RE: Breakout... (was Space Duel mod)

(This was e-mail Chris Bright and I were kicking back and forth, but
it's probably work soliciting more input now. ;-)

Overwhelming number of votes has been to keep working on Breakout.
(Which, I admit, surprised me.)

-Clay

> 1. Have bricks that fall out of formation that can "squish" you or be
> killed by the ball. Give a bonus for knocking them out of the air....
> should be easy programming wise.
>
Hey! I like that one a lot. It'll kinda mess with my collision
detectors right now, but I can probably work around that. (There's not
much *to* Breakout, so I can spend a lot of time doing "special case"
checks if need be...)

> 2. Have different sizes of paddles.
>
Yep, I'd thought about that one. Maybe triggered by an Arkanoid-style
falling "prize" to be caught.

> 3. Use some graphics from tempest for effects... fuze balls etc.
>
Oh, yeah... I'd forgotten about the fuze-balls. A lot of Tempest
graphics were generated "on the fly", so I was having a tough time
coming up with anything from the game to tie in... Spikers are possible
too...

> 4. Have multiple balls.
>
This would be good. Increases demand on the collision detectors and
changes code rather significantly, but just 'cause it's "hard" doesn't
mean I shouldn't do it. ;-)

> 5. Make the super zap button do something. Maybe make your paddle
> bigger
> for a few seconds.
>
That's a good idea. I was actually thinking of having it "super-zap"
the bricks and take out some random number of them.

> 6. Blocks need more than one hit... they could "crack" after the first
> hit and more after each hit.
>
That's already in the code, just turned off for now. ;-)

> I could think up some more if you need more suggestions.
>
That would be great. Some that I thought of:

"special" bricks drop a prize to be caught (ala Arkanoid), prizes give
capabilities triggered by super-zap:
        a) super-zap: destroy some random number of bricks
        b) time-warp: slow down ball speed 50% for some period of time
        c) grow: paddle gets bigger for some period of time
        d) catch: catch the ball and fire it off when ready

"Badguys" appear and fly around the screen:
        a) dropping in new bricks
        b) making weird ball bounces
        c) steal the ball and run off-screen (losing ball) unless hit by
a second ball before they escape

"Brick attack!" (Accompanied by big flashing letters of "BRICK ATTACK!"
and loud siren sound. ;-)
        a) bottom couple rows of bricks suddenly start falling down the
screen at different rates-- dodge or be killed!

I like Ray's 1:3 ball-splitter for the super-zap too...

-Clay

> --
> Later, Chris Bright
> Vid page http://www.comnet.ca/~cbright/
>
>
Received on Tue May 4 14:16:02 1999