Okay, so, I’ve been messing around with this idea of making a “giraffe volleyball game.” Sounds kinda silly, right? But I wanted to see if I could actually pull it off. I started with just thinking, what the heck would that even look like?
First thing, I needed some giraffes. I’m no artist, so I grabbed some free 3D models online. They were, uh, basic, let’s say. Really blocky and stiff. But hey, it’s a start! I figured I could always make them prettier later if the game was actually fun.
Getting them to Move
Next up was getting these digital giraffes to, you know, move. I used this game engine, it’s pretty popular, and it has some built-in physics stuff. So, I slapped a “rigidbody” component on my giraffe models. This basically tells the engine, “Hey, treat this thing like a real-world object that can be pushed around.”
I messed with the settings – things like mass (how heavy it is) and drag (how much it resists moving through the air). I wanted the giraffes to feel kinda floaty and awkward, because, well, they’re giraffes playing volleyball!
- Making them jump: This was trickier. I wrote a little script that applies an upward force to the giraffe when you press a button. It took a lot of tweaking to get the jump to feel right – not too high, not too low, just… giraffe-y.
- Hitting the ball: I made it so when the giraffe’s head collides with the ball, the ball gets a little “kick” in the opposite direction. Again, lots of fiddling with numbers to make it feel somewhat believable. I didn’t want it to be super realistic, just fun and silly.
The Court and The Ball
I threw together a simple court – just a flat plane with some lines. Nothing fancy. The ball was another primitive shape, a sphere, also with a rigidbody. The net? it is a simple, elongated cube.
The biggest challenge was getting the giraffes to actually hit the ball in a way that felt somewhat controllable. It’s still super janky, honestly. Most of the time, they just kinda flail around and miss. But every now and then, they’d make a solid hit, and it was surprisingly satisfying!
Current Status: Playable, but… Rough
So, right now, the game is playable, but it’s far from polished. The giraffes look ridiculous, the physics are wonky, and there’s no real scoring system or anything. But! It’s actually kinda fun in its own weird way. It’s like, so bad it’s good, you know?
I might keep messing with it, adding some animations, maybe some sound effects. Or, I might just leave it as this bizarre little experiment. Either way, it was a fun way to spend a few hours, and I learned a bit more about game physics, so that’s a win!
