Breakout Extreme

Post date: Jan 03, 2014 11:32:24 AM

Introduction. As with the other "extreme" variations of classic arcade games presented on the showcase, Breakout Extreme is an altered version of the original Breakout developed by Atari. The goal of Breakout is of course to destroy as many layered "bricks" as possible by bouncing a "ball" with a "paddle". If the ball is to ever fall beneath the paddle, the ball is lost and the game continues until all remaining balls are lost. Breakout Extreme adds to the original gameplay through its inclusion of 5 different power-ups, an inventory to keep power-ups for later use, a scoring system in which the player must catch the broken bricks to score points and acquire power-ups, and other features.

Launch Options. There are three two options to running Breakout Extreme:

Download Breakout Extreme (~40 Mb size; Windows only)

Download Breakout Extreme (~2 Mb size; Requires Java)

The server that held the JWS is down, so the only options are downloading the packaged version or the JAR.

Java Web Start (JWS) is the recommended method of running the game, however the options that involve running the game as an applet or entirely downloading the game are also available. Users who are running the game with JWS on an OS X operating system will need to adjust his/her security settings to allow the game to run with JWS. Due to sizing issues, the browser's zoom should be set to default in order to the view the applet properly and the browser may have to be viewed in full-screen mode in order to avoid a small portion of the playing area from being cut off. There also have been a few issues noted with the applet version of the game on OS X, as well. The download is a compressed file which requires a compression tool, such as WinRAR, to uncompress the download's contents. The reason for the download's size is that the application is bundled with its own Java Run-time Environment, thus the application can execute on Windows systems without Java.

Screen shot of Breakout Extreme

Instructions. The primary objective of Breakout Extreme is to score as many points as possible before loosing remaining "balls". Points are scored by first breaking "brinks" and then catching the falling brinks. A brink is broken by either a ball or a "laser" and is caught only by the "paddle". The paddle will always horizontally follow the mouse, so long as the mouse remains in the game's playing area (i.e. gray area). The amount of points received from catching a brink is dependent on the brink's initial color. Brinks flashing a variety of colors don't provide points but instead provide power-ups. Once a power-up brink is caught, the power-up is inserted in the inventory. Power-ups are executed and selected with the left- and right-buttons on the mouse, respectively. Up to three power-ups can be stored in the inventory. The last power-up will always be replaced if another power-up is obtained the inventory already has three power-ups. New power-ups become available once certain numbers of brinks are caught.

Please note keyboard controls are available in the game, though not recommended since the mouse provides more precision in directing where the ball bounces. The left and right arrow keys control the paddle, and the space-bar and the s-key respectively execute and select power-ups.

Credits. I decided to rely on getting sine and cosine values with a look-up table Math library developed by Riven, and all the sounds and music are from SoundJay.