breakout-clone

Yet another Breakout clone

Just the umpteenth breakout clone.

How to play

The code has been compiled with Java 17 so, having that, to run the game java -jar $JAR is enough, where $JAR is, possibly, the latest release.
Nothing else is necessary: if no breakout_clone.properties file is found, it creates a default one and exits afterwards.

The game generates two rows of bricks per level, with brick types picked randomly (with some limits/requirements).
Technically, the placement of every object and text is dynamic, depending on the window's size (maybe I'll make it configurable in the future).

The score is increased destroying bricks (how much depends on the brick type) and clearing levels with all lives. Losing a life resets the level AND the score, losing all lives resets the whole game. When a level is cleared, a life is restored.

Hitting the ball with the paddle's sides inverts the y-velocity only, hitting it with the center, also inverts the x-velocity.

Configuration

THe log. options control the info being logged, useless when playing, kind of useful when debugging.
The two fps. configs are probably best left alone, I tinkered with them in the past and 60/80 seems to be the best values.
The max_lives option changes the number of max (and starting) lives.
The max_level config may be changed to have a shorter/longer game.
The invincibility config, if true, disables the loss of lives if the ball reaches the bottom.
The ball.start_speed config defines the starting vertical speed of the ball, which is also increased level by level according to ball.mod_speed.

A comment on the code

I started this project because I wanted to create a simple game to test some ideas.
Some mechanics are implemented as generically as possible, which is probably one of the reasons (together with a not-very-good game thread/loop) why the game has got plenty of issues, especially in the physics/movement department (e.g. what happens when the ball collides with multiple bricks at the same time, or the movement speed that depends on the frames).
When I started coding it, I thought that OOP was the best way to organise and develop a game. With time, I realised my mistake and moved away a bit from OOP, which is why the code is not as tidy as I would like.