the BRICKBREAKER SPRINT dev thread

[GlitchyPSI]

if you are using the light theme i deeply apologize​

so i've talked about "my game" for a while in these here wee forums and i've internally debated (a fierce debate between three people) to actually show it here because i didn't want to seem like i was just advertising or something.
well i fear no longer! (except for The Banish) here's this thread that talks about my game but not just my game i'll be sharing progress on its development here because i don't really have a "paid supporter" secret chat to send previews to and i wanted a semi informal (and probably a separate formal) devlog to be public, and i find you guys may be interested in this

todo: i'm wriiting this while somewhat tired. i may fix its first post's formatting in the future

basic information: brickbreaker sprint is a brick breaking game (lmao) like breakout or arkanoid. you use a paddle and a ball to break bricks
the gameplay loop is inspired by pac-man championship edition in which you get to advance through a stage's brick sets. you can opt to be fast and loop around the stage to get a multiplier (a lap) and or be efficient and clear all the bricks off of a set and gain a large Score Bonus
all in all it's about speed and choosing what you wanna pursue for a set at any given moment, or if things are out of your control, panic until you have a ball for yourself.
the aesthetic is very vectorheart inspired and initially took off with my color scheme of black white and one color but it's evolved on its own thing besides my branding (still keeping limited coloring and aesthetics)

links (screenshots in itch page)
twitter account / itch.io (web version available)
​

that's it for the intro post i'll be posting things i manage to get working about it as time goes on and on and on

 

[GlitchyPSI]

for the first post in this thread i'd like to mention that the game is at a milestone i call "nano plus" which is one of three milestones, the next being lite (which is the next big update that i got money to publish on steam for!)

the nano milestone is the base sprint gamemode (the new thing) and most important basic systems that i wanted to try and see if people liked as it's my own interpretation in how the main mode's game loop should go

the nano plus update's highlight is the integration with the stage portal called Scaffold which hosts the stages online, along with the web based stage editor
so as a kind of starting point for the thread i'mma post its small trailer here:

 

[GlitchyPSI]

now for an actual in-progress post: i've been refactoring the gamemode engine to allow something i had planned since the beginning of development of this game, which is a dedicatory to brickbreaker revolution by digital chocolate
some context:

Spoiler: context

digital chocolate is a company that made many mobile games including brickbreaker revolution, which had a novel gamemode in which you advanced through brick sets. dchoc's rights were acquired by rockyou, a social media games company, which went on to develop some games from their IPs. by now dchoc is defunct. rockyou eventually also died (bankruptcy)
since dchoc was BEYOND dead and i enjoyed BBR and BBR2 so much, bbsprint was originally going to be a homage to BBR (some tracks in the game are remixes of tracks from BBR), before it eventually spun into its own thing. i still thank dchoc for the game in the credits however

bbsprint is not going to have just one gamemode, it's going to have the titular gamemode, sprint, the classic gamemode in which you have to break all bricks yes or yes (with the sprint spin on it) and a recreation of the revolution 1 gamemode that dchoc pioneered and never seen anybody do again

a few days ago i was working in the absolute basics of the revolution gamemode. stage state can be saved and brought back


the gamemode architecture also makes it easy for me to make gamemodes that control a great deal of things compared to the single-mode thing that the original demo had going on, so i'm very happy about it

this is going to have its own proper animation and ball position changing, but right now i'm just reusing the "ball callback" to debug the stage state and such things

 

[Maxi Soundscape]

I grew up with brick breakers as a kid so this sparks a certain joy in me, played it on NG ages ago and really liked it

+ Vectorheart is an instant win for me :3

 

[GlitchyPSI]

I grew up with brick breakers as a kid so this sparks a certain joy in me, played it on NG ages ago and really liked it

+ Vectorheart is an instant win for me :3

thank you! (yeah i uploaded the game to ng too, bit brutal when coming to score lol)
my initial main reason for making this was because i had the same love for brickbreaker revolution and I wanted to say something about it in the form of an actual game
i'm certainly going to put all my UI design power into the vectorheart aesthetic

 

[GlitchyPSI]

oh yeah i should show the stage editor too huh
it's called Trowel, its namesake and icon were based off valve's Hammer because that name is simply metal so i went a similar direction
there's 2 flavors of the editor, they are developed independently of the game itself (for funny reasons actually, i talk about them here)

this is the desktop version.

that's the one I mainly use and the one I used to make the first stages
it's unfinished, long way to go. but it is the foundation of everything and it has shared libraries with the actual game, so when i work on it i work on the game too
it is the one that will be distributed for FREE when the lite version of bbsprint is released on steam, so i'll have to finish it eventually!
it contains granular auditing (bottom right corner) and complete event management
"events" contain one or more things that can happen when they are loaded, they can load a stage, they can reset the ball to the paddle, they can grant a powerup, set text, etc
in this version you'd be able to configure events as you like, but right now the setup button only adds a set load action per event (which is the bare minimum)

this is the web version, currently called Trowel pico

this version was made because unity webgl would've been catastrophic to work with especially if dealing with files from the user's computer, so I kickstarted this and the stage portal. all stages are hosted online. much more work for me but considerably less work for the player to play anything

this is a much more scope reduced version of the editor. the event manager and set editor are together to simplify the creation of levels (only allowing the load action per event) and there's a fixed amount of audits.
it is technically finished; it has integration (upload) with the stage portal and the only thing i will be doing in the future is to change its name to web Trowel (simplifiying my name schemes)

 

[GlitchyPSI]

more work today on the revolution mode and i revamped how pause works so everything absolutely everything necessary pauses correctly
so, revolution
next i'm probably going to add the top paddle, but the absolute basics of the mode work perfectly, only polish is required at this stage (and PROBABLY the top paddle from BBR, but i'm debating whether to do it, I'm at the stage where I can make misc changes to this mode from its original incarnation)
and there's particles today!

 

[GlitchyPSI]

some more polish before getting to the bigger graphics that I can't make over remote desktop

 

[GlitchyPSI]

even more pizzazz
revolution mode now has its Arrows, and the advancer block has some fun particles

https://imgur.com/VvFd89l

i hate using imgur btw, there is a chance that in some future this image link is not what it is supposed to be ever, but the previews are starting to become so heavy that the file uploader just won't let me up them

anyway i'm now on my particle era, i'm going to spruce up bbsprint with particles and camera shakes, as well as start introducing settings to limit it