Water Breakout
Breakout in an oasis
About the game
Water Breakout was originally developed during my Computergraphik Praktikum in 2011 (and is still advertised as an example project on the universities website). The goal was to develop an interactive program that show-cases different graphic effects. We decided to focus on a realistic (or at least nice) simulation of water effects and used the old Breakout idea as the framework for the game: The user is controlling a paddle with which he must try to keep the the balls inside the field until they destroyed all the blocks. By controlling where the balls hit the paddle, the player also has some control of the rebound direction.
Overall the game contains 5 different levels which step-by-step introduce new block types. Some must be hit multiple times, others explode (damaging nearby blocks) and some release an additional ball which helps to clear up the blocks. The game also features multiple cameras, allowing the player to view the oasis scene and its reflection in the water surface from different directions.
A fellow student of mine, Andreas, also contributed to this project. However, I got carried away a bit and thus became responsible for most parts of the game. He did not wish to be listed as official author, but I still wanted to briefly mention him her, since I really enjoyed working together with him.
Version 1.2
10 years later I dug up Water Breakout again and decided to polish it a bit before releasing it here. The most important change is certainly the addition of sound effects and music, for which I got help from Nik again. Instead of adding single sound effects to various events (block hit, ball lost, etc.) we decided to turn each of those into a whole virtual instrument which play random notes matching the background music. The music also changes slightly after each level which makes the overall sound design rather dynamic.
Other parts of the game were improved as well: The current level, score, and remaining balls are shown in the top right. The game supports a fullscreen mode and the window size can be changed dynamically when in windowed mode. Grabbing the mouse cursor has also been improved and it can be released again at any time now by pressing ESC.
The source code is also bundled. But please keep in mind, that large parts of it are very old by now and a serious rewrite would be required. Still, I decided that including the code is better, for instance it could be used to add new levels or block types.
Videos
The new (and maybe a somewhat over the top, hehe) trailer:
Some actual gameplay:
Download
Water Breakout 1.2 (Windows, ca. 44 MB), recommended
Water Breakout original (Windows, ca. 50 MB), old version
Contact
For question, suggestions, or general feedback, you can drop us an E-Mail:
On Niks website he presents some of his other works:
