A quick overview over the project and setting up the basics of the breakout game.

This game tutorial series will teach you how to create a simple match 3 game. The player swaps 2 jewels, if afterwards 3 or more jewels match, they’ll be destroyed (giving points) and the jewels above will fall down, possibly creating additional matches.

In this tutorial we’ll take a quick look at the project and set up some basics in the Makinom editor.

The Unity Project

By now you should’ve downloaded the project, unzipped it and opened it as a Unity project (i.e. don’t import it). You can open the project using the Unity menu: File > Open Project…

The project contains the following folders:

  • Finished
    The finished game, containing the complete Makinom project and all schematics, prefabs and the level.
  • Gizmos
    The Makinom gizmo icons.
  • Makinom
    The free version of Makinom.
    You can import the full version to replace it.
  • Tutorial Resources
    The resources the tutorial will be using, i.e. the ready to use level and prefabs that haven’t yet been set up for Makinom.
    The level is located in Assets/Tutorial Resources/.
    The prefabs are located in Assets/Tutorial Resources/Prefabs/.

Setting up Makinom

We’ll now set up some basics in the Makinom project. Open the Makinom editor (Window > Makinom) – this will create a new Makinom project at Assets/Makinom/Project.asset, in case no project has been created or opened yet.

Check if you’re working on a new project (i.e. not using the Finished Project) in Editor > About in the Project Summary. The Currently Loaded project should be Assets/Makinom/Project.asset, if not, please click on Create New Project and save it at this location.

Game Object Pools

We’ll use pooling to reduce the amount of game objects created and destroyed during the game – you can learn more about pooling in this how-to.

Whenever a jewel is destroyed, a particle effect will be spawned at it’s position, we’ll use pooling to reduce the costs for creating and destroying these short-lived game objects.

Navigate to Base/Control > Game Object Pools and change the following settings.

0: Destroy Particles

  • Name
    Set to Destroy Particles.
  • Prefab
    Select Destoy Particles.
    The prefab can be found at Assets/Tutorial Resources/Prefabs/.
  • Start Size
    Set to 20.
  • Can Grow
    Enable this setting.

GUI Boxes

We’ll set up a GUI box that’s used for the information HUD (displaying the player’s score and turns). Navigate to Menus > GUI Boxes and change the following settings.

0: HUD

The GUI box will later be used to display the player’s lives in a HUD at the lower left corner of the screen.

  • Name
    Set to HUD.
  • Height Adjustment
    Select Auto.

In the Content Box Settings we’ll define the bounds of the GUI box – the health HUD will be displayed at the player’s position, i.e. we’ll only really need the width and height.

  • Bounds
    Set to X=0, Y=0, W=1280, H=200.
  • Anchor
    Select Upper Left.
  • Show Box
    Disable this setting.
  • Font Size
    Set to 25.

HUDs

Finally, we’ll set up the HUD. Navigate to Menus > HUDs and change the following settings of the already added default HUD.

  • Name
    Set to Info.
  • GUI Box
    Select HUD.
  • HUD Type
    Select Information.

Display Conditions

  • Auto Display
    Enable this setting.

Information Element 0

We need one HUD element to display the player’s information, click on Add Information Element to add it.

The score will be stored in the global int variable score, the turns in the global int variable turns.

  • Element Type
    Select Text.
  • Text
    Set to:
    Score: <var.int=score>
    Turns: <var.int=turns>
  • Variable Origin
    Select Global.
  • Is Percent (Width)
    Enable this setting.

And that’s it – click on Save Settings to save the changes.

Scene Setup

Finally, we’ll add Makinom to the scene. Open the Level 1 scene (found at Assets/Tutorial Resources/).

Adding a Game Starter

To add Makinom to the game, we’ll need a game starter. You can learn more about game starters in this how-to.

Add the game starter using the scene wizard (Windows > Scene Wizard). Click on Add Game Starter, select the Makinom project if it’s not already selected (found at Assets/Makinom/Project.asset) and click on Add Game Starter again. The scene wizard will create a new game object and attach the game starter to it.

Move the new game starter object out of the way, e.g. to X=-10, Y=0, Z=0.

And that’s it for now – save the scene.

The next tutorial will handle the generating the level.