Clearly, SketchUp is the perfect design tool for the game, but it's not clear how deep the integration with SU will go. Will SketchUp simply be the design tool for an online game, or will the game be played within SketchUp?
I don't have the answer, but here is where to look.
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"Will SketchUp simply be the design tool for an online game, or will the game be played within SketchUp?"
Design is the game -- or at least the first half of it:
There are two sides to Q-BA-MAZE play: design/construction using the cubes followed by activation with rolling marbles.
SketchUp is a perfect tool for the virtual design/construction part of Q-BA-MAZE play.
A program with virtual physics, gravity, and collision detection will be necessary for modeling the movement of marbles through a structure. While the geometry needs to be simplified for practical reasons in SketchUp, we are modeling the Q-BA-MAZE SketchUp cubes with sloping interior geometry so that the marble movement should work in a program that models physics.
The cubes in a Q-BA-MAZE construction align variously at their corners or the mid-points of their edges, so fast and accurate building of structures should be easy for those familiar with the SketchUp tools.
We will be posting updates about Q-BA-MAZE SketchUp on our blog at www.playanddesign.org.
(The author of this post, Andrew Comfort, is the inventor of Q-BA-MAZE and the founder of Q-BA-MAZE Inc.)
Thanks for the update, Andrew. Have you heard of SketchyPhysics? It ties the Newton physics engine to SketchUp. Search YouTube for "sketchyphysics".
Thanks Jim! I found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJGb8AjUv08
I had no idea there were already physics plugins for SketchUp.
I can't wait to see if the indecisive rocking motion and random flow of marbles out of either side of the double-exit cubes is properly simulated by this SketchUp physics plug-in.
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