Behind the Magic Eight Ball at Sharp Sharkey's Gritty Little Pool Hall

Richard Bragg

Behind the Magic Eight Ball is a realistic 3d pool game that allows a player to practice his shots to perfect his game or to challenge an opponent to a head-to-head duel.  The incredibly realistic ball dynamics allow the user to do anything he would be able to do in a real game including applying different spins to the cue ball, shoot with varying amounts of power and spin, or even jump over other balls.  The winner of a two-player game even gets a chance to visit the mysterious "Magic Eight Ball" room, where Sharp Sharkey's Magic Eight Ball holds the answers to all of life's questions.

In short, my attempt was to create a pool game that was realistic as possible, so that someone who played pool would enjoy the game as much as playing pool for real.  Since I am not a very good pool player mainly due to the fact that I can't control the stick as much as I would like it to, this was my chance to create a pool simulator where I could make the stick do exactly what I asked of it, and then see if I really understood the game...  I feel I have accomplished that goal, and now have a very fun game that I can play without leaving the computer.

Really this is just a simple web site to distribute the cool pool simulator I wrote for CS 248.

Here are some screenshots (click for a larger image):

For more info:  README
NOTE: You should not attempt to play this game without a decent video card.  It will be unplayably slow...  Testing was done with an NVIDIA Geforce3 card, where it runs great - but on my Intel 810e Chipset it runs way too slow for any fun to be had.
Download Windows version