Chapter 4. Game Controls

So far, we have completed the first half of our game in the previous chapter. We started by developing the initial structure for the project by introducing the game objects to the screen. Currently, the paddle and ball movement is inactive, but everything displayed in the simulator is scaled according to the original game design. The last phase of completing this tutorial is to add in all the actions that will occur in the game, including object movement and updating the score.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Moving the paddle using touch events and accelerometer
• Collision detection between all game objects in the scene
• Removing objects upon collision detection
• Ball movement within the screen boundaries
• Calculating the score
• Win and lose conditions

Home stretch! We can do it!

Moving in the up direction

If making objects appear on screen is exciting to you, wait till you see them move! The main object of Breakout is to keep the ball above the paddle position to stay in play and have it collide with all the bricks to complete the level. What keeps the suspense going is the anticipation of the ball movement around the game screen. This wouldn't be possible without adding physical boundaries on the game objects to react to collision detection.