Setting up losing a life and game over.
In this tutorial we’ll set up the schematic to lose a life and call game over when all lives have been lost. The schematic will be added to the water at the bottom of the level – if the ball falls into the water, the player will lose a life and respawn.
First, we’ll set up the schematic for handling life reduction and game over. Losing a life will lead to destroying the ball and the paddle and spawning a new instance of the ball/paddle player prefab.
Open the Makinom editor, navigate to Schematics and create a new schematic. Change the following settings.
We’ll need 2 prefabs – a death particle and a player prefab.
Click on Add Prefab Resource to add a prefab resource.
Click on Add Prefab Resource again to add another prefab resource.
Add Node > Audio > Audio > Play Sound (Channel)
We’ll use this node to play a water splash sound.
Add Node > Value > Variable > Change Variables
We’ll use this node to reduce the player’s lives by 1.
Click on Add Variable to add a variable change.
Add Node > Game Object > Prefab > Spawn Prefab
Time to spawn the death particles.
Add Node > Game Object > Prefab > Destroy Prefab
We’ll destroy the death particles after 5 seconds.
Add Node > Game > Player > Destroy Player
We’ll destroy the player (paddle) using this node.
No further settings needed.
Add Node > Game Object > Game Object > Destroy Object
We’ll use this node to destroy the ball (i.e. the starting object).
Add Node > Value > Variable > Check Variables
Now, we’ll check if the player lost all lives.
Click on Add Variable to add a variable condition.
Add Node > Game > Game > Change Game State
The player lost all lives (i.e. game over), we’ll set the Game Running state to Inactive.
This node is connected to the Success slot of the previous Check Variables node (i.e. all lives lost).
Click on Add Game State to add a state change.
Add Node > UI > Dialogue > Show Dialogue
We’ll display a game over message for 3 seconds. As before, we haven’t yet set up the UI box, but we’ll use the same as before and set up the UI later.
Before reloading the level, we’ll reset all global variables (lives to 3, bricks to 0, score to 0, ballInPlay to false).
Copy the previous variable change and change the following settings.
Click on Add Variable again to add another variable change.
Add Node > Game > Scene > Load Scene
We’ll use this node to reload the scene.
Finally, we’ll set Game Running to Active again – the game continues.
Add Node > Base > Wait
The player still has lives, we’ll wait for 1 second before respawning the player.
This node is connected to the Failed slot of the Check Variables node checking the global int variable lives (i.e. the player still has lives).
We need to set ballInPlay to false, otherwise the player wont be able to fire the ball again after respawning.
Finally, we’ll spawn the player’s prefab again.
And that’s it for the schematic – click on Save Schematic and save it as LoseLife in Assets/Schematics/.
We’ll add the LoseLife schematic to the Water game object in the scene (child object of Level) using a Trigger Machine. The machine should start when the Ball enters the water’s trigger while the Game Running game state is Active (i.e. we wont lose a life after winning, since the state is inactive at that time).
Add a trigger machine component to the Water game object (e.g. using the component menu: Makinom > Machines > Trigger Machine). Change the following settings.
Click on Add Check to add a game object check for the starting object. We only want the machine to start when the Ball is the starting object.
Click on Add Condition, we’ll set up the game state condition here.
In the added Condition 0, we’ll set up our game state condition.
Click on Add Game State.
And that’s it – don’t forget to save the scene.
Hit Play to test the game. You’ll now lose a life when you miss the ball and it falls into the water. If all lifes are lost, you’ll get a game over message (not visible yet) and the game restarts. However, you don’t know how many lives you’ve left or the score you achieved …
The next tutorial will get to the UI setup, i.e. the UI box we already used in schematics and HUDs showing our lives and score.
