I worked in a team to make a VR Bowling game for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets. I did this in the Media, Marketing, and Communications Scholars program at The Ohio State University. This was my first time using the Unreal Engine but it was not the first time I made a game.

Physics-Based Sounds

Using Unreal’s built-in collision detection I built a small system where the nature of collision effects the exact sounds that play. Higher-force collisions are louder, and the pitches are random. With this, the sounds for each throw are unique and responsive.

Shiny Bowling Alley

While I focuses on programming the game, I also did work on lighting up the scene and adding reflections to the floors. This helps make the bowling alley feel like it could be a real-world place. I also created all of the logos which are scene on the walls of the bowling alley.

playarea

C++ Source Code

Scoring a bowling game is one of the classic problems programmers use to sharpen their skills. I learned C++ and Unreal’s header tools and implemented it all. Beyond scoring the game, I also had to program the ball return, the pin sweeper, the rotation of the bowling ball, the name entry, and the high score table. In total, the project had more than 4,000 lines of code, not including the work that was done in Unreal’s Blueprint system.

code

Finally, here is a behind the scenes look of what the bowling alley looks like in the editor:

ineditor