Taking PONG to the 3rd dimension ( DEMO and SCREENS inside! )

[DoorKnobHandle]

Hello,

I just finished working on just another PONG clone. What about a PONG clone, you say? Everybody wrote a PONG clone... But this one is special: It is in 3D. That's right, programmed in C++ and OpenGL, it combines the feeling of the good old PONG with the new possibilities of the third f*cking dimension. It features... ehm... two paddles... and... a ball. No seriously, there are only three different bonus ( what the hell is the plural of bonus? bonii? I always wonder about that... ) available at the moment, but those are fun and something completely different than your average increase paddle size/add ball kind of bonus - for example one will increase the speed of the camera rotating around the scene, so that playing is becoming really hard and challenging.

Did you really read all this text above? Anyways, here are three screenshots - but keep in mind, they don't show the feeling of this game at all. The actual look is quite terrible, but play it and I'm sure most of you will find it quite addicting ( atleast most of my friends did, when we tried out the multiplayer-mode:

EDIT: I am sorry, you'll have to visit each link and click on "free" everytime in order to watch the screens and download the game...

http://rapidshare.de/files/5883430/Screen3.jpg.html
The legendary 'HELL TEMPLE' with minor graphical bugs...

http://rapidshare.de/files/5883424/Screen2.jpg.html
Some ingame action - two paddles and a ball...

http://rapidshare.de/files/5883418/Screen1.jpg.html
And - finally... The legendary... ehm... main menu...

DON'T JUDGE THIS GAME BY IT'S LOOK! Actually, don't ever judge a game by it's look...

I am aware of some bugs ( both the paddles and the arena aren't displayed correctly ) but it is completely playable as it is. It features a tournament with three levels and three different enemies ( easy, average, difficult ) as well as a multiplayer-mode for two people on one keyboard.

For more information please check out the readme-file.

It is a beta and the reason I post this here is to get feedback, so please let me know what you think about it and what you would tweak/improve/change.

Thanks and here is the link...

[Vince Twelve]

Well, the game is well scripted and visually neat, so I'll examine it from a game design standpoint rather than a technical one.

In most games, fighting with annoying camera angles and movements is considered a bad thing, but here it's a game mechanic.  It's quite frustrating for you to have to keep thinking about which way the camera is facing before you can figure out which way your paddle is going to move when you press a button.  "Does left mean left now, or does it mean right?"  Also, when the camera is situated just right (placing a paddle on either side of the screen) you have no depth perception which often makes hitting the ball or getting a power up a stroke of luck rather than skill. 

Speaking of power-ups, one is hardly inclined to get one when it punishes/rewards both players equally.  I suppose if one player who is more skilled with a fast camera he might want to speed it up while the other player tries to slow it down... this creates an even bigger gap between an unskilled and skilled player, making the game unballanced. Two players of equal skill have no reason to pick up the power-ups since they'll both be equally effected by them, so why go out of their way?  Perhaps, working with your "confuse the player by making him dizzy" gameplay design, one power up could suddenly flip the other player's controls...

You've actually created a 2D pong game.  The only thing that the third dimension adds is the camera rotation which, granted, is the entire innovation here.  I'm just not sure it's a successful one.  It does add a challenge, but I'm not sure it's a fun challenge rather than a frustrating one.

However, the game is technically pleasing.  If the arena and paddle models displayed correctly it would be even more so.  I particularly like the reflection on the field.  Well done.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks for your comment, Vince.

You are right in all your points. Still, let me try to explain: I didn't exactly think of the power-ups as usual power-ups. Those boxes are designed to be picked up randomly. Let me use an example: The player is not supposed to think: "Hey, there goes a "increase cam rotation"-bonus in my direction, I should try and pick it up". He won't think this way because he knows this bonus isn't going to help (especially in singleplayer against the computer), instead he is supposed to pick the bonus up while trying to get the ball, so it happens more like an accident: "Holy crap, I just picked up that bonus - what the hell is happening?"...
Now you could go even further and say, those power-ups are (again especially in singleplayer mode) negative power-ups. The player should try to stay away from them.
The only exception is the "stop camera rotation" bonus. This one (if used properly/picked up shortly before camera is behind your paddle) will actually improve your situation quite a lot.

Now to the movement system: You are right, it is very confusing. But experience shows to me and other people that played the game before I released it here, that after playing for a longer time, it will eventually be learned by the player and automated. I don't know how long you've been playing the game already. It is probably not the best idea to make the player go through this amount of time to learn the movement, but I couldn't think of any other way making the paddles move...

So, in conclusion, you are right. Those are all pretty lame excuses ... Anyways, this game is meant for quick "party" fun and was done in two days. It also was my first ever released OpenGL application...

Thanks though for spending your time!

[InCreator]

Em... well...
It's so...


...Pong 3D.

Camera controls... well... suck. It wasn't uncomfortable, it was pain.
I'll second Vince in pointless nature of this so called "bonus", due unequality. If you want to bonus player with camera, make him see his paddle first-person view or somehow that makes it harder for *other* player to see *his* paddle!

I suggest more powerups, but better ones, such as freezing other player for 3 seconds, More cool sounds and better textures (current ball looks like straight-out example from C++ beginner's tutorial). Maybe lose the fireworks and make ball produce one when charged with some cool bonus? After all, when making a pong clone, make sure to make THIS one worth trying (by something new, of course), the competition is strong out there 

[Vince Twelve]

Now you could go even further and say, those power-ups are (again especially in singleplayer mode) negative power-ups. The player should try to stay away from them.

You're right.  And that's actually a cool thing.  Try to hit the ball while avoiding the bad powerups.  However, this feature just doesn't jive with the multiplayer. 

Also, it would be nice if the difference between the camera speed up and slow down boxes was more obvious, so you could make the decision between getting and avoiding while concentrating on the ball and the confusing controls.

It's an interesting game, and I can see how it would be quite fun after getting the hang of the controls and playing it with a buddy.  Sorry if I sounded more negative than I meant to.  I do that a lot.

[jetxl]

The best pong clone ever was super pong 95! In this game there was the option to play western pong. You could, get this, SHOOT A BULLET! If the bullet hits the other player, he would be unable to move for a few seconds. But the fun really starts if the bullet hits the ball. The ball would move into a random direction.
I played that game agains my brother for days. Making screenshots when I pwnd him and using it as desktop pic.

...just talking about pong.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Allright, allright... I see, it needs lots of work.

Anyways, I did it in 2 days and it's all coded in a horrible kind-of-way ( one single .cpp file with 5k lines ).

I'll consider redoing it with a better foundation.

Of course, I would add more bonus ( again, what's the damn plural? ), but this was just going to be a beta. I like the shooting bonus ( and I've already implemented exactly this one in the PONG clone I once wrote in AGS ), so I'll see what I can do.

Funny enough, InCreator was right, the only textures I used, that are from a coding tutorial are the ball and ground texture...

Thanks for your time, though.

[Nikolas]

No help from me for the game except:

I think that the plural of bonus is:

bonuses

[shbaz]

Soon I'm supposed to make a game using entirely digital logic components. That is, no programming as you'd know it, but it's basically arranging blocks of transistors so that a circuit does what you'd want it to. This is an assignment for my Digital Logic Design class. I was told pong can be made in a day, so my engineering team and I have gotta make some twist on it. I wonder if a simple 3d pong game would be possible without complicating things much?