D: BLOCKBUSTER
Hi everyone.
This is our first game in GameMaker, started it yesterday, so go easy on us!
BLOCKBUSTER basically inherits all the features of the original Breakout game, except for one main twist - you play in a circular fashion around the blocks instead of just plain left and right. We're focusing on really juicing the game up (epileptic fits, here we come!). Draws heavily on the inspiration of this video which was recently shown at the Games Development workshop at UCT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg
Controls:
Start game: hold left+right
Move clockwise: left
Move anti-clockwise: right
Scoring system:
At the moment, the scoring system gives you 10 points for each block you hit. Also, there is a chaining multiplier for hitting multiple blocks in a chain. For example, if the ball leaves the paddle and hits three blocks in a row, you'll get (1x10) + (2x10) + (3x10) = 60.
Still to do:
Difficulty levels
Ball speed changes
(Any other suggestions?)
Screenshots:
Coming soon...
Releases:
1.0.0.0 - First release. Buggy sound.
1.0.0.1 - Sound fixed. Lives implemented (doesn't show, but you have 3). More juice!
1.0.0.2 - More juice! Lives show up now, win/lose conditions in (doesn't show anything yet though), score implemented. See score section above for details.
1.0.0.3 - Made it more pretty. Start, win and lose screens added. Consider this a final build for the competition, despite more work being needed - unfortunately run out of time it seems.
Let us know what you think!
P.
This is our first game in GameMaker, started it yesterday, so go easy on us!
BLOCKBUSTER basically inherits all the features of the original Breakout game, except for one main twist - you play in a circular fashion around the blocks instead of just plain left and right. We're focusing on really juicing the game up (epileptic fits, here we come!). Draws heavily on the inspiration of this video which was recently shown at the Games Development workshop at UCT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg
Controls:
Start game: hold left+right
Move clockwise: left
Move anti-clockwise: right
Scoring system:
At the moment, the scoring system gives you 10 points for each block you hit. Also, there is a chaining multiplier for hitting multiple blocks in a chain. For example, if the ball leaves the paddle and hits three blocks in a row, you'll get (1x10) + (2x10) + (3x10) = 60.
Still to do:
Difficulty levels
Ball speed changes
(Any other suggestions?)
Screenshots:
Coming soon...
Releases:
1.0.0.0 - First release. Buggy sound.
1.0.0.1 - Sound fixed. Lives implemented (doesn't show, but you have 3). More juice!
1.0.0.2 - More juice! Lives show up now, win/lose conditions in (doesn't show anything yet though), score implemented. See score section above for details.
1.0.0.3 - Made it more pretty. Start, win and lose screens added. Consider this a final build for the competition, despite more work being needed - unfortunately run out of time it seems.
Let us know what you think!
P.
zip
zip
BLOCKBUSTER.zip
2M
Comments
The only thing that's annoying/confusing is when you're at the top of the circle the controls are, of course, inverted and I end up going the wrong way to chase the ball. Some visual indicator showing which key will go in which direction or maybe changing the keys when the player is in the top half of the circle would be convenient.
Blockbuster was among one of my name ideas for my game XD
That Juice video was like biblical for me :) Always good to follow that, but I reckon POST mechanics are finalised... I think.
Having blocks in the center means that your ball could theoretically 'escape' past the paddle really quickly, it's not going to be coming back at you if you don't hit a block because there's no walls or ceiling to bounce off of. There are some neat ways to address this, mostly via questions:
1. What happens if the escape is on a secondary ring further out than the paddle? What if only half of that ring was actually the escape area and the rest bounced the ball back? What if that whole ring slowly rotated?
2. What if the escape point is actually on the same ring as the paddle and moves similarly? It could be on the opposite side of the ring, on either side of the paddle or even between two or more paddles.
3. What if you had multiple paddles at different points around the ring?
4. What if the escape area was at the center of a set of blocks and your goal was to break enough blocks to get enough score to move on to the next level?
5. You've got an unused key combo in pressing both at the same time during gameplay. Should that do something like warp the paddle to the opposite side of the ring? Should it turn on some sort of gravity well that pulls the ball in? What does it doooooo?!
