Well, me and my programming buddy in high school have decided that now, after over a year of formal and informal C++ learning, as well as approx 6 months of OpenGL, along with a good understanding of 3d math, have finally decided we will make a breakout game to test our skills.. The question is, what can you add to a breakout game to make it interesting? We've come up with some good ideas we think you'll like. Please comment on any of them :). Let us think visually, what makes breakout boring? It is 2dimensional, boring, unanimated, and bland. Solution? "floating" blocks (animated) as well as bump mapped textures + lighting, will give the game a whole new look. Particle effects, blocks shattering, sparks flying, etc etc.. Let us think Physically, why is breakout so simplistic? The ball has static physics, it hits surface with a directly angular algorithm. Solution? Solution? Give the ball mass, make it have friction, make it roll around smoothed corners, add other balls of various masses to react with each other differently, give the ball and the level, physics. Let us now think about the sound. Breakout, simply boring, generally no music, and a couple collision sounds. Solution. Take it further, add a sweet techno soundtrack in the background, dynamic sound engine which handles a different sound for every different type of surface you can collide with, explosions, fires, you name it! Now lets look at the gameplay, Level 1, break these blocks, level 2, break those blacks, et cetera. Solution? Make the screen scroll with the ball, put paddles at different locations, for truly dynamic and extra large levels. Now lets think about the package, you generally get an assortment of levels, and that is what you're stuck with. Solution? Fully featured level editor, block designer, and world creator.. Those are the ideas we have thought about in concept so far. Right now we'll be happy to get a 1960's breakout version running...

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The question is, what can you add to a breakout game to make it interesting? ... Solution? Fully featured level editor, block designer, and world creator..

Take a look at and play this game, to see all of the great things you could add to such a simple game and be captivated by it for hours! That's pretty much an implementation of your problem and solution [smile] Now, get busy and good luck [grin]

Breakout was also the first port of call for me and my friend when we decided to take on the task of making a full game, and we had to consider the same issues.

We did a lot of what you mentioned, exploding blocks, moving blocks, different game modes and 3D graphics. As well as some powerups, the ability to fire projectiles and the ability to jump.(maybe it sounds more like Arkanoid, forgive my ignorance, but I'm under the impression that firing is the thing that seperates the two games, but I honestly don't know)

The game never got finished unfortunately, and we had a lot of big plans for it. One thing that we did that may be of interest is to include an 'Endurance' mode. You have your blocks as usual, which, after a certain amount of time move down (towards the players bat) and another row of blocks is added to the top of the pile. It worked really well, and removed some of the monotonous "destroyed all the blocks, heres some more" level progression.

In fact I may have some screenshots....

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matthew.millington1/perplexeddev/screen01.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matthew.millington1/perplexeddev/screen02.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matthew.millington1/perplexeddev/screen03.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matthew.millington1/perplexeddev/screen04.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matthew.millington1/perplexeddev/screen05.jpg

I might even have an .exe floating around in cyberspace somewhere, I'll find a link if you want to have a look. (remember, its unfinished, no in game sound for a start, and no end game conditions)

The biggest problem I always had with breakout is that I have relatively little control over where the ball goes. I can try to aim it at a specific block, but chances are I'll miss, and if it's late in the game, that means that I won't hit anything.

So one thought I have for a breakout game would be to give the player a bit more control over where the ball goes. Say, every time the ball hits the paddle, it fills up batteries for a set of thrusters that allow you to slightly adjust its trajectory. You could use this to get that last block, to save you if you can't catch the ball on the way down, or perhaps not use it to get a score boost.

Put in a bunch of different items that control how the ball moves/acts. Put an effect in where the screen shakes for a few seconds making it harder to hit/control the ball. There are literally tons of things you could add. The more options the more gameplay.

Put the whole world on the surface of a sphere and have things that deform the sphere, like gravity wells.

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Original post by NIm Put the whole world on the surface of a sphere and have things that deform the sphere, like gravity wells.

Um... we're talking about a 'first game' here, not something that many people with more experience would choke at. Albeight, it is a good idea.

Good luck with the game!

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Original post by Ezbez Quote: Original post by NIm Put the whole world on the surface of a sphere and have things that deform the sphere, like gravity wells. Um... we're talking about a 'first game' here, not something that many people with more experience would choke at. Albeight, it is a good idea.

You wouldn't need to put the game on the surface of a sphere to have gravity wells, though. Plenty of 2D games have acceleration vector fields (a fancy way of saying that within a given area, objects are pushed/pulled about). I'd worry about making the ball's trajectory too unpredictable, though; you don't want the game to become "send the ball upwards and hope".

To add a suggestion relating to Derakon's ball control issues, how about a pointer showing the direction of the ball's bounce off the bat? in a similar method to Bust a Move, only with bouncing rather than firing.

That would be more or less effective depending on how your planning to control the balls direction when hitting the bat. If your calculating the ball's rebound direction just by where it hits the bat, (hit the bat left of centre and the ball will go left) it would be pretty effective, intuitive, and a doddle to calculate.
If your going using the speed/direction of the bat to determine how the ball rebounds, then it would be less effective, (since the arrow will only change while you are moving, the player would have little time to work out where the ball will go) and probably not worth considering.

You might be thinking of using a combination of the two above methods, or a more advanced method with friction, spin, magnus force etc, which would obviously affect how difficult/useful it would be.

If you did decide to implement the pointer then it opens up a whole newe set of decisions to make. How long will the pointer be? Will the pointer change with difficulty? Will it be affected/activated by powerups? Maybe a powerup to alter the direction of the pointer (so you change the direction of the ball's bounce without moving the bat).

A simple addition like that can create a lot of individuality for the game. I'm not saying you should use a pointer, but its something to consider if you've been thinking about the issues that Derakon mentioned.

you could bump up the ball physics adding spin and air resistance (for ping-pong style trick shots!) and letting it roll along a surface if the angles are shallow.
In such a case, introduce odd brick shapes (contained in a rectangle though) to make cute brick patterns AND to provide interesting gameplay. Slanted brick, U-turn brick, curve brick... hey, even a tube brick would add to it.