Needs ideas for making Breakout clone

For Beginners

Started by unknownProdigy February 12, 2005 05:23 AM

17 comments, last by GameDev.net 19 years, 2 months ago

1,865

February 12, 2005 03:49 PM

Quote:Original post by Rob Loach
Don't plan too much before you actually start the project or you'll be swamped and overblown by the amount of work that it entails.

It's not so much as that, but rather thinking about how you can make a system so you could easily addd in *anything* you want. I'd say start thinking about a design of which you just had one special feature. Make this class interact with the game. Now extend it into something more generic, so you can simply override and dervive additional classes for the desired effects. Basically you are making a special FX manager.

So recap -

1. Make Boring Breakout First
- Make it data driven, so you can easily change the behaviors of *anything* simply by editing a file
- You may want to use a script system as well, but that tends to get rather complicated

2. Make your Special FX class manager
- It should be able to load 'scripts' that change the behavior of the game in real time.
- You should be able to easily modify anything that goes on in the game this way - ie ball speed, paddle movement, etc...

Just a few ideas! A little complicated, but if you use this appraoch you will be able t odo all of what you have said in your first post about the powerups.

- Drew

Anonymous

February 12, 2005 09:14 PM

Hi there take a look at this break out game, personally for me its the best break out clone I've ever4 played.

http://www.sharewareorder.com/Takamaru-downloads-2739.htm

Anonymous

February 12, 2005 09:24 PM

um yeah as someone said, start with "boring breakout" first, thats ok though because breakout might be one of easier games to make better once you do have the basic framework down.

There was a breakout clone I liked once which also mixed in a bit of space invaders,- right at the top of the screen behind some blocks a mothership would go over every now and then and drop little homing missile type things, that was quite a good idea.

iMalc

2,466

February 12, 2005 09:41 PM

What about team-play. Top and bottom vs left and right for example. The team that gets the most blocks wins.

Here's some ideas for powerups...
+ A powerup which makes your ball act a little 'drunk'.
+ High-intertia mode, where your paddle acts like it sticks to the ground and you have to move it abruptly to get it to come unstuck.
+ Suicide bomber mode. At your command (mouse click) the ball explodes and takes out any nearby blocks. A new ball reappears stuck to your paddle. (Maybe you can blow your paddle up too, by mistake!)

How about when you get a multi-ball powerup, your current ball first grows bigger and bigger and then pops into lots of little balls.

I hope you have pixel-perfect collision detection and response. None of that "ball goes through the corner of a block" crap. Also make balls collide with each other.

btw most clones I've played rebound the ball off the paddle as if the paddle's top surface is curved upwards. You could draw it curved upwards in the middle. Also, some powerup could make it draw and act concave instead of convex, and it would rebound the ball in the opposite manner, just to confuse them.

[Edited by - iMalc on February 12, 2005 10:41:18 PM]

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spunkybuttockszc

100

February 12, 2005 09:47 PM

For more realistic ball deflection:

If the ball collides with the paddle, find the x coord of the center of the paddle. Then compute the distance between the ball's x coord and the center of the paddle. Then either add or subtract this value from the ball's x velocity depending on the direction it's travelling.

iMalc

2,466

February 12, 2005 09:59 PM

btw, don't have the powerup's on each level just randomly selected from the whole bunch. Instead, introduce new kinds of powerups (good and bad) into the mix, only as you reach certain levels.
Seeing each new level design itself isn't always enough to keep someone interested.

"In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion."
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Drew_Benton

1,865

February 12, 2005 11:30 PM

Quote:Original post by iMalc
btw, don't have the powerup's on each level just randomly selected from the whole bunch. Instead, introduce new kinds of powerups (good and bad) into the mix, only as you reach certain levels.
Seeing each new level design itself isn't always enough to keep someone interested.

Agreed! Any one remember Bomberman? Remember the 'poision'? It did a variety of things such as reverse the controls, made you slow like mollasses, made you switch places with another player, etc... That would be fun to see in a breakout game. I'd say take a look at Atomic Bomberman on the PC for some ideas.

- Drew

sakky

100

February 13, 2005 03:58 AM

I just got done playinga Breakout clone on Linux! It's pretty cool too. I had lots of pwerups like the ones you talking about. It also had guns, but the bullets were really slow. It had sticky balls so the ball would stick to the paddle. It also used the mouse; sometihng I think you should use in your game because it makes it a lot more funner to play.

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Anonymous

February 13, 2005 01:03 PM

I remember coding a breakout clone way way way back.

Here were some things I had:

1. Force Field-A laser shot out from both sides of the paddle and the ball could bounce off of it. If the paddle moves, the laser disappeared. If the ball hit it, the laser disappeared.

2. "Shadow Push"-Basically, the user could reflect the ball no matter where it was.

3. "Pause"-It would pause the ball momentarily.

Needs ideas for making Breakout clone

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Needs ideas for making Breakout clone

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