Cursed-Breakout v1.0 Beta 1

March 9, 2015

Here it is, the big version one-point-oh beta one. I had been starting to wonder if I would ever make it this far, but evidently I’m the persistent sort. I have learned a lot of things along the way, and there are still a few things that I will likely learn before the final release. I only expect one more beta before going gold, and I suspect that I will will only include the file selector and possible level verification. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So what can you expect in this release? Everything! There is now a custom level system, the ball has directional velocity, there’s a pause screen (that you can access with p), and many more things under the hood! You can, of course, read all about these changes in the changelog down below or on its GitHub repository.

If you just want to download it, just click below:

Download cursed-breakout v1.0b1

Changelog

• Added custom level system (see example.lvl for formatting)
• Added pause screen and moved the quit option into it
• Added directional velocity for the ball. It now bounces off of the paddle at different angles depending upon where you hit it. This is accomplished with separate x and y timers, and a slew of other variables relating to the speed of the ball (or more specifically, the delay before the ball moves again)
• Moved paddle physics into the Collider
• Changed the up/down/left/right arrow keys so that left and right now move at the 2x speed, while up and down move one space at a time. I just flipped them because I found myself using up and down more often anyway.
• Changed the old method of quitting to a quitFlag to allow for a more intricate quit sequence
• Replaced didUpdate with paddleUpdate, ballUpdate, and collisionUpdate for more precise control over refreshes, and added leaveok() to reduce the need to move the curser so often
• Cleaned up calculations for better readability
• Fixed an error in my math caused by “correcting” the previous errors in the Collider
• Fixed an issue where the ball would mysteriously bounce off of the bricks backwards to how it was supposed to by adding a check to ensure that the ball was coming towards the brick first