Super Beach Ball

I’ve been working some more on my beach volleyball game…

Do you know that thing where people say that making something only takes 20% of the time but making it good takes 80% of the time? Yeah…

I’ve been working on the game end screen for like 3 hours now and I just can’t get it to look right. The screenshot below is what I got after like 5 different prototypes and is nowhere near done. A lot of the effects that I’m trying to add seem to not work very well with Godot’s control nodes either, so they looked pretty jittery when I tried to set them up.

Thankfully, I did get something good done! You can now access a menu during a match which allows you to adjust settings or leave the match and go back to the main menu.

I finally got around to adding local PVP!

So far, you’ve only been able to play against an AI, but I’ve made it so that there’s an option to select local PVP now, and it actually works! The left team is controlled by WASD, and the right team is controlled by the arrow keys.

It honestly took way longer to implement than I thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have made so much spaghetti code… (▔﹏▔)

I had to fix so many dependencies that I made initially just to set up the gameplay quickly. Really, it probably should have taken like 10 minutes since I already had all the logic down for player movement and gameplay. Still, I was able to finish it in the end. I won’t be able to work on this project for a bit since I’ll be out over the weekend, but I’ve definitely got a good idea of what I’ll be doing next!

I’ve finally set up a main menu for my beach volleyball game!

Honestly, it might look a bit too good, because now the actual gameplay feels like it needs to be way better (┬┬﹏┬┬)

But really, I’m proud of how it looks because I’ve never done a main menu before. The buttons are super satisfying to hover over, and in general, I think it looks really professional now. Plus, it worked almost first try! (with the help of a couple youtube tutorials, but the slide in and hover animations of the buttons, as well as a bunch of other styling choices were all done by me!)

I’ve made some great progress on my beach volleyball game!

Now you’re actually playing on a beach! It looks a bit empty though… I’ll probably add more to it later.

I’ve also been working on making the game feel good. I added a bit of screenshake whenever the ball gets hit. I’ve also made it so that the camera zooms in when the ball gets hit up. There’s also a diamond transition and a score counter whenever a point is scored.

Finally, bug fixing! Originally, if the ball hit the top of the net, the AI would think that the ball had hit the ground and would stop playing, but the ball is technically still in play. To fix this, I changed it so that the AI would recalculate where to move if the ball has substantially changed its trajectory, i.e. the ball bounces off the net, so it lands somewhere that wasn’t where it originally thought it would land. Also, I encountered a pretty funny bug while making it so that the ball would spin when it gets hit. It turns out you shouldn’t make a 2D sprite rotate in ALL directions! (screenshot below)

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how things are going. I plan to continue polishing the game up as much as possible, so I don’t think I’ll be shipping for a while. Still, I think it should all be worth it!

I’ve gotten a lot of work done on my beach volleyball game!
I’ve finished up all the animations, so all the player characters are actually moving and stuff. I also added some sprites for the net and the ball, so they actually look pretty nice now.
I’ve also added a couple of effects to make the game a lot more interesting to look at as well as a lot more balanced. I noticed that it’s pretty much impossible to react to the enemy spikes instantly, so I added a small pause whenever one of the players spike or receive, both of which look really cool as well as make the game a lot more reasonable to play. I also made it so that the camera moves a little to follow the ball.
All in all, I think that I’m on a good track to make a really solid finished product!

I should probably also mention that the little blue outlines in the screenshot and the recording are debug lines to see collisions and raycasts. They’re not going to be there in the final game, they’re only there for testing. They do look pretty cool tho :p

I’ve finally got some player art for my beach volleyball game!
I still need to set up animations though… still, I’ve got all the frames that I need, and I’ve already begun setting up animations for one of the player characters. I’m still balancing the actual gameplay, but I think that it should all be in a good state soon!

I’ve been working some more on my beach volleyball game.

Now you can play against an AI! It took me ages to figure out how to make the AI move exactly to the right location to hit the ball, but I was able to finally figure it out using a bunch of parabola equations (high school physics finally coming in clutch). Lowkey, the AI is way better at my game than me though😭 I’ll probably be able to work on some proper art soon, but for now I’m pretty satisfied with how things have turned out!

Also, if you know how actual volleyball works, you probably know that people usually serve after the receive. I considered doing this, but I figured it would just complicate things, so I kept it at just a receive and a spike. And yes, I did in fact make this game because I loved the anime Haikyuu! (you should watch it too)

BTW, I’m trying to upload a screen recording here, but I’m not completely sure if it will work or not. If it doesn’t, please tell me how I can make it work, and I’ll post an updated devlog.

WHY IS HE GETTING CLOSER?!?!
I’m working on a beach volleyball game. The game has 2D graphics, but I plan on making the background 3D, so the game uses 3D physics. It turns out that if you leave the Z position of the player a little off, they start sliding towards the camera. I’m still working on prototyping, so art isn’t final, but I’ve already set up a ball (the purple godot icon) that bounces and can be hit, so I should have something functional soon!

Just started, I’ve got a simple 3d scene set up for now with basic movement, I’m planning on eventually making it into a 2d beach volleyball game with 3d graphics (probably will have to get through finals week first tho). Should be pretty cool!