I'm halfway through implementing the powerup system; I suspect the final version won't be as mad as this screenshot suggests!
New features added to Brixtar:
- A rewritten collision detection system. I think it's working better now, although I've noticed a few bugs I still need to iron out.
- "Steel" bricks. These are almost invulnerable, and are intended to be an obstacle to work around. These bricks will break after hit a large number of times though in case a ball get stuck in a loop.
- "Ice" bricks. These are bricks that need to be hit more than once to break (currently allowing up to four hits). These are depicted by diamonds on the block; each hit removes a diamond until it turns into a normal block (so a three diamond block must be hit four times to be completely destroyed). I'm not entirely sure why I'm calling them "ice" bricks rather than something else.
- Powerup drops. These are capsules that drop from destroyed bricks, and must be touched by the paddle to activate. Currently I've colour coded all of them so only one specific type will drop from each brick type. In the current test code destroying any brick will result in a powerup drop; I'll scale this back when testing is done.
- Multiball. The "M" powerup doubles the number of balls in play (up to 32 at the moment).
- Powerball. The "P" powerup turns all balls in play into "powerballs"; they glow yellow and do not rebound off destroyed bricks - they keep on going. They do rebound on ice and steel bricks however, unless their hit destroys that brick (although there's a bug in the collision code where they sometimes don't do what they're supposed to). This effect wears off on the second rebound from the paddle (unless you get extra powerups).
- Fireball. The "F" powerup turns all balls in play into "fireballs"; they glow orange like little suns and destroy ice bricks in a single hit.
- Ultraball. If a ball is affected by both a "P" and "F" powerup it turns into an "ultraball", a blue glowing ball that acts like both combined; it will smash through all non-steel bricks.
- 1 Up. Gives you an extra life. (This powerup was pretty easy to code [smile]).
Some of the graphics are still a bit placeholder-like (the steel brick looks too ugly to keep), but it's getting there. I've still got a couple more powerups to implement before they're done.
