A New Tutorial Series - The Breakout Tutorial

Hi, I have a seven part tutorial series on creating a Breakout/Arkanoid type of game. I am almost finished with part seven, so I thought I would begin posting the first parts in the series now.

Overall Goal of the Series
This series began as an experiment a year ago, while I was teaching myself how to program in TorqueScript. I began writing notes for my own use on how to do certain things. These notes kind of spontaneously organized themselves into a tutorial, and I found that I liked writing it. It was also a great way to help solidify things in my mind.

A Few Things to Note

What? No Behaviors?
There are no behaviors whatsoever used in this tutorial. I began writing Part 1 when TGB was at version 1.13, but that's not why I didn't include behaviors. The main thrust of this series is scripting, using TorqueScript to accomplish things; building logical, understandable code to create a game.

Behaviors are a method of abstracting code into a LevelBuilder drop down. They are not always the correct choice. For one thing, they add a certain amount of overhead, both in amount of code and in complexity, which is not always necessary, particular for simple object actions. Also, they may lead to a certain sameness across your games, it's almost too easy to build a game from your set library of behaviors that you always use, perhaps hindering innovation.

Now, I'm not really against behaviors, and may use them in a future tutorial, but I wanted to present a complete game that did not use them.

Breakout? What is this 1987?
I'm a real fan of TGB, I think it has a tremendous amount of potential. When people first begin using it, they almost always begin thinking along the lines of platformer or side scroller, assuming that is its natural strength. I disagree, I think it is perfectly suited for almost every casual game you can think of.

I'm not a huge fan of breakout in particular, but I love all kinds of casual games; matching games, card games, unusual logic games. The BreakoutTutorial started almost randomly, I think, because the last game I had been playing was a wonderful Arkanoid kind of game called BreakQuest. As I played it, I thought "I bet TGB could do this."

A Finished Game
Part of the goal of the series, and one reason it is so long, is that I wanted to have, at the end, a complete and finished game. Sound effects, music, particle effects, game logic, multiple levels, high scores, game state saving (unlocking levels,) etc. I didn't want to create a tutorial that provided a shell of a game, and then tells the user, "OK, now finish it up!"

Intended Audience
The intended audience for this series is everyone. I wrote it with a beginning user in mind, so if you have been using TGB for a while, you may find some step details too obvious. However, I would not hesitate to recommend it to intermediate or even advanced scripters. It's fun, and you may learn some TorqueScript techniques or methods you haven't been using.

I do urge everyone who follows the tutorial to read it completely. Just jumping from code section to code section and copying and pasting will teach you nothing, and you may miss some important information. For very new users, I promise you that if you take it slowly, digesting every part of it and understanding each line of the code you are pasting in, by the end of part seven you will have a pretty firm command of TGB.


Well, that was a longer preamble than I had intended, so here is the link to part 1 of the series.
The Breakout Tutorial - Part 1

I'm putting up parts one, two and three today. Part four should go up tomorrow, and five shortly after that. The final two parts will go up a little bit later as I proof and test them, but I'm hoping it will all be up in the next week or so.

I am going to start a thread for each subsequent part, which I intend to be used for discussion, questions, etc.

Thanks,
Greg