Unity 3D + Playmaker - ProBuilder to Create Clicker Game

This is part 1 of a recording of my mini game jam that I did on my own and hopefully shows some of my thoughts and processing in creating a video game in 3 hrs. I have spread the time over 6 videos. My mini game jam theme? ... Space X . Ok I am a huge space nerd and love to watch Space X launche

This video opens a six-part series documenting a self-imposed three-hour game jam on a SpaceX theme: a rocket-launch clicker game. Part one covers modeling the rocket with ProBuilder and roughing in the clicker UI — a circular launch button with a radial timer ring. The footage is uncut but time-compressed, so this guide distills the workflow into its actual steps.

Step 1 — Model the rocket from a ProBuilder cylinder

Starting from a blank scene with a SpaceX rocket photo as reference, the rocket begins life as a ProBuilder cylinder. From there it's push-and-pull editing on the cylinder's faces and edges until the silhouette reads as a rocket — jam rules apply, so "passable" beats "perfect." A plain material goes on once the shape is done.

Step 2 — Fake the hull detail with a normal map

Rather than modeling panel detail, the skin gets a very subtle normal map. The texture is drawn by hand, run through the NormalMap-Online converter, downloaded, and dropped into the project's sprites, then assigned to the rocket's material's normal map slot. The goal is the slight waviness real rocket skin has — barely visible, but it breaks up the flat segments enough to sell the surface. Cheap trick, big payoff, no extra polygons.

Step 3 — Draw the button sprites

The clicker needs a round button, and Unity's default button is a rectangle. In Photoshop, on a 256×256 canvas, draw a white filled circle and save it as click button — white on purpose, so it can be tinted any color inside Unity later. For the timer, duplicate the idea: an empty circle with the fill deleted, given a 20-pixel stroke on the inside of the selection, saved as timer. Two tiny sprites, both recolorable in-engine.

Step 4 — Assemble the clicker UI

Add an empty Launch Clicker object under the game manager, then a UI button. Import both sprites with texture type Sprite (2D and UI), swap the button's sprite for the circle, and size it — 200×200 proves too big, 150×150 sits right. Add a TextMesh Pro UI text named fuel text, bolded, for the button label, and tint the button. Then add a UI Image at 170×170 — slightly larger than the button — using the timer ring sprite, centered on the button and placed behind it, named fuel button.

Step 5 — The radial-fill timer trick

The ring becomes a countdown dial with two dropdown changes: set the image type from Simple to Filled, and the fill method to Radial 360. The fill amount is a normalized value — 1 is a complete ring, 0 is empty — so animating that single number later will sweep the ring around the button like a clock. That's the whole visual foundation done; per jam discipline, no more time on design than necessary. The remaining five parts build the clicker logic on top.