BREAKOUT
By: Dan Johnson

Introduction
	This game will be an adaptation of the classic “breakout” game. To be made with Apple’s Quartz Composer 4.0 for the Visual Programming Course at Ohio University.  

Background

(Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)
	Breakout was first introduced as an arcade title developed by Atari, Inc. in 1976 by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow.  It was ported to many of the early game consoles including the Atari 2600 and later the Atari 5200 as “Super Breakout.”  Many adaptations have been made of the game and ported to many different platforms including iPhone and online Flash games.  Some of the more well known copies of the game include Block Buster for the Microvision and Bebop
	Highly influenced by “Pong” the game has some striking resemblances to it including  the core mechanic is to bounce a ball off of a paddle.  They are both considered the originators of the “bat-and-ball” genre.  Breakout spawned the subgenre of bat-and-ball games known as “Breakout-style” games.

Description
	This version of Breakout will be built using Quartz Composer as opposed to the many other versions that are available.  It will feature the basic mechanic of bouncing the ball off of a paddle in order to keep the ball on screen and destroy all blocks.

Features
I.	Control of the paddle with the keyboard
A.	Use of the keyboard patch fed into an integrator
B.	Value then split between the billboard display and location for collision
II.	Increasing Difficulty
A.	Score taken from sample and hold
B.	Then put through a multiplexer for incremental speed
III.	Victory and Loss conditions
A.	Lives are kept through a conditional and sample and hold
B.	Upon losing all extra lives player will trigger lose condition
C.	Score is kept through adding all blocks destroyed through a sample and hold.
D.	Upon reaching a score of 35, player will trigger win condition

Design
	The objective of this game is to eliminate all of the “blocks” on the screen.  Players will have control of a “paddle” that will bounce a ball between it and the blocks.  When the ball hits a block that block will be destroyed. Once all of the blocks are destroyed, the player has won the game and will advance to the victory screen.
	Players will start with 5 “lives” or retries.  If the ball falls below the paddle and off screen the player will lose a life and the ball will reset onto the screen.  When the player loses all 5 lives the game will end in a loss condition.  The amount of blocks destroyed during the game will be the player’s score.  This score will be displayed on both the victory and loss screen.
	The ball will start off at a slow speed and as the player destroys blocks will increase in speed, making it harder to complete the game.

Future Work
	Further work on this game would include the following
I.	Multiple Levels
II.	Pausing the game
III.	High Scores
IV.	Power-ups
a.	Multiple Balls
b.	Increased paddle speed
c.	Extra lives
d.	
V.	Added visual effects
a.	Explosions upon breaking blocks
b.	Multiple hits to break a block (showing damage)
VI.	concurrent Multiplayer (side by side games)