BRiK [breakout/arkanoid clone]

Current build: play BRiK 0.0.7b - Now with locally cached high score (just one), and a crosshair :(

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46479820/brick/007a-screen1.png" border="0">

BRiK (working title) is a pixelly breakout/arkanoid clone that I'm hoping will be the first complete C2 project for me. I started this a week or two ago, but got distracted by the space contest, and yesterday I started building a minesweeper clone for some reason.

Anyway. BRiK is intended to be fast paced and full of blips and boops, and combos and multipliers and powerups, and eventually the graphics will actually look good (colourful at least) and the sounds will be more appropriate.

Features so far include:

A paddle.

A ball.

Some bricks (3 levels)

Combo bonuses and score multipliers.

Two kinds of MULTIBALL: Regular, and ULTRA (I dunno, you think of a name.)

Levels are randomly selected

Bonus life every time you get a x9 combo (which isn't difficult).

So essentially, it's the very basic game up and running. I have a lot of things I want to do to it... first on the list is a server based high score list (if anyone has any advice on how to go about this I would be grateful.)

Anyone that wants to take the time to point out bugs, problems or design flaws will be rewarded with millions of dollars worth of invisible unicorn dust, and a thumbs up.

-cheers

Paul

Looks good, a few things to note:

1. making the cursor invisible is a good idea, however realistically it ends up being very annoying as you 'lose' the mouse off the sides of the screen frequently, losing control of the paddle. You will have to make the cursor visible.

2. Perhaps increase the amount (if there is any) that the ball bounces depending on how far from the centre of the paddle it hits (hard to explain but it adds a lot of gameplay)

3. Will you post the unicorn dust to me, or shall I pick it up?

1. Yep, I've noticed the cursor problem. I'm not sure, but would AbsoluteX make any difference? I guess I'll have to live with an annoying arrow on screen most of the time.

2. At the moment the collision polygon is angled on the sides of the paddle, but the result is perhaps a bit too subtle.

3. Unicorn dust is being sent by Owl Courier, it should arrive within a cycle depending on which dimension you're in.

• Thanks for the tips!

Runs nice and smooth here on FF 7.0.1.

Love the chunky graphics, don't change them, colours OK but don't change them chunky pixels.

Love the BRIX font to would be cool if the score and other info was the same. Rojohound made a spritefont example HERE thats if you have all the other characters.

Keep it up :)

I really love the styling behind this game, them "chunky" graphics as Minor mentioned but the sound as well. Just takes me back to games of old like Pong and Quix. Pure style, awesome job!

Just a couple things I noticed which I'm guessing you've already noticed but I was able to get the ball to disappear off the left edge of the screen at one point and the game didn't register anything.

I also was able to get the ball's angle at perfectly 45 degrees so it was stuck indefinitely on the x axis.

Again though, I really dig that style.

Cheers,

David

Love the BRIX font to would be cool if the score and other info was the same. Rojohound made a spritefont example HERE thats if you have all the other characters.

Thanks. I'll look into that - I do intend to use some kind of retro pixel font eventually. The arial font is only placeholder.

I was able to get the ball to disappear off the left edge of the screen at one point and the game didn't register anything.

This sometimes happens to me if the framerate drops below 60fps at the wrong moment. Is yours running smoothly, or are you getting occasionally stutters? Since I started testing on Chrome with hardware acceleration it hasn't happened (which is why I think it's related).

I'm not too sure how to prevent it, but I'll see if there is some extra way to detect that the ball went through a wall it shouldn't have.

I also was able to get the ball's angle at perfectly 45 degrees so it was stuck indefinitely on the x axis.

How long did you wait before you gave up? I've actually added a tiny amount of gravity to the ball, so it should eventually start to fall - you just have to be patient.

I'll fiddle with it to see if I can just detect when the ball is moving exactly horizontal and then speed up the correction process.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.