Seth Baldwin's Game Art Blog: April 2016

"ARKANOID ZS"

Team Members: Seth Baldwin and Zihan "Henry" Wang

For our arcade game remake, we chose Arkanoid, an expanded version of the Atari game "Breakout!". It is essentially the same as Breakout, with the player using a scrolling (left and right only) paddle to reflect a ball into a series of bricks until they are all destroyed. Each color of brick grants a different point value and the metallic bricks are harder to destroy (silver) or even indestructable (Gold). Arkanoid expands on the Breakout formula by adding power-ups that fall from some bricks and grant the player a variety of temporary abilities. It also has floating enemies that fly around and do not cause the ball to bounce in the opposite direction when destroyed (unlike the bricks).

BREAKOUT! (the foundation of Arkanoid):

In order to build Arkanoid, one must first build Breakout!.

PRIORITY LIST:

1. Player's paddle movement and collision with ball - Seth

2. Ball physics - Seth

3. Brick collision/destruction and point distribution - Seth/Henry

4. Boundary collision - Seth

5. UI scoring elements - Seth

6. Power-up programming - Henry

6. Power-up drop and integration abilities - Henry

7. Random flying enemies - Henry

ASSET LIST:

1. Ball - Seth

2. Bricks of varying color and point value - Seth/Henry

3. Paddle - Henry

4. HUD - Seth

5. Bounding box/wall meshes - Henry

6. Power-up icons - Henry/Seth

7. Background - Henry

8. Flying enemies - Henry

9. Start Screen UI - Seth

BRICK COLORS / POINT VALUE:

• White (50pts.), Orange(60pts.), Cyan(70pts.), Green(80pts), Red(90pts.), Blue(100pts.), Purple(110pts.), Yellow(120pts) - 1 hit needed to destroy

• Silver - Multiple hits to destroy (2 to 8, depending on level)

•Gold - Indestructible

POWER-UP LIST:

Should we make it?:

YES - Priority power-up. Necessary for the games mechanics/entertainment value

MAYBE - Would be nice to have but not a priority due to blue printing that is probably very complex.

PROBABLY NOT - Should be removed from our version of the game.

Lazer - YES

Paddle can fire projectiles. This makes the game a lot more fun.

Enlarge - MAYBE

Enlarges Paddle Size. Not a very impressive power-up but would still be a helpful one to have.

Disruption - MAYBE

Splits ball into 3 separate balls (losing the first 2 wont count against your # of lives). This is a very cool power-up that we want but is probably difficult to program so only if time permits.

Player - YES

Adds player life. This is the most necessary power-up for maintaining balance and since it should be very easy to program, it's priority.

Catch - MAYBE

Catches the ball and releases it on command. This is fun but we could see it being a challenge to figure out... We are not fully comfortable with this one yet.