Brick Breaker

Brick Breaker was a group project that I worked on in my first computer science class (ICS 111). This one player game, has a “re-invented” space theme and is controlled with the ‘a’ and ‘d’ keys which move a bar on the bottom of the screen that can be used to deflect a ball that appears in a random position at the start of the game. The objective of the game is to break all of the bricks that are on the top of the screen by deflecting the ball with the bottom bar. As the game progresses it becomes more challanging as asteroid objects come onto the screen and can also deflect the ball. They can either be used to your advantage or not depending on the timing of when the ball hits the objects.

In this project, we dealed with creating many different classes to implement the functions of each of the objects that are seen on the screen as well as some of the hidden features that you might not always think of. I worked on implementing the main class which dealt with taking in all of the other individually implemented elements. Some of these elements included the bricks, ball, bar, and the obstacles. I also implemented the bricks which are “broken” when the ball hits them.

Throughout the process of creating this game, I learned a lot about the Java programming language, and about how a seemingly simple game can take a lot more work than might be expected. As a beginning programmer, I found that it was sometimes nice to be challanged by the coding itself and by working with others in a team. A lot of time was put into this project and in the end I feel that it was successful since we were all able to gain a better understanding of the code and recieved a satisfying result to show for our hard work.

You can view an example of the game being played on Youtube: Youtube Video.