Vector Breakout

Hey all,

Yeah, just me, "Mr. Breakout" again.

Good news-- Vector Breakout is progressing nicely, scoring is in there,
there's a really nice number font now (added Atari VG export to my
Windows vector graphics editor :-), collision detection is "done" (works
as well as "SuperBreakout" in MAME), speed progression is "getting
there". I "niced" up the graphics too-- rounded the edges on the
paddle, made the ball round, etc. Oh, there's a self-playing demo mode
too.

Strange news-- it "moves" much better on real hardware than MAME. Dunno
why really-- in MAME the ball always appears "double" (like a motion
artifact from double-buffering not switching right?) but on real
hardware it's silky smooth on screen. (I am impressed with MAME's
anti-aliasing though. Whoever wrote that did their homework-- VERY
close to "real" display for static objects from a brightness/mixing
standpoint)

Bad news-- I'm still not sure how the hell to deal with bounces off the
"paddle". I can't for the life of me characterize how it works in
SuperBreakout-- it seems like some "hits" result in random bounces,
while others cause true "mirror" bounces and other return the ball along
the same path. Any help would be appreciated. (Ray, seems like you
know something about this? :-)

Overall it's taking longer than I expected, but then what piece of
software doesn't. ;-) It looks nice and plays well though so I'm pretty
happy about that. Anyone interested in testing it a bit? (Preferably
on real hardware, although MAME would do in a pinch. MAME buggers up
reading the mouse and causes weird paddle behavior though-- doesn't
happen on real games.)

-Clay
Received on Mon May 10 20:20:07 1999