Ball Breaker

 Ball Breaker, Arkanoid like type.
 Done by Clément CORDE.
 Contact : c1702()yahoo.com


> History:

 A few years ago, I worked in the video game industry (which was a really bad
experience, btw). As I never programmed a ball breaker type game, I wanted to
make a little one, just for me, and that's what I did. One of my coworkers
seemed interested in the project, so I asked him if he wanted to have the
source code to see how I did it. This guy then suggested me to put my code
online, for it might interest some people. I'm a bit sceptical on that point,
but here it is. And if it may be of some use to someone, cool.

 I think there's nothing revolutionnary in this code, but it contains some
principles that might guide people beginning programming (even if I don't
pretend to be an expert !): How to manage sprites, animations, monsters,
shots... At least, it is one way of doing things. And there are some little
tricks!


> License :

 I don't have any pretension for my code being good, powerful, or whatever.
Nonetheless, it's working. I'm giving the source code so that people can look
at it, maybe find some tricks in it, and even re-use some parts of it. In this
last case, it has to be a non commercial use! For commercial use, please get
in touch with me.

 And if ever this code has been of some use to you, do not hesitate to give me
a lil'greeting! (^_^)


> Copyrights:

 No, not mine! :)

 As I made this game for me and that I'm not an artist, I took graphics the
way I could, in order to have the least possible to draw by myself. For a ball
breaker, Arkanoid seemed to be an ideal model. But this means that part of the
graphics are probably under copyright (Taito ?). As the goal is absolutely not
to make money, let's cross fingers and hope I won't get into trouble.

 Monsters, explosions, levels' frame and the base bat are from the Atari ST
version.
 Backgrounds come from the StrategyWiki website
(http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Arkanoid/Walkthrough).
 The font was found on Daniel Guldkrans website
(http://www.algonet.se/~guld1/freefont.htm), and slightly retouched by me to
fit the game needs.
 All additional graphics by myself.

 The sounds have been found on different sites giving copyright free WAV
files, then were modified/speeded up/cut by myself.
 Only one sound might be under copyright (Taito ?), the extra life sound,
which comes from the Arkanoid arcade game, ripped for me by Mr Stan.

 Just a little thing I have to state: My goal was not to make a strict
Arkanoid clone, even if eventually it looks like it. So there are some
differences.


> Keys:

F9:  Switch 1x/2x/TV2x (default).
F10: Switch Full screen/Windowed.


> Questions:

 I will answer as possible by mail (c1702()yahoo.com) to questions, but please
specify a very clear subject. The reason is that I'm receiving loads of spam,
and of course, I don't read it before deleting it. So if you send a mail,
don't write 'viagra' as subject!


> SDL:

 The game uses SDL to the minimum. I suppose it's possible to make a lot a
great things with SDL, but that was not my goal. I haven't been coding
anything looking like a video game for some time, and I wanted to see if I
hadn't forget everything. So basically, I use SDL to get a video buffer and
blit into it, in 256 colors because that's what I wanted to, and because 256
colors modes are easy to manage and have palettes. I also use SDL to load BMP
files, because I didn't want to code a BMP loader (even if it's probably
easy). Otherwise, everything is done by hand.


> Conclusion:

 I managed to do what I wanted to do, it went well, and I'm rather happy with
the result (It doesn't look too buggy! (^_^)). Of course, it looks like a 15
years old game, but at first, I made it for me!

 I hope I didn't forget too many essential things entering into details, and
that all this stuff could be of some use to some people.

 I hope as well that some will enjoy the game! :) (Even if to me, the fun part
was the coding!).