2018

BubbleOut

BubbleOut is basically a BreakOut clone with a twist:

Instead of static bricks you are destroying bubbles that get pushed around by the player ball and other bubbles.

The Rules

You as the player control the platform at the bottom of the screen.

You can only move left and right and not leave the boundaries of the window. The platform is not completely flat but has a small raised part in the middle, so you can deflect the ball, which is bouncing of the window boundaries, the bubbles and of course the player platform, at an other angle than the angle it arrives at.

Your goal is to destroy all bubbles.

Each time you hit a bubble with the ball or the platform it shrinks a little bit (and by this its mass and drag are reduced) and once it reaches a critical size it is destroyed.

If one bubble hits another bubble, there are three possible outcomes:

1. If the bubble we are looking at is the same size as the other bubble, nothing happens, they just bounce of each other.

2. If the bubble we are looking at is bigger than the other bubble, it grows (if it didn’t hit the size limit yet).

3. If the bubble we are looking at is smaller than the other bubble, it shrinks (or gets destroyed if it reached the critical size).

When the ball hits the bottom of the window, it is destroyed and you get a new ball and lose a life (you can see your remaining lifes in the center of the platform).

When you have no lifes left and the ball hits the bottom of the window, it is game over and you lost.

Features

  • A verry crude custom C++ engine following very loosely the ECS pattern:

    • Object Manager that stores objects linearly in Object Pools

    • Decoupleled update and render loops:

      • Only renders when update is not lagging behind

    • Observer Pattern

    • Rigidbody Physics:

      • Rigidbodies with mass and drag that can also be kinematic or completely disabled

    • Physics System that can calculate collisions between Circle - Circle, Rect - Rect and Circle - Rect

      • Collision Enter and Collision Exit detection

    • Entities with tags as collections of components

    • Render System with different Sprite Renderers that are drawn in a specified order and can have render tags so only some are rendered or can be completely disabled

    • Sound System with multiple voices that plays sounds triggered by events using the Observer Pattern

  • A Player System

    • Moves player platform inside the boundaries of the window using the inputs of the player

    • Makes player platform release the ball if it currently holds one

    • Checks lifes of the player and triggers game over

    • Makes sure the ball retains its speed

    • Resets the platform and the ball when the game is reset

  • A Bubble System

    • Spawns bubbles at the beginning of the game

    • Checks sizes of bubbles and disables them when they reached the critical size

    • Changes the Game State when no bubbles are left and the player won

  • Multiple Game States

    • startup, playing, won and game over

Additional Notes

All the assets in the game are produced by myself. I designed and drew the graphics and produced all sound effects. The music is a chiptune cover I made of the Game Corner Theme from the Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum games.