Registration fee: $15.00 US. To register, click on the "Registration Form..." button when MacBrickout's green help window pops up. Fill out the form and send it to me.
New Stuff -- 3.1
I was originally going to call this latest version 3.0.2, but after realizing how many changes I've made I decided to call it 3.1.
The most exciting new feature is the addition of portable levels. These are separate level files that you can put into the same folder as MacBrickout. If MacBrickout finds a portable level, it will use that level instead of the stock level. Anybody can play MacBrickout using portable levels, but only registered users will be able to create their own portable levels.
A typical portable level filename would look like this: "MacBrickout Level 1". If you wish to swap two levels, simply rename them accordingly. If you're handy with ResEdit, you can add your own background pattern to a portable level file. Make sure the resource ID of the 'ppat' is 1000. It is now impossible to mess up MacBrickout by editing levels. If you mess up a level
you're editing, simply drag its corresponding level file to the trash and the original
level will come back.
I put a selection in the preferences dialog which lets you instruct MacBrickout whether or not to use custom levels. If you select "No", MacBrickout will ignore all portable level files it finds and use only the stock levels. If you select, "Yes", MacBrickout will use any portible levels it finds in the MacBrickout folder in lieu of the stock levels.
I have made some changes to the high score dialog. Now there are two separate high score lists. If you obtained a high score without playing any custom levels, you'll be on the standard high score list. If you played any custom levels during your game, your high score will be placed on the custom high score list. Use the radio buttons in the high score dialog to switch between the two.
I have added limited game saving and loading features (for registered users only). If you're late for school or work, no need to worry. Just quit your game. Your current game status will be saved and you can resume your game, right where you left off, when you get home.
If you have problems with the paddle not moving, try switching between the two paddle drivers in the "preferences..." menu.
Here's a list of some other things that are new in this version:
-Added credit card scrambler feature so if you decide to register MacBrickout using a credit
card via E-mail, devious people who might intercept your E-mailed registration won't know
what your REAL card number is.
- You won't lose the warp tunnel if you pause the game.
- You'll only lose "clear" status if you catch a free ball capsule.
-fixed various sound driver problems, although I suspect a few still remain...
-Added "Preferences..." menu
-Added "dragable" game window. Click on the score bar and drag...
-The menu bar clock works even during game play (in 90% processor mode, see preferences).
-Fixed a color mismatch problem in the score bar. The gray behind the numbers was a little
darker than the gray in the surrounding border causing these ugly gray boxes to appear.
-Some of you guys apparently were playing MacBrickout at work when you shouldn't have been.
He..he.. There is now a "Boss" key -- If the boss is coming, hit B during game play to
instantly hide your game. Hit Command-R to resume.
*** The rest of this document is pretty much the same as it was in the initial 3.0 release***
Compatibility--
I have tested MacBrickout 3.0 on the following computers and found it to run flawlessly: Macintosh II, IIcx, IIci, IIsi, IIfx, IIvx, IIvi, Quadra 605, 650, 900, 950, Performa 450, Centris 650, Powerbook 180c, LC, LCII, LCIII.
If you have one of the above computers and MacBrickout fails to run, try disabling your extensions by holding the SHIFT key down while rebooting. This should fix your problem. You can then selectively enable/disable your extensions (by dragging them in and out of your extensions folder and rebooting) to single out the one that conflicts with MacBrickout. If you do find an extension that does indeed conflict with MacBrickout, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
On all of the AV macs (660AV, 840AV, etc.), MacBrickout 3.0 ran satisfactorily, but not flawlessly (see below).
Any models not mentioned have yet to be tried as of 10-20-94.
One important note: Whenever the ball is visible, MacBrickout is using 100% of the processor's power. That means any applications running in the background are halted until MacBrickout 3.0 is paused or the game is over. (In MacBrickout 3.1, you can select 90% processor time in the preferences. This will allow the menu bar clock to function and background tasks to be polled. You may experience slight delays, though, when bricks are disappearing)
Those Bugs--
There may be a few bugs that hid in the cracks and managed to get through pest control (quality control). One that I'm aware of is the sprites (moving objects) will jitter on the AV Macs when the sound is turned on. This is due to an interrupt priority problem between the sound manager and the vertical retrace manager. If your Mac has a DSP chip in it, you'll experience the bug. If your Mac has the Apple Sound Chip in it, you won't experience the bug. Whenever I attain access to an AV Mac and get documentation on the DSP chips I will attempt to remedy the problem. Until then, AV users, use the OPTIONS menu to turn the sound off.
The MacBrickout Discussion Area and Reporting Bugs --
If you are a member of America Online, there is a MacBrickout discussion area available for your use. Please report any bugs you may encounter in that discussion area. That way, you can see if the bug has already been reported or if I have already responded to a particular bug. I will be posting notices of future revisions of MacBrickout there as well.
This is also the place to talk to other MacBrickout users and share high scores, tips, tricks, strategies, etc. To get there, go to the games forum (Keyword "MGM") and click on the message boards icon. Click on "List Categories". Double-Click on "Lets Discuss -- Mac Games". Double-click on Arcade games L-Z, and finally (whew!) double-click on the MacBrickout 3.0/3.1 folder.
