Hey there! I’m a recent addition to the Unity Course, and I wanted to share what I came up with in the BlockBreaker section. Before I began the Unity course I had prior C# knowledge. What actually terrified me was Unity, because I had worked with someone else in it without any guidance, and I got lost with a lot of the inter-object communication (I didn’t know about
public objectType name at the time, and hadn’t figured it out in my attempt). I decided to start the course and I really took to BlockBreaker. I’ve already tinkered in a number of game development tools, and the course, BlockBreaker particularly, really has helped me unleash my experience in C# into Unity… to the point where I had to adapt some of the course material differently because I went a little too wild with my own ideas early on (the paddle has a “no movement” sprite state, a “moving left” and “moving right” sprite state).
Music is by a friend of mine. Sound Effects were created using SFXR/BFXR (http://www.bfxr.net/)
Anyway, some of the key differences between my version and the version presented in the course:
- I do keep score. When you finish all the levels (some of the later ones need work, I know) the win screen changes some modifiers and puts you back at Level 1 to get a higher score.
- On the topic of scores, you can earn extra lives starting at 10,000 points. I think the array I made allows for 50 lives to be earned… maybe overkill but when you’ve completed a few cycles the ball launches pretty fast, so they might be helpful.
- You have 3 lives.
- Instructions on the title screen have a 12-second cycle so you have time to read the text – there’s the basic instructions and then info about the powerups.
- There’s a countdown bonus timer that awards you bonus points the quicker you finish a level. I haven’t tweaked the numbers for each level yet, though.
- There are bonus pickups randomly dropped from blocks. 1-hit blocks have a 10% chance, and each successive hit the block requires increases that chance by 5%.
- Bonus Points: 250pts * (Cycle * Level)
- Bonus Time: +5sec to countdown bonus timer (+250 Bonus pts)
- Bonus Life: +1 Life
- Deflector Pickup, a fun little idea I decided I wanted to try implementing.
- The Deflector: The ball glows with a halo effect when it nears the paddle on the Y Axis. When it is glowing, if you left-click the ball will be deflected upwards in a direction opposite the paddle (two levels to left and right). You can hold three and lose one for each use.
There are still some tweaks I’d like to make, such as the bonus timer for some of the stages and tweaking the Boring Loop fix I’ve implemented, but I’ve decided it’s finally time I get back to work on the course. I’ve really gone off the rails on this project, and while it’s been fun, and I feel like I’ve made something cool, it doesn’t get me that much further in my understanding of Unity as a whole, and if anything maybe the things I’ve researched on my own are presented in later courses.
Also, I’ve left some debug keys turned on since this isn’t the last version of the project, used while the ball has not been launched and is attached to the paddle:
U: +1 Life, J: -1 Life
I: +5sec Bonus Time (250pts), K: -5sec Bonus Time (-250pts), Comma ( , ): Halves Bonus Timer
P: +1 Deflector, Semicolon ( ; ): -1 Deflector
(Not sure why I skipped O, L, Period ( . )…)