;) Keen to give this a play after work today.
What's interesting is that it's SO SO BLOATED with a million options - 3 control options, giant paddles, a million powerups, etc etc... I'm not sure if that's the right approach to it, and I wonder if there's something more interesting hidden in there somewhere that could make the experience really unique.
It's quite interesting the solutions they arrived at the first questions of the genre: What they have now is 2 sets of paddles - and also the block field in the middle is quite big so that it actually begins more like normal arkanoid - ie bounce up and down, then as blocks get sparse the ball starts to gets through to the other side, but there's a paddle on the other side too!
Anyway, it's interesting to see what's been done and take learnings from them :)
Good luck!
@aodendaal - thanks for the compliment. We'll take a look at the control indications, but we consider it to be a skill of the game. Will definitely think about it though.
@Tuism - awesome video, and seems like a great game once you get the grip of it. We could possibly take one or two bits of inspiration from it. What was your game idea BTW?
@dislekcia - awesome response, thanks. At the moment, based on our time limitations, we may avoid levels and keep it simple by needing to destroy all the blocks in the quickest time possible. Doesn't quite fit the description of breakout, but thats why we're only basing it on the original game. We may consider adding another paddle on the opposite side to make it slightly more manageable when the ball slips past the blocks. We may make it interesting and have the blocks rotate too. The left+right combination during gameplay isn't in use yet, but we do have a few ideas up our sleeves for that. Will keep you in suspense (hopefully we get around to implementing it!).
Thanks again for the insightful comments. Hopefully we can turn it into a really enjoyable game before the deadline, and perhaps round it off afterwards anyway.
Cheers,
P.
Often you'll dismiss mechanics for not feeling right or fun or good, and it's not because they don't have the potential to be right or fun or good, it's just because the feedback's not there. If you consider how to add that extra feedback right from the start, you implement it more quickly and you get the full experience sooner.
Just like with game tutorials and sound effects, visual feedback is not something that should be left to the end like it's non-critical, imo. It's absolutely critical, and is a significant part of the game experience. More particles, more screen shake, more bouncing and stretching, more FOV tricks and blurs and glows. More everything.
Very interested to see what kind of solutions you guys come up in that design space! :D
Two suggestions maybe make the paddle move faster and have it further away from the blocks, it takes too long to get to the opposite side at the moment. It's going to be awesome being able to play pong against yourself!
I second the multi paddle idea, maybe as a pick up?
And the more experience you have with juice the more you are able to quickly pop it in, which would be great in the long run for yourself anyway, and makes all prototypes easier to understand :)
The juice I was talking about above is like, purely effects. Not needed for understanding of the game.
P.
P.
The game's fun and looks good, but I think you might have gone a little overboard with the "juice". The sharp flashes of rapidly-shifting colour in the background on impact are actually making my eyes hurt. I wish that was hyperbole. :( While you should definitely keep the background flashes, I would suggest that you perform a fade between colours at the very least, instead of direct rapid transitions. That said, I like that motion blur effect and the particles. Nicely done!
It plays well in the build I tried, but way you could tweak side-impacts a bit? It's a bit sad that all I can do is nudge the ball in a circle if I sideswipe it, potentially indefinitely. You'd have to test it, but perhaps a slight random angle change would add a little more unpredictability to side-impacts, and furnish the player with a possible second chance? That or a swifter failure. :P
For everyone else, there's a new build uploaded (1.0.0.3). Consider it a final build for now, unless we get the chance to add/edit some requests. Thanks for all the feedback, and it's been awesome building this in only 3 days - amazing what Gamemaker can do!
Cheers,
P.
My only critique is I felt the paddle moved too slowly, so rapid recovery from initially going in wrong direction wasn't really possible.
Failing that, does anyone have a version they downloaded previous that they'd be able to upload somewhere for me?
EDIT: You can find it here. I tested this version again on my install, and seems to work fine. Maybe it was a dodgy upload. Otherwise if there's still problems, I'll need to get to my dev PC and rebuild it. Let me know.