Progress so far + screenshots

For now the main gameplay mechanics work. This is usually the fastest, easiest and the most fun part in game development. It took me three weekends to complete and it was quite a challenge, because it took quite some maths and logic to figure some stuff out. For instance how fast must the pad be moving to go at the same speed as the particles hit the edge. The part that gave me the biggest headache was collision detection. Dark GDK has an integrated function, that lets you return a value if a sprite is hitting another sprite, but it did not work very smoothly, so I had to make my own (more on that in an upcoming post).

Now I'm just trying to separate different game sections, like the main menu, the menu where you choose levels that you want to replay, the game itself, the game over screen, the section that restarts the game, etc. I'm trying to get the basic architecture of the game planned out basically. For this I am using some temporary sprites just so I can test if the mechanics work.

Thus far I've made a temporary main menu:

And a temporary "choose level" menu:

For an artist of my caliber the 3D buttons look pretty neat (if these were the early 90's). The bloody stain is also a temporary asset with which you choose which level you want to play and press space to engage it.