‘Nature of Code’ final project proposal
The idea I have for the final project is basically re-creating the game called ‘Breaktout’. It is a very well-known game and I am sure that everyone has played this game at one point in their lives.
I have been brain-storming about the final project idea for a while. I was certain that I will be creating another game. I started thinking for games that would make use of most of the material we have covered in class. I thought of games like Pac-man, asteroid hunter, sudoko, etc. Most of the games I thought of were not a good choice for the final project because of the compressed time frame and/or did not make use of enough material that we covered in class.
I started searching online for game with some kind of animation and I finally saw the ‘breakout’ game image on one of the websites. This is the URL of the website:
“I Need Practice Programming”: 49 Ideas for Game Clones to Code
The game is number 33 on the website and it has weird name. They called it ‘Arkanoid’.
Before I finally decided on re-creating the game, I listed all the material that I would probably use in the code. Here is the list I came up with;
- Objects
- Functions
- For loops and nested for loops
- If statements and nested if statements
- Lists/Arrays
- Use of external resources (for example; images and sound)
- Vectors
I decided to re-create the game as it will be a perfect project for the time frame and it also involves most of the material we covered/learnt in class. Also, another factor that made me satisfied with re-creating this game is that it targets a very broad range of people. Little children (boys or girls), teens, adults.
Here is a photo of a very simple breakout game. (Photo taken from wikipedia);
I do not believe that the game has a specific design or an ‘original’ design so I will make my own design for the game, using a background picture and use different colors for the bricks, the paddle and the ball. I will be thinking about the shapes I will be using to draw the elements of the game but I guess the paddle will have a rectangular shape, the is going to be spherical and the bricks will also be rectangular with a small angle in its corners. I might also use images for the elements of the game if I found good ones.
Also, one of my main goals when coding this game is to not hardcode a lot of the values. Some of the values will need to be hardcoded when assigning variables and coordinate positions but I will try as much as I can to make everything automated so that if a variable value is altered everything else also changes and the game continues to function properly with everything in place.
There are some issues that I expect to be facing during the coding part of the game. One of the issues I expect to encounter is actually drawing the bricks without hard coding anything. I have been thinking about this issue and I think a probable solution will be making a list within a list (2D array) to store the bricks and then use a display function to draw the bricks on the screen.
I hope I will be done with coding the game in the time frame given and most importantly produce a fully functional game with a great design.