Piz-ong
October 24, 2012 25 Comments
I’ve made a lot of friends since starting Indie Gamer Chick. Like, a lot. You probably can’t even grasp what a turnaround that is for my life. Growing up as an awkward child with autism who still to this day can’t even hold eye-contact with my own parents, having so many people call me their friend is pretty fucking sweet. It’s been life changing to say the least. And funny enough, some of those friends I met by saying their game was rancid fecal matter on this very site. It’s like one of those things you read about where someone meets their soul mate by mowing them down at an intersection, only not as fun and/or crunchy.
One of the cooler guys I can call my friend is Dave Voyles. He’s a dude who I actually knew in a past life, when I was a poor sport on Dreamcast and would rage-quit games of NBA 2K1 on him (the Knicks cheated, I swear it). When I showed up on the XBLIG scene, he made me feel welcome and got me involved with developers. I then shit on his creation, the 2011 Summer Uprising, but he still put up with me. Or at least he did after the car bomb he planted didn’t go off. It turns out that make of car had an iron plate under the seat and nobody outside the factory knew about it. So after determining that I’m unkillable and bad with continuity, he’s actually been a pretty good friend to me. And so that’s why I’m going to talk about his game.
It’s called Piz-