Introducing UnityCycles- fast-paced monowheel combat across procedurally-generated terrains.

What is it?

This project sprouted from my lack of free time as of late- trying to program an entire game engine from the ground up just wasn’t going to work, so I decided to give Unity a try. I started playing around with a rollable ball on some terrain created from a worley noise algorithm that I had lying around, and it grew from a fun distraction into a solid base for a game.

My plan is to develop this in my free time, and since it’s the first of my projects to see a public release the plan is to make it free. Everyone loves free stuff, and what better way to show off what I can do?

The Game

The base mechanics of the game are high-speed physics-based movement and droid-based combat.

The player monowheels are equipped with jets for jumping, dropping and dashing- they can be used to build up momentum, slingshot off of slopes and make huge jumps, as well as quickly changing direction providing you build up enough charge by staying grounded and moving fast.

Weapon drones will spawn periodically over the course of the game and can be collected and used against your opponents: Up to three at once will follow you and fire on command. Currently they come in 5 variations: Rocket, Mortar, Seeker, Shotgun Storm and Slag Cannon. This is the full ‘Standard Set’- I have plans to add Magic, Tech, Comedy and Super sets to future builds.

The Rules

Right now the game supports Deathmatch rules. In the future I plan to flesh out this system considerably with mix-and-match-able game elements such as Team, Checkpoint Race, Trick, Class-based, Stock and Time along with other configurable elements such as how pickups are delivered to the arena.

The Arena

Combat takes place over a procedurally-generated terrain. This system is highly configurable, exposing as much of the height noising algorithm as possible to the player. There are 12 different environments to choose from total, spanning 6 distinct geological styles. I’m hoping to perhaps add some non-terrain random/procedural elements to the playing field in the future, though I don’t have any solid ideas yet.

The Future

I’m hoping to expand the scope of the game somewhat as development goes on. As it stands the experience is limited to multiplayer splitscreen which isn’t always practical, so the plan is to hopefully add Bot AI and Network Play at some point. Sadly however, the latter is likely to be limited to LANs due to the way Unity’s physics engine interacts with it’s netplay engine. (Poorly)

So…

If you’re interested in the game, have feedback, ideas or just want to get in touch, I can be found at @ShiftyAxel on Twitter. Let me know what you think, and if you like what you see please share it with friends!