A "Pong" Progress Report

In which Arielle shares her second project, a nearly completed "Pong" clone with a visual twist and slightly morbid theme.

I was really excited for this project. The moment I realized I was going to work on making a Pong Clone, I set to work immediately and with gusto. After all, it's probably one of my favorite retro games. Before I became the "epic" fledgling gamer I surely am, I was a child who played video games infrequently and had limited access to many. But if Pong was ever an option, I remember being drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Luckily older caretakers were familiar with and fond enough of Pong that they were often willing Player 2s.

Pong is, quite possibly, one of the most iconic and influential games in the history of the industry. This game was released by Atari in 1972. It was originally an assigned training exercise given to Allan Alcorn by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell. Bushnell and co-founder Ted Dabney were so impressed, they decided to manufacture it. Allan Alcorn based the concept of the game off of another game (Tennis For Two) which had been released on the unprecedented first home console, Magnavox Odyssey. Bushnell had seen the Odyssey at a tradeshow and soon after Atari released Pong in the very first arcade cabinet. Pong ended up being a major commercial success and was eventually released in its own home console. In fact, the game was so successful that almost every electronics manufacturer at the time attempted releasing their own version of the game. There was such an influx of Pong clones that the video game industry crashed in 1977!

Having worked on one project before, I had a better idea of what to focus on first, so I decided I was going to make sure to get the coding up and running completely before working on making the game more visually interesting. I did, however, want to have a theme selected beforehand, so that afterwords I could focus on learning various pixel art techniques and making the visuals more interesting. The theme came to me nearly as quickly as "camels" before it. I thought, Space War's main concept was shooting so "camels" came to mind because of spitting, Pong's main concept is ping-pong. I started to think of animals I knew that could potentially play in such a manner, and my mind immediately went to dolphins, setting finally on Orcas, due to their documented behavior of "punting" seals out of the water...Morbid, but it worked beautifully for the purposes of revisualizing the game, I would just have to make it less gory...

As of now, the game is nearly completed. The only thing left to do is to create the visuals for the paddle assets of the game, the afore mentioned Orcas. Thematically, the orcas will be based on the Transient subspecies, which has had a handful of "albino orcas" sighted amongst known pods, which would create the visual contrast between Player 1 and Player 2.

But enough telling, it's time to show! Below are various images showing my finished working coding and some close ups of the pixel work I did on finished assets.

Above, you can see coding for the whole game, completed and working well! In the future, I'll take the time to edit the images together.

The .gif above, proves visually that the coding is working. As you can see, the global variables match the numbers above in the layout, showing that when a player scores a point, the point is accurately tallied and shown in the score.

This .gif above, shows off the splash effect I added for when the ball hits the paddles, as well as showing that the mobile controls I added are working for Player1. The arrows won't be visible for the finished game, they are merely a tool to illustrate how the touch mobile controls will work. In the mobile version, the clicker arrow shows where the player's fingers will be to control the paddle.

Above, is a close up of the ball asset. Thematically it is a Harbour Seal...that's terrified. No live animals were harmed in the making of this game...pixel animals however...

Below, is the pixel dithering work I did on the tile background. I ended up simplifying the original idea for the tile background I had in my head...due to just how long it took to complete using only a mouse. I'm not 100% in love with it, but I think it's a pretty good attempt for someone who is very new to pixel art and has never ever done dithering at all. I even added some pattern dithering to make it look a little more like water!

My next step is to complete the paddle assets and then it's off to the next project! I will likely be attempting to do some practice on Pixel Art so that hopefully my next project will have even better imagery. I'm also working on investing time into some of Game Gen's events, like Monster Mondays, which up until now I've ignored in favor of working on the main projects I've shown so far. I would like to do a blog post showing any work done during these events.

This project also brought to my attention that I really need to get my hands on a tablet of some sort, as I can't keep trying to draw with the mouse. I've known people who are experts at drawing with their mouse, but I was never one of those people. To me, it's like using a brick to draw something intricate. They do say that it makes a poor artist who blames their tools...but...drawing with a mouse is torture. Time to research for an affordable tablet!