Assignment 2: “Breakout, The Powerup Update”

Objectives

• Read and understand all of the Breakout source code from Lecture 1.
• Add a powerup to the game that spawns two extra Balls.
• Grow and shrink the Paddle when the player gains enough points or loses a life.
• Add a locked Brick that will only open when the player collects a second new powerup, a key, which should only spawn when such a Brick exists and randomly as per the Ball powerup.

Getting Started

Download the distro code for your first game from https://cdn.cs50.net/games/2019/x/assignments/2/assignment2.zip and unzip assignment2.zip, which should yield a directory called assignment2.

Then, in a terminal window (located in /Applications/Utilities on Mac or by typing cmd in the Windows task bar), move to the directory where you extracted assignment2 (recall that the cd command can change your current directory), and run

cd assignment2

Break(out) a Leg!

Welcome to your third assignment! By now, we’ve gotten our feet wet with states, randomization, and much more; this time, we’ll be diving in a little bit more and adding some new features entirely!

Your goals this assignment:

• Add a Powerup class to the game that spawns a powerup (images located at the bottom of the sprite sheet in the distribution code). This Powerup should spawn randomly, be it on a timer or when the Ball hits a Block enough times, and gradually descend toward the player. Once collided with the Paddle, two more Balls should spawn and behave identically to the original, including all collision and scoring points for the player. Once the player wins and proceeds to the VictoryState for their current level, the Balls should reset so that there is only one active again.
• Grow and shrink the Paddle such that it’s no longer just one fixed size forever. In particular, the Paddle should shrink if the player loses a heart (but no smaller of course than the smallest paddle size) and should grow if the player exceeds a certain amount of score (but no larger than the largest Paddle). This may not make the game completely balanced once the Paddle is sufficiently large, but it will be a great way to get comfortable interacting with Quads and all of the tables we have allocated for them in main.lua!
• Add a locked Brick (located in the sprite sheet) to the level spawning, as well as a key powerup (also in the sprite sheet). The locked Brick should not be breakable by the ball normally, unless they of course have the key Powerup! The key Powerup should spawn randomly just like the Ball Powerup and descend toward the bottom of the screen just the same, where the Paddle has the chance to collide with it and pick it up. You’ll need to take a closer look at the LevelMaker class to see how we could implement the locked Brick into the level generation. Not every level needs to have locked Bricks; just include them occasionally! Perhaps make them worth a lot more points as well in order to compel their design. Note that this feature will require changes to several parts of the code, including even splitting up the sprite sheet into Bricks!

How to Submit

1. If you haven’t already, install Git and, optionally, install submit50.

2. Using Git, push your work to https://github.com/me50/USERNAME.git, where USERNAME is your GitHub username, on a branch called games50/assignments/2019/x/2 or, if you’ve installed submit50, execute

   submit50 games50/assignments/2019/x/2
   

   instead.

3. Record a 1- to 5-minute screencast in which you demonstrate your app’s functionality and/or walk viewers through your code. Upload that video to YouTube (as unlisted or public, but not private) or somewhere else.
4. Submit this form.