Playing around with Unity and Dashboard (updated)

I'm currently working for a start-up called OverTheEdge that have created this cool application for creating 3D games on Mac OS X, called Unity.

The games can be deployed as stand-alone applications, on web pages through a free browser plug-in and even as Dashboard widgets.

I decided to try making a game of my own, and within a few hours of playing around, I ended up with this simple prototype.

The game concept is like this: You control a ball on a plane hanging in mid-air trying to avoid falling off the edge. Meanwhile, smaller balls are trying hard to push you over the edge. Push them over before they manage to make you fall into oblivion.

It's not a complete game by far, but you can download a Dashboard Widget further down. I'll post updates to this site when I manage to add some scoring and fine-tuning to the game.
Hint: You can restart the "game" by flipping the widget over to view the back side and back again, as it will reload the Unity Plug-in.... (Or by pressing CMD-R to reload the Widget....)

[Update Jul 17 2005:
I've just made a minor update.... it's still not a game, but the enemy balls are a tiny bit more intelligent, and much more agressive... Oh, and the player gets respawned when you fall over the edge. ]

Download the Widget
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.
If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

... and by the way. The Unity Player is currently the only hardware accelerated 3D web plugin that can run inside Dashboard Widgets.

Posted by keli at July 7, 2005 03:36 AM |