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View Full Version : GM in pictures: Arkanoid



dislekcia
06-08-2010, 09:12 AM
I'm about to run a practical exercise at UCT as part of their game development course, I thought it might be cool to post the same thing here and see what you folks come up with, seeing as this was originally material I did for NAG back when they were running the GM in Pictures series. So here you go (obviously the marks don't count... Unless you really want them to):

CSC2003: Arkanoid in Pictures

Instead of printing raw source code, like the magazines of yore used to, we?re giving you a series of pictures and a challenge. The challenge is to make Game Maker look just like these screenshots and you?ll have yourself a game.
Goals:


Open up Game Maker, replicate the following pictures and emerge at the other end with a fully-playable version of Arkanoid. (6 marks)
Have the player win when all the bricks are destroyed and lose when the ball falls off the bottom of the screen. (How about some lives for the player?) (2 marks)
Have differently coloured bricks and add at least one powerup to the game (collected by the paddle) (2 marks)
Bonus marks: Improving the paddle and ball interaction ? changing the bounce angle at the corners of the paddle or stopping the paddle moving out of the screen, for instance; Creating new types of brick behaviour ? only destroyed from above, needs multiple hits, etc. (2 bonus marks)


Total: 10 marks with 2 possible bonus marks.

Arkanoid:

Some of you may know this game as Breakout, others as simply ?Bricks?. Once you?ve got the basics in place by following the pictures, you?ll be able to add in new bricks and give them funky behaviours by simply inheriting from the parent Brick. Try adding typical powerups like making the paddle bigger for a limited time, multiple balls, etc.

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/objects.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/1.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/1A.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/2.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/2A.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/3.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/3A.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/4.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/4A.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/4B.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/4C.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/5.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/5A.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/5B.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/5C.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/5D.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/5E.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/5F.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/6.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/6A.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/6B.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/7.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/7A.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/7B.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/7C.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/8.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/8A.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/8B.png
http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/8C.png

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/Images/ArkanoidPrac/ArkanoidRoom.png

---

If you add a whole bunch of cool stuff, please post your final game and how you managed it, that would be rad.

Chippit
06-08-2010, 10:58 AM
Everything's made up and the marks don't matter? But what if we like making check marks on stuff?

dislekcia
06-08-2010, 02:31 PM
Everything's made up and the marks don't matter? But what if we like making check marks on stuff?

Then Drew and Colin make out.

dammit
06-08-2010, 04:53 PM
This is second year stuff?

dislekcia
06-08-2010, 05:18 PM
This is second year stuff?

They're not learning programming via GM, they're learning game logic. Remember, they haven't had to produce playable games as part of their course yet...

We all know how much impact a DevLAN can have on aspiring devs, so that's pretty much what we're doing here: Lighting some fires and changing some thinking. You're looking at this from the other side of the fence ;)

dammit
06-08-2010, 05:26 PM
I'm just surprised this isn't part of first year. What do they do during first year?

dislekcia
06-08-2010, 05:30 PM
I'm just surprised this isn't part of first year. What do they do during first year?

Standard CS/Bsc stuff from the sounds of it: Covering the maths, programming and logic bases. I think the game-related courses only start in second year.

Chippit
06-08-2010, 07:00 PM
First year CS is really the most arb, pointless ****, tbh, especially for someone who's already familiar with programming. In fact, all that person really wants is the stuff in third year. I imagine this course isn't much different. First year's there for the people with little or no background, to try and teach the required groundwork stuff. Proving grounds, if you will.

dammit
06-08-2010, 08:31 PM
Okay, but I already know the course in UCT already offers alternatives for those who've done programming, "fast track" courses. I guess I assumed they would be making games by second semester :P

dislekcia
06-08-2010, 09:08 PM
Okay, but I already know the course in UCT already offers alternatives for those who've done programming, "fast track" courses. I guess I assumed they would be making games by second semester :P

I kinda assumed the same thing. Which is why we were all pretty stunned when people seemed to be making very nub mistakes at the Global Game Jam. This is us doing what we can to change that, at the request of the previous head of department, who totally gets it ;)

Marmalade
10-08-2010, 11:59 AM
Okay, but I already know the course in UCT already offers alternatives for those who've done programming, "fast track" courses. I guess I assumed they would be making games by second semester :P

The games design course at UCT only starts at the beginning of second semester (edit: before that is only regular computer sciency stuff) so at this point I'd imagine quite a few of the students with no exposure to game programming wouldn't have any how a game is programmed. I will add that the games course does progress pretty quickly since by 3rd year second semester you are writing your own shaders etc.

dammit
10-08-2010, 06:49 PM
Good to know :)

Fengol
11-08-2010, 08:44 AM
A quick observation when I made this on the weekend. Why does the paddle use bounce against all and against solid objects. From a tutorial point of view it's inconsistent and you can miss the checkbox to make bricks a solid (which I did and wondered why I wasn't getting bounce). But is there a benefit from making bricks a solid?

Ultixan
11-08-2010, 02:42 PM
Hey guys,

As someone who's gone through UCT's gaming program (doing masters atm) I thought I'd give my opinion on why things are structured the way that they are.

As has already been stated, first year is pretty much just for people who have never programmed before. AFAIK UCT is required to make the course available to people who have never even really used a computer before, let alone programmed. For people like that, there is a rather steep learning curve to understanding the programming, etc. up to the compiling and linux stuff in the first semester of second year. The games course only starts up in the second semester of second year once everyone that might be taking it has a solid groundwork in programming and some basic algorithm theory (searching and sorting methods etc.)

I know it's changed quite a bit since I did the games course (I was in the pilot year) but I remember we covered a lot of game design stuff, not just programming. IIRC we had to produce a full design document for a basic, fictional game. One of the better things we had to cover was the creation of a text based adventure game. I'm not sure if they still do that but it definitely helps get people into thinking about games should run. We also had to then make a small game using game maker (we only had the demo so we were a bit limited in what we could do) which worked out pretty well. The last thing I really recall going over in second year was game software engineering, for which they taught us SCRUM. (SCRUM being the only software engineering technique I've ever heard of being used on the IGDA forums)

The second year course was basically then a foundation for building and designing games and getting people to think about things in the correct way, such as states etc. The third year course then started covering all the really cool stuff like networked games, lighting, shaders etc. So yeah, the second year course might seem a bit slow to people outside the process but it does start moving at a fairly rapid rate.

As for the nub mistakes at the GGJ, that was probably my group ;p
Our game went horribly pear shaped. The game I made at the first jam was much better.

Anyways, thats my 2c regarding the games course.

dislekcia
12-08-2010, 02:19 AM
A quick observation when I made this on the weekend. Why does the paddle use bounce against all and against solid objects. From a tutorial point of view it's inconsistent and you can miss the checkbox to make bricks a solid (which I did and wondered why I wasn't getting bounce). But is there a benefit from making bricks a solid?

A solid object in GM cannot be interpenetrated by an object with a collision method for it. This stops edge-cases that can sometimes happen when a ball hits two bricks at the same time and just sits there, jiggling.