheep and a very basic net. I’m no artist, so this was purely for getting the general idea down.
Next, I opened up my game engine (I’m using a free one, nothing fancy). I started by creating a flat ground plane. Just a big rectangle, basically. Then I added two cubes for the “sheep.” I made them white and fluffy… well, as fluffy as cubes can be.
I needed a net, so I stretched another cube really thin and tall and placed it in the middle. I picked a nice blue color for it, just to make it stand out.
Making the Sheep Move
This is where things got a little tricky. I wanted the sheep to move left and right, and also jump. I fiddled around with some basic movement scripts. I used the arrow keys for left/right and the spacebar for jumping. It took a while to get the jumping to feel right – not too floaty, not too sudden.
- Created a new script for player movement.
- Added input detection for arrow keys.
- Used `AddForce` to make the sheep jump. It felt appropriate.
- Tweaked the jump force a LOT. Seriously, a lot.
Adding the Ball
I created a sphere for the ball. I made it a bit bouncy by adjusting its physics material. I wanted it to be a bit like a beach ball, so it wouldn’t just drop like a rock.
Then I wrote a very simple script to reset the ball to the center of the screen whenever it hit the ground. This was my super basic way of handling “scoring” for now.
The “Gameplay”
So, the “game” at this point was basically just two cube-sheep bumping a ball back and forth. It was… surprisingly entertaining, at least for a few minutes. There were no scores, no real win conditions, just silly physics-based fun.
I played around with it for a while, trying to see if I could make the sheep “headbutt” the ball. I added a little bit of upward force whenever the ball collided with the top of the sheep. It worked… sometimes. It was pretty janky, but hey, it was something!
What I Learned
It is just a very simple prototype.
Even simple games take a surprising amount of tweaking! Getting the movement and physics to feel “right” took way longer than I expected.
It’s fun to just mess around and see what happens. I didn’t have a grand plan, but I ended up with something that was at least a little bit amusing.
I might come back to this later and add some actual scoring, maybe some AI for a single-player mode, and definitely some better sheep models. But for now, I’m calling it a day. It was a good little exercise!
