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  1. Hans van Briemen of Mobile Excellence B.V. is the copyright owner and creative mind behind Sudoku-Ball. He is a very creative mathematician and Marketing professor at the University of Applied Science in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Marcel Lennartz of Lensoft International Ltd is the project director/producer of Sudoku-Ball and makes Hans's ideas into reality.

    DownloadJava3d recently chatted with Marcel, and we learned about their game, the development process, and the development team behind Sudoku-Ball.

    Our interview with Marcel Lennartz continues here...

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  1. The Sudoku-Ball Project
  2. dlj3d: When did you begin design and coding?
  3. Concept and Design Papers
    Concept and Design Papers
  4. Marcel: We started the game design and coding around March 2006. Just before that we were working on some other Sudoku concepts (which we will publish in the near future). During the development of the ball we came up with new ideas and improvement and along the way we added more and more features of which we felt were essential for the first Beta Launch. We still have a very long "wish list" of features that we want to implement, but we rather use the real players feed-back on this first version before we implement them.
  5. dlj3d: Did you create a prototype - how long did it take to create?
  6. Sudoku-Ball Paper Prototypes
  7. Marcel: We made many prototypes, starting with the initial ball design (done in Macromedia Flash, MS PowerPoint and 3DS Max). We also made several paper based prototypes and printed physical balls (which will be available for retail later this year). Getting the design and quality correct whilst maintaining good performance during playing was a key item that needed attention during prototyping.
  8. Sudoku-Ball Paper Prototypes
    A physical Sudoku-Ball
    Available for retail later this year
  9. dlj3d: Were there any moments of genius that you'd like to share?
  10. Patentable ideas
  11. Marcel: There were many moments of deep intellectual reflections during the development of this game that have resulted in an official patent application at the international patent offices. The algorithm to generate 3D Sudoku puzzles has been a real mathematical innovation, but also the dynamic plotting of the number symbols on the 3D texture required a thorough understanding of geometrics and linear algebra as these are not available in some standard class library.
  12. dlj3d: Where there any problems along the way? - How did you solve them?
  13. Marcel:
    1. We had some major problem converting the mouse position to a texture position in 3D at the start of the project. Texture Pinching at the poles was a problem
      Problem - Texture Pinching
    2. It is not possible to plot numbers on various positions on the texture and display them to the user with equal quality. Especially the numbers at the poles caused problems. In the middle of the project we changed to a different texture which has the black squares on the poles.
    3. We also invented a new method for plotting high resolution number symbols interactively on the limited resolution sphere texture with the best possible perceived quality. We proudly called this the Moving Average Color Sampling method (MACS). We were glad to have Hans van Briemen on the team to aid us with his mathematical knowledge throughout the development of MACS.
      4. Moving Average Color Sampling method (MACS)
      Texture Correction using Moving Average Color Sampling method (MACS)
    4. Another problem which we have not resolved completely is how to automatically check for the presence of existing JR and Java3D and install the correct JRE and Java 3D runtime on the users' machine via the browser.
    5. We resolved most technical Java3D issues via discussions with other Java 3D developers on online forums.

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