Car Parking Jam

Overview

Car Parking Jam is a car-routing parking puzzle game where players tap colored cars on a grid to drive them out to a row of parking slots, where matching-colored passengers automatically walk from their queues and board. Fill every car with passengers to send it off and clear the level. The game features 3D animated passengers, a built-in level editor, an automatic level generator, and a booster system.

Getting Started

Requirements

• Unity 6 or newer
• Universal Render Pipeline (URP)
• TextMesh Pro (included with Unity)
• Active Input Handling set to Both (legacy mouse raycasts + new Input System keyboard)

Installation

1. Import the Car Parking Jam package into your Unity project
2. Ensure the project is set to use the Universal Render Pipeline (check Edit > Project Settings > Graphics)
3. Open the game scene at Assets/CarParkingJam/Scenes/GameNew.unity
4. Press Play to test the first level

Quick Test

Once in Play mode, tap any clickable car on the grid (front-row cars and any car whose path to the front is clear). The car drives through the grid, out to the back row, then parks in the next free slot. Matching-colored passengers in the queues automatically walk over and board it. When every car is filled and all passenger queues are empty, the level is cleared and the next level loads automatically.

Folder Structure

Gameplay

Core Mechanics

Each level features a grid of color-coded cars, a set of passenger queues above the grid, and a row of parking dock slots between them. The goal is to clear all passengers from the queues by filling every outgoing car with matching-colored passengers.

• Tap to drive — Tap a clickable car to route it from the grid to the next free parking slot along a pre-authored waypoint path
• Front-row gating — Only cars whose path to the back row is clear are clickable; a visible outline marks them
• Pathfinding propagation — When a car leaves the grid, pathfinding costs propagate around it and may unblock cars that were previously obstructed
• Color matching — Passengers at the front of each queue walk to the docked car that matches their color
• Car capacity — Each car has a seat count; once full, it drives off the back of the parking row and frees its slot
• Parking slots — Limited dock slots mean you must plan which cars to route first; a full dock blocks new cars until one departs
• Locked slots — Some parking slots start locked and must be unlocked with the Unlock Slot booster
• Hidden cars — A "covered" car on the grid is revealed (with a smoke effect) the moment its cell becomes reachable

Car Colors

The game supports nine predefined car/passenger colors defined in the CarColor enum:

The palette is defined by the Materials you assign to CarColorLibrary; the hex values above are the reference look used by the shipped art.

Win & Lose Conditions

• Win — All grid cars have been parked and filled, and all passenger queues are empty. The level index advances and the next level loads automatically after a short celebration.
• Lose — All parking dock slots are occupied by cars that cannot be filled (no matching passengers remain, or the queue is stuck behind an incompatible front car). The Game Over panel appears with a Retry button that reloads the current level.

Animations

Passengers have three animation states: idle (waiting in the queue), run (walking from the queue to the docked car), and boarded (seated inside the car). Cars animate with smoothed path following, rotate toward their heading, and play a smoke-burst effect when the "hidden" cover is revealed. The Balloon Pick booster adds a rise → fly → drop sequence with a soft balloon sprite and particle plume.

Scripts Reference

Gameplay scripts live in the global namespace under Assets/CarParkingJam/Scripts/. Reusable engine scripts live in the same Assets/CarParkingJam/Scripts/ folder under the HypercasualGameEngine namespace.

Core Gameplay

Engine Scripts (HypercasualGameEngine)

Editor Scripts

Level Editor

Opening the Level Editor

In the Unity menu bar, go to Tools > Car Parking Jam > Level Editor. This opens a dedicated Editor window — no need to enter Play mode.

Features

• Level List — Browse, add, duplicate, reorder (up/down), and delete levels in the left panel
• Grid Painter — Click cells on the grid to paint colored cars or erase them
• Paint Modes — Select a mode from the toolbar: None, Place, Erase
• Color Selection — Choose a car color when in Place mode (Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Violet, Pink, Brown, Gray)
• Hidden Toggle — Mark a car as "hidden" (covered) so it reveals with smoke when reachable
• Passenger Queues — Configure each passenger-queue column: depth, per-slot color assignment
• Parking Row — Set total parking slots and pick which indices start locked
• Booster Counts — Per-level starting counts for the three boosters
• Grid Settings — Adjust grid width, height, and cell spacing per level
• Save / Reload — Save all levels to disk as JSON, or reload from disk with confirmation

Paint Modes

Level Storage

All levels are stored as individual JSON files in Assets/CarParkingJam/Resources/Levels/ with the naming convention Level_1.json, Level_2.json, etc. They are loaded at runtime via Resources.LoadAll<TextAsset>("Levels").

Automatic Level Generator

The Automatic Level Generator is an Editor tool that batch-generates playable parking-puzzle levels procedurally. It uses configurable difficulty curves, pathfinding-aware car placement, and balanced passenger-queue distributions to create varied, solvable levels.

Opening the Tool

In the Unity menu bar, go to Tools > Car Parking Jam > Auto Level Generator. This opens a settings window where you can configure all parameters before generating.

Settings

How It Works

1. Configure settings — adjust all parameters in the Editor window
2. Click "Generate Levels" — the tool detects existing levels and appends new ones
3. For each level, the generator:
   • Randomizes grid size, color count, and fill density within your ranges
   • Interpolates difficulty based on position in the batch (easier at low levels, harder at high levels)
   • Places cars on a shuffled fill pattern that guarantees at least one front-row clickable car
   • Generates passenger queues whose color totals exactly match the total car capacity per color
   • Distributes passengers across queue columns in a shuffled round-robin pattern
   • Picks the next free parking-slot count and locked-slot positions from the active ranges
   • Exports a JSON level file to Resources/Levels/

Boosters

The game includes three booster abilities that players can activate during gameplay. Each booster has a configurable number of uses per level (set in the level JSON data) and an optional tutorial popup that appears on first use.

