Black Ball is a "Brick breaker" with triangular bricks. Some bricks drop bonus that upgrade the bar or the ball if you catch them. The ultimate bonus is the black ball. Also, you can charge the bar with energy by moving it quite fast. Energy is released when you touch the ball, and the ball is speed up for a while.

There is an anti-stuck system to avoid the ball to bounce for eternity. Be carefull, when you think that the ball is stuck, it will not last long.

TIP : The idea of accelerating the ball by loading the bar is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Having a fastball in a brick breaker is not good, however when you own the black ball, speeding the ball can be really useful. As the black ball only last for 5 seconds, accelerating the ball allow you to destroy more bricks in this small duration.

This game is about a simple bar, with lots of uses. Try it and give me feedbacks !

There is a bug quite rare with fast precise collisions. The ball stops moving just after a collision. If you get it, you can wait 10 seconds for the anti-stuck script, or press "R" to restart the level.

I was thinking of a brick breaker game some month ago, and this jam was a good oportunity ! It was not easy as I thought. At first, I wanted to bind some keyboard keys to change the shape of the bar. Unfortunately, my knowledge of fast collision with precise collision masks was not so good (but improved a lot !).

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  • Jupiter Hadley
    Lv. 13

    Good game! I included it in my GM48: One Tool, Many Uses compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/i6dgliSj-A0

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    How really like how everything was made of triangles, I would just have hoped that the ball was more impacted by the position on your bar. Usually with breakout games the more you hit on the side, the more the ball bounces with an angle, and with triangles it should be the case even more.

    Anyway good game overall, and the black ball upgrade was really satisfying.

  • SirTotallyAverage
    Lv. 15

    Triangular bouncing is an interesting twist on the traditional ball breaker game. The mechanics felt really solid and when the ball bounced it was pretty predictable. However, I did manage to get the ball stuck between two walls, bouncing perfectly horizontal between them. Waited for about 30 seconds then had to restart. The sounds / music were really good. And for some reason, I really liked that simple depth particle background. Kinda loses points for me on theme though.

    • Rabugree
      Lv. 5
      Rabugree Developer of Black Ball

      6yrs ago

      Thanks for the feedback. I am sorry that you get stucked. I really tried to avoid getting stucked (as it can be the main anoying problem in a game like that). I do not know why you think the game is not in the theme. Obviously there is not only one tool, but for me the bar is a tool with many uses. It can bounce ball, speed up ball, get larger, get laserbeam, caught powerup, get black ball. Maybe I just did not understood the theme in the good way. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks a lot for your feedback !

  • Kwis
    Lv. 67

    "There is an anti-stuck system to avoid the ball to bounce for eternity. Be carefull, when you think that the ball is stuck, it will not last long."

    I once waited 2 minutes for the ball to get back to me...

    And that sums up my issue with Black Ball. I kind of like breakouts game but here, the level design and ways for you to bounce the ball makes it more difficult (as in, slower) then your regular breakout. To be more specific:

    • The ball sometimes has unexpected bouncing (not saying it's your fault or anything but it felt a bit strange and difficult to "aim"; maybe regular breakouts have "more simple bounce patterns")
    • The level design is such that the ball has more opportunities to bounce for a long while (also triangle don't always help) LIke on the level 2, I wait a long moment (2 minutes) for the ball to come back. And when It came back, It again bounced for a moment (shorter though). So yeah, the game made me kind of impatient.. :/ Not bad though!
    • Rabugree
      Lv. 5
      Rabugree Developer of Black Ball

      6yrs ago

      Thanks for the feedback ! Sorry if you get stucked somewhere, I really tried to avoid that kind of problem. When the ball is stucked, after 15 second it change direction with a random range angle between -10 and 10). You probably had bad luck with angles. Sorry for that.

      The bouncing system was quite hard to understand even for me, as I used the one available in game maker studio (move_bounce_all()). Also, the collision mask of the ball is a precise mask collision, but made with square pixels. The bouncing is not easy with that pixels angles.

      I hope you enjoyed Black Ball a bit, and sorry for playing with you patience ;)

  • C0DERP1GLET
    Lv. 36

    I read your Biography. I'm also the olny programmer in a team of 4 people working on a sci-fi game for more than one year. Maybe that's funny. Maybe I'm wierd.

    Anyways, great game! You focused on making a fun rather than long experience and got some original mecanics even if the main mecanic is just brick breaker. The bouncing is well made and I hade no problem with the ball getting stuck.

    The GUI was off when I activated fullscreen mode. It made the mouse collisions apart from the buttons and I couldn't see how many balls I had. If I turned fullscreen off was the bar offscreen so I had it on anyways. Can you tell me how you make fullscreen mode that way? Like, by clicking the corner button on the window.

    BrainBot
    Submitted

    BrainBot

    • Rabugree
      Lv. 5
      Rabugree Developer of Black Ball

      6yrs ago

      Oh nice ! Nice to meet a guy working on a game like me. I am maybe in your 4 people team... In a parallel universe. Or maybe I am wierd.

      I am glad you had no problem with stucks.

      For the fullscreen mode, you can enable fullscreen switching in the game option for windows>graphics (if you are on a windows computer). I am using gameMaker Studio 2 so it can be in a different place in game's options. I enabled "allow window resize" so you can switch with the top right button of the game's window. I also disabled "Allow fullscreen switching" because the game was really ugly in fullscreen mod. For the text drawing that display the number of balls, I just used a "draw gui event" (I could have make it better so you can read the number of ball after resizing the window, but I forgot).

      Thanks for the feedback and good luck for your (maybe our, depend of the universe) project.

  • JohnNWFS
    Lv. 2

    Nice game and good music. Everything ran smoothly. I didn't use the power ups often other than the long paddle which came in handy. A couple of times the ball got caught in a near horizontal back and forth but the ball eventually got back into play. Good job.

  • Joseph
    Lv. 4

    Oooh, nice tutorial/title screen! Makes it look somewhat professional from the get-go. The music is pretty good too. I really like the idea of the ball getting faster when you hit it fast, it's too bad that there isn't a real reason to do it. The triangle bricks are also unique and add a slightly new twist on the breakout idea.

    There are some things to improve, though. Trying to hit the last few bricks took me way too long (a common problem with breakout-style games, but a serious one). Another smaller thing is powerups could display a simple message somewhere telling you something like "XXXX Powerup received!", as I didn't understand what the red powerup did.

    Solid game idea!

    P.S. What if speeding the ball up to max caused "black ball" instead of waiting for a powerup? Could be interesting, and also then the game's name would fit better.

    Parum
    Submitted

    Parum

    • Rabugree
      Lv. 5
      Rabugree Developer of Black Ball

      6yrs ago

      Thanks for the feedback ! The red powerup is laserbeam , alowing you to fire laserbeam with the bar when you left click with mouse (and be careful, the laserbeams can destroy the ball !) Your idea of getting blackball when speeding the ball is good ! I should have done that. Display messages when powerup are caught is also a good idea. I am a troll so I like the way you can discover new powerup and get the blue one and think : "Oh that is great, new powerup, what is it doing ?". And bad news, this one speed up ball a lot and kills you eventually.