[Help] Arkanoid/Breakout help

[Judah Smith]

Hi all

I am a BA Design for Computer Games student at Bradford University, in the UK. I have been set the task of making a Flash game using AS2.0, our first real programming assignment.

My game concept is best described as 1/3 Pong, 1/3 Pinball and 1/3 Breakout, the old Atari game where you knock bricks out of a wall with a bat and ball.

So far, I have worked my way through 'Beginning Flash Game Programming for Dummies' and have managed to get a crude pong game working. However I am a little stuck on the Breakout element and wondered if I could pose a couple of questions?

1: How would I best create the bricks? My reading suggests an array, but would that allow for random elements such as bonus bricks, or would they all have the same properties?

2: How would I knock bricks out of the wall? I learned about hit testing when I made my paddles, and I figured a brick is just a paddle that disappears when hit. I thought to achieve this, maybe unload movieclip on hit test, but this is just a guess, am I thinking a load of nonsense? Another thought I had was to make my bricks into 2 frame movie clips, with the second frame blank and on hit test, to move the brick movie clip to it's second frame? Is this nonsense? If I used this method, could I still use an array?

Sorry to start with such a comprehensive question. Hope thats OK? I'll certainly put in the time on the forums and return the favour to newbies when am a flash guru like you guys.

I've included a zip of the game so far, which is basically my version of pong with no breakout or pinball elements. Its absolutely awful, but you've no idea how proud I was to get it working

[tonypa]

1. Array is very good idea. You can have random elements in array too or you could create separate array for random pieces:

mainarray - always shows same bricks in this level
random array - populated with random items when you start this level

2. Both unloading mc and sending it to empty frame will work.

[duckotaco]

Guess what, we're doing a breakout game too.

We used arrays for the bricks and this did allow us to give different properties just to some of them.

I think my programmer guy is unloading the movie clips quite simply, to knock them out.

Good luck with your breakout clone.

[Judah Smith]

Do you think I could take a look at your fla and .as fles. They may give me an insight into how to move forward frm here.