- HYPERBOWL UNITY CODE
- HYPERBOWL UNITY PC
- HYPERBOWL UNITY LICENSE
- HYPERBOWL UNITY MAC
- HYPERBOWL UNITY WINDOWS
HYPERBOWL UNITY CODE
So I got the old code to build just well enough, with a few generations newer Visual Studio and stubbed out calls to old middleware, to the point where I could launch the game and load the lanes (equivalent to levels). When I tried converting the game assets to OBJ format, for example, those files wouldn’t import successfully into Unity, and then when I tried the OBJ converter included in the FBX SDK and got the same result, I figured Unity is just using those same converters to FBX under the hood, so might as well just skip the middleman.
HYPERBOWL UNITY PC
The other PC eventually just crashed on its own.Īfter a few unsuccessful attempts at running the original assets to Unity’s accepted file formats through various converters (and enduring one vendor’s “I am the super guru of 3D conversion software”), I decided I might as well export the data directly from the game and that Unity’s preferred model format really was FBX.
HYPERBOWL UNITY WINDOWS
This was fortuitous, as I next made the mistake of connecting one PC to the Internet, and instead of something momentous like the Forbin Project, it bogged down downloading a gazillion Windows Updates and ultimately suffered a hard disk crash. The first thing I did after booting up the PCs, even before connecting to the Internet, was copy everything I could find onto DVDs and my own computers, then committing everything to version control. And not just the files, but the original development PCs, one with the arcade version and one with the Windows version, so I was able to compare them and choose one as a starting point. In addition to the license, Hyper Entertainment provided the original source assets, including the audio, textures, models and also the source code for both the arcade and Windows versions of the game. And I would have had to implement or do without a lot of goodies that we take for granted in modern game engines, like bump map shaders and dynamic shadows. I could have eschewed middleware altogether, but I had enough trouble just resuscitating the code enough for the asset conversion, much less port it to multiple new platforms.
HYPERBOWL UNITY MAC
Even though my focus is mobile, I’ve also made Mac, Windows, webplayer, Flash, and Mac widget versions of HyperBowl, and the only major code difference is the between the touchscreen and mouse-driven control code. The multi-platform support is a huge advantage. I didn’t realize at the time it would be as popular as it is today (I believe this was before they made the Indie version free) and this was before Unity Android. So using Unity was the expedient choice and default choice, but it turned out to be a good choice. I only thought of porting HyperBowl to the iPhone a couple of years later when I heard the plans for Unity iPhone support and immediately thought how the screen aspect ratio of the iPhone was a good match for the tall projection screen of the original attraction game (nowadays, you can still find some of the attraction HyperBowls still running in venues like Dave and Busters with upended flat screen TVs replacing the original screens). In a way, Unity chose HyperBowl, as I started using Unity in 2007 because it ran on a Mac and had a webplayer and I happened to meet Joachim Ante at WWDC. Unity was the right choice for the game engine.
HYPERBOWL UNITY LICENSE
And thus they granted me a license to develop it for the web, Mac/PC, mobile and the Wii (basically everything that Unity supported at the time). He agreed and suggested I just ask the owners of Hyper, and whaddya know, they said sure, they’re not actively developing it anymore, so why not. I only worked at Hyper Entertainment for the first few months of 2001 but kept in touch with the Director of Development there, Aaron Pulkka (now running his own show at Rabbx).Īround the time Unity announced their upcoming iPhone support, I mentioned to Aaron that I thought that would be a good way to get HyperBowl running on the iPhone. This version of HyperBowl came about because I worked on the original HyperBowl, developed by Hyper Entertainment and first deployed as an attraction game at the Sony Metreon in San Francisco. I've been working on it for six years, now - I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a labor of love, but at least a work of mild fondness.
I’ve been holding off on a postmortem for my Unity version of HyperBowl, a 3D bowling game in which you bowl through various fantasy worlds (ancient Rome, the deck of a rocking ship, the streets of San Francisco…), until I achieved Flappy Bird success, but maybe I shouldn’t hold my breath. After looking at the Game Developer/Gamasutra-style postmortem of a GameCube title I worked on back in 2002, it occurred to me it’s about time I wrote another one.
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