Why things are the way they are --
Some people have asked me why the two player mode is the way it is. One would think that as soon as you lose a ball, your turn is over and it's the next player's turn. I have put a lot of thought into how I should implement the two-player mode. I finally concluded on having each player finish an entire level before the next player gets a turn. This way, a really lousy player doesn't spend twenty minutes waiting for a really good player to lose a ball. Plus, it keeps both players on the same level, competing for higher scores and staying interested in the game.
The way the scoring is implemented isn't very apparent at first glance. Here is how the scoring is calculated: As the rows of bricks get closer to the top of the screen, they are worth more points. The very top line (right under the wall) is worth 20 points (often times this row and the row below are left blank) , the line below is worth 19, then 18, etc. When the ball hits the bricks, these scores are tallied up in a private scoreTally variable. After the ball hits the paddle, the value of this scoreTally variable is multiplied by the multiplier (MULT) and the result is added to your displayed score.
Originally, there was a bug in the game where the ball would occasionally bounce off of the bottom of the screen instead of going "ker-plunk". Somewhere along the way, that bug got fixed, but then I kind of missed it. So I intenionally programmed it back in. Some moment when you least expect it, the ball will bounce off of the bottom of the screen to save the day!
MacBrickout was originally designed to operate only on 13" monitors or larger. Later, people convinced me to include 12" monitors, so I added some quick code. On a 12" screen the spaces between the bricks aren't as uniform as they are on a larger monitor. If you use the level editor (registered users only) on a small screen, the bricks might look a little tweaky on a larger monitor. I would recommend only using the level editor on a 13" monitor or larger.
One of my main concerns when developing this game was to keep it as compact as possible. My thinking was that many people will be downloading it off of pay bulletin board systems such as America Online or Compuserve. The larger the file, the more downloading time it takes. Since sounds take up a lot of hard disk space, I elected to store the game sounds in a special compressed format. I knew that some people would want to install their own custom sounds so I added a neat little feature that lets you do this. You need to know how to use ResEdit though. Below is a list of all of the sounds in the game. Each sound has a number after it. If you wanted to replace, say, the brick sound, simply add a 'snd ' resource with an ID of 134. The only requirements are that you keep the total length of all the combined 'snd ' resources to 300,000 bytes or less and that the sounds be sampled at 11Khz. You should increase the memory requirements of the application to accomodate the new sounds. Oh, by the way, for those programmers interested in learning about data compression, there's a great book called "The Data Compression Book". It's written by Mark Nelson and published by M&T Books. It covers minimum redundancy coding, adaptive huffman coding, LZ77 and LZ78 compression, speech compression, lossy graphics compression and much more. It's very well written and essential to any programmer's computer book library.
awesomeSnd 128
bellSnd 129
bonusSnd 130
bonusLevelSnd 131
borderSnd 132
brickSnd 133
broingSnd 134
catchSnd 135
clearedBoardSnd 136
duoohSnd 137
erieEchoSnd 138
freeBallSnd 139
frogSnd 140
jugglinSnd 141
laserSnd 142
noiseSnd 143
ohYeahSnd 144
popSnd 145
powerDownSnd 146
powerUpSnd 147
slowDownSnd 148
speedUpSnd 149
steelSnd 150
upDownSnd 151
warpedSnd 152
warpTunnelSnd 153
wooHooSnd 154
youDiedSnd 155
Easter Eggs
Easter eggs are little surprizes intentionally, or often times unintentionally, left in by the programmer. To see an easter egg, hit the ESC key while the ball is moving.
Just for fun...
I've included version 0.0 of MacBrickout just for laughs. This is what I had after the very first evening's worth of programming (which seems like such a long time ago). This version eventually evolved into version 2.0.5, 3.0, 3.0.1 and finally into version 3.1 which you have here. I thought some of you might find it interesting to see what this program looked like in its earliest stage of production. Click the mouse button to exit this lowliest of MacBrickout creations.
Modifying MacBrickout
Some people may wish to modify or customize Macbrickout by changing the graphics or sounds. If you do so, all I ask is that you make it VERY clear to the user that it is not an original version, but a modified version.
*** THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION APPLIES TO REGISTERED USERS ONLY ***
When you register MacBrickout 3.0 these features become enabled:
--> Laser Capsule
--> Free Ball Capsule
--> Bonus Capsule
--> Warp Capsule
--> Chaos Capsule
--> Game Counter
--> Level Editor
1). Laser Capsule
When you catch this capsule, two red laser balls will rotate around your paddle. You can fire the lasers by clicking the mouse button. For rapid fire operation, hold the button down.
2). Free Ball Capsule
Catch one of these and you'll hear a friendly "bong". One ball will be added to your remaining balls indicator at the top-left corner of your screen.
3). Bonus Capsule
These don't come out too often so be sure to catch these purple and black capsules at all costs. When you catch one, you get 1000 points. If you finish the level, you get to participate in a special bonus round:
There are several bonus rounds, but you must complete the first one in order to see the second one, etc. Every bonus capsule you catch entitles you to one chance at a bonus round. When you get to a bonus round, read the title at the top of the game screen (under the score bar) to find out what you need to do. You get 10,000 points for completing bonus round one, 20,000 for bonus round two, etc. You'll also get a fruit for completing a bonus round. If you get a high score, the fruit will appear next to your statistics in the high score dialog.
4). Warp Capsule
These capsules are extremely rare! Catch one of these and a hole will appear somewhere in the side of the screen. If you aim the ball so that it goes through the hole, you'll instantly warp to the next level (and accumulate 100,000 points)!
5). Chaos Capsule
It's chaotic! You'll love it! Some people have been known to call this capsule the "slot machine" capsule.
6). Game Counter
You can now look at the bottom of the high score dialog and see how many games you've played.
7). Level Editor
When I wrote the original MacBrickout, all the levels were created by hand. I had to type in a few parameters: how many rows of bricks, how high the rows were, how many bricks per row and the color of each row of bricks. The computer would then generate the bricks on the screen based on that information. If something didn't turn out right, I had to go back in, change some numbers, and try it again. It was quite tedious to draw levels on the old MacBrickout. I wanted to make the levels in MacBrickout 3.0 more diverse. I wanted multiple colored bricks on the same line, independently sized bricks, programmable initial ball position and angles, level names and multiple hit bricks. In order to make all this possible, I knew the only choice was to write a level editor. It's a full featured art program custom tailored to draw brick layouts for MacBrickout.
Here's a description of each of the level editing tools:
1). New Brick
Select this when you wish to place a new brick on the screen. An outline of the brick will follow the mouse until you click the button. The brick will be drawn in the current brick size and in the currently selected color.
If you place a new brick so that it touches another brick, the two bricks will join together and become inseparable. This is how you increase the size of a brick that is already drawn.
You can drag bricks around. Simply click on a brick, drag it to its new location, then release the mouse button. If you wish to erase a brick, click on the brick, then hit the delete key. The delete key will always erase the most recently selected brick.
Tip-- A quick way to reduce the size of a brick is to drag it to the edge of the screen, as the computer will not let the edge of a brick overlap the boundaries of the screen. When the brick has been "squished" to the desired size, release the button, then drag the brick back to its desired location.
Use the grid lines as an aid in helping you align the bricks.
2). New Row
Here is a convenient way to lay down a whole row of bricks at a time. The computer will fit as many bricks as it can in a row. The bricks will be drawn using the current brick size and current brick color.
3). Brick Size
This is where you can set the height and width of all of the bricks you're about to draw. The standard height is 20 pixels and the standard width is 40 pixels.
4). Position Ball
Here's where you set the initial position of the ball. Just drag the ball where you want it and click the button.
5). Set Ball Angles.
You can set the starting angle of the ball and the angle variance of the ball here. 0 degrees is straight up, 90 is to the right, 180 is straight down, and 270 is left. I usually set it to 180 degrees with a variance of 30 degrees. This will yield a starting angle between 165 and 195 degrees. If you make the starting angle 180 degrees with a variance of 0, the ball will always start off going straight down.
6). Ball Speed in Microseconds
This sets the initial speed of the ball. 3100 is a good start. Lower is faster. If you set it to 20, the ball will go as fast as your computer can make it go. If you own a fast computer, sit back and laugh. 20 is an unplayable speed!
7). Collision Detection
This sets the initial collision detection of the ball. If you want the ball to start off bashing through bricks, set it to 1. If you want the ball to pass over the bricks until it hits the paddle, set it to 0.
8). Background Pattern
Here you can choose a nice pre-drawn background pattern for your level. If you're handy with ResEdit, you can add and edit background patterns.
9). Gray Brick Destruct Level
Any gray bricks you draw AFTER changing this setting will be affected. If you want a gray brick to disappear the first time a ball hits it, set the gray brick destruct level to 1. If you set the gray brick destruct level to 5, it will take 5 hits before the brick disappears.
10). Name This Level
Whatever you enter here will appear in the little title plaque at the top of the level. Feel free to leave it blank if you can't think of a level name.
11). Clear Screen
This clears all of the bricks off of the screen so you can start fresh.
12). Done
This builds the completed level from your beautiful artwork and saves it to disk as a "portable" level file. Afterwards, you can select New Game from the file menu and try out your new level.
13). Cancel, Abort
If you mess up, or change your mind about editing a level, select this. It will revert the level to the last saved version.
The Palette
Across the top of your screen are 21 little colored boxes. These are the colors you use when drawing the bricks. To select a color, simply click on it and a black box will outline your selection. Any brick you draw from now on, will be in the new color. To change the color of an existing brick, select the new color, then hold OPTION and click on the brick you wish to change. To change the color of one of your palette squares, double-click on it. A color wheel will pop up letting you choose a new color.
The first two palette squares have a particular importance. The first square is the color you use when you want to draw gray bricks. The second square (which can not be altered) is the color of the gold bricks.