Booster Buttons

Booster buttons are found in the GameHUD_Panel/BottomHolder in the scene UI. Each button has:

• A background overlay (Bg) that shows/hides based on availability
• A use count badge (PowerUpCountText) showing remaining uses, or the unlock level if still locked
• An active-mode tint (light blue) when Balloon Pick mode is waiting for a target click
• Lock by level — boosters unlock at configurable levels (default: Unlock Slot at level 1, Shuffle at level 2, Balloon Pick at level 3)

Cheat Mode

Press the U key during gameplay to unlock all boosters and refill their usage counts. Press Right Arrow / Left Arrow to jump to the next/previous level. These shortcuts are useful for testing.

Customization Guide

Adding New Colors

To add a new car/passenger color:

1. Open CarColor.cs and add a new entry to the enum:
   public enum CarColor { Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Violet, Pink, Brown, Gray, // Add your custom color before Null/Lock: Teal, Null, Lock }
2. Create a new car Material in Art/Materials/ with the desired color, plus a matching passenger Material
3. Open the ColorManger.asset (CarColorLibrary) ScriptableObject and add a new entry mapping CarColor.Teal to those materials
4. Re-save every level via Tools > Car Parking Jam > Level Editor > Save All to Disk so the JSON levels recognize the new color as a valid option

New colors are automatically available in the Level Editor, Auto Level Generator, and at runtime.

Adjusting Grid Visuals

The grid layout is controlled by CarGridBuilder and ParkingLevelBuilder. Key properties:

• columnSpacing / rowSpacing (per level in JSON) — World-unit spacing between grid cells
• gridTilePrefab / gridTileVisualPrefab — Tile mesh spawned per cell
• tileMaterial — Shared material used for every grid tile

Modifying Car Visuals

Car rendering is handled by the ParkingCar component. Each car prefab includes:

• MeshRenderer — The car body; material is set at runtime from CarColorLibrary
• Outline effect — Uses the CarOutline shader loaded from Resources; outline meshes are created/toggled dynamically by ParkingGameManager.UpdateCarOutlines()
• Smoke particle — Plays on hidden-car reveal and during driving
• Balloon effect — Lifts the car during the Balloon Pick booster sequence
• TextMeshPro text — Displays seat count while the car is parked

Modifying Passenger Visuals

Passengers use SkinnedMeshRenderer with material coloring and Animator for character animations. To change the character model, replace the prefab mesh and ensure the Animator has triggers for the walk and seated states used by PassengerMovement.

Modifying the Lock Visual

Locked parking slots are indicated by a gray lock sprite overlay plus a dark-gray tile tint. Both are configured at runtime by ParkingSlotManager.ApplyLockedVisual(). To change the lock icon, replace the sprite on the Lock child of any Parking_Tile GameObject. To change the locked tile color, edit the LOCKED_TILE_COLOR constant in ParkingSlotManager.cs.

Adding New Boosters

New boosters can be added by following the existing pattern in BoosterManager.cs:

1. Add booster state fields (use count, active flag, UI references)
2. Wire up the button in HookUpExistingBoosters() following the HookUpBoosterButton() pattern
3. Implement the booster logic in a new click handler method (e.g., OnMyBoosterClicked())
4. Add a booster-count field to ParkingLevelData so it can be configured per level, and propagate it through the SyncEngineLevelManager() bridge in ParkingGameManager
5. Update UpdateBoosterUI() to handle the new booster's lock/unlock/count display

Monetization (Ads)

The project ships with a stub AdsManager that runs in Dummy mode so the game works out of the box. To ship real ads:

1. Create a MonetizationSettings asset: right-click in Assets/CarParkingJam/Resources/ → Create > Hypercasual > Monetization Settings
2. Drop a MonetizationInitModule component on a root GameObject in GameNew.unity and reference the asset
3. Import the Google Mobile Ads SDK and the External Dependency Manager
4. Switch the asset's provider fields from Dummy to AdMob and fill in your real ad-unit IDs (leaving Google's test IDs as placeholders during development)
5. Add MODULE_ADMOB to Project Settings > Player > Scripting Define Symbols and wire the real SDK calls inside AdsManager.cs

Game code never imports GoogleMobileAds.* directly — it only calls AdsManager. This keeps the ad provider swappable in a single file.

JSON Level Format

Each level is a JSON file with the following structure:

The cells array defines grid cars (sparse: only non-empty cells). Each cell has row, column, cellType ("occupied" or "empty"), a carColor string matching the CarColor enum, and a hidden flag. The passengerQueues array has one entry per queue column with a list of color strings from front to back. lockedParkingSlots is a zero-indexed list of parking slot indices that start locked. The two path* arrays define the world-space waypoints cars follow from the grid to the parking row and from the parking row off-screen.

Support

Common Issues

Tips

• Use the Developer Settings Panel (gear icon) in Play mode to quickly navigate levels, trigger win/lose, unlock boosters, and test ads
• Press Right Arrow / Left Arrow during gameplay to jump to the next/previous level
• Press U to unlock and refill all boosters for testing
• The Auto Level Generator is the fastest way to populate your game with content — generate 100+ levels in seconds
• Every generated level is guaranteed solvable: total passenger counts per color exactly match total car capacity per color
• Back up your Resources/Levels/ folder regularly
• The Welcome Popup can be permanently dismissed via the "Do not show this popup again" checkbox

Contact Us

If you get stuck or have any issues, feel free to reach out to us at ragendom@gmail.com. We are happy to help!