Arinoid – an Arkanoid clone
For our first game, let’s try to write an Arkanoid clone. The graphics in the game were taken from the freely available Spritelib by Ari Feldman.
The prototype contains only one level, and I’m pretty sure that a lot of people out there can do a much better job with level design and color coordination 
. The game is very much playable, although I think there are better ways of implementing the ball/brick “physics”.
So this is how it’s going to work (this will be the general routine for most of the games): this first post will include a general overview of the project, and a zip file containing the prototype. The next posts shall discuss how the game was put together. Along the way, I hope to gather comments, suggestions, and help from everyone, and these will all be factored into the next iteration of the project. This process will just repeat itself until we come up with something that most, if not all of us, will be happy about .
This game was written in Python, using the Pygame library. For me, Python is great to work with, and I would recommend it as a good first programming language. As most of you already know, Python code is very readable, and this is very important for an undertaking like this. I would just like to stress that this project could have been implemented in any other language – the choice of language is mainly due to personal preference.
To understand what’s about to happen, I would consider a working knowledge of Python as a prerequisite. For those of you who already know how to program, I assure you that you can easily pick up Python. With some basic knowledge of C and familiarity with programming, I was able to learn Python by reading the Python Tutorial that comes with the Python package. I think that a weekend is more than enough to go through this tutorial.
For those who haven’t programmed before, the Python website has a Getting Started page, which includes resources for non-programmers. If you’re a non-programmer, I encourage you to give it a shot! I was a non-programmer myself before, and I think that the effort was worth it.
To run the code, you will need to have Python and Pygame installed. Here is the zip file which contains the Arinoid source code and graphics (this should work for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux).
License
This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
June 4th, 2006 at 6:00 am
I got a 404 with “arinoid source” :
Not Found
The requested URL /arinoid.zip was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
June 4th, 2006 at 6:23 am
Thank you so much for pointing that out, jml! Link fixed
June 7th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Luckily, I found the game through your site, but the direct link from pygame.org is broken. I’ll try the game now. Hope it will bring me nostalgic memories.
June 9th, 2006 at 6:42 am
Hi Johan! Thanks for pointing that out as well – I’ve fixed the link from the pygame site
. I just have to say that this is an early version and hopefully, it will be improved after the screencasts for it are done. I’d love to hear everyone’s ideas!
June 19th, 2006 at 2:41 am
[...] To run the code for this screencast, you will need to have a data subdirectory containing the Arinoid sprite sheet file. You can easily fulfill this requirement by downloading the arinoid source from the post on Arinoid. Also, this will be needed for most, if not all, of the upcoming screencasts. [...]
June 24th, 2006 at 6:35 am
[...] 1945 is a clone of the popular vertical scrolling shooter 1942. Again, the graphics in the game were taken from the Spritelib by Ari Feldman. This game will serve as the basis for the screencasts once we finish Arinoid. The screencasts will probably begin with screencast 6. In the meantime, I am hoping that you’ll find the source code useful, and just leave a comment on the site if you have any questions . I posted this in advance because one of the site’s readers needed some help with animations, which this game has but Arinoid doesn’t. Aside from animations, this game also features a scrolling background. [...]
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:30 am
[...] Arinoid now has sound! I think that sound plays a very important role in the overall game experience, and I hope that you will all like this minor update. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
[...] Arinoid post [...]
March 19th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
[...] and made a really dumb Sprite class, and stole some reasonable “breakout physics” from this tutorial to make this Breakout clone in [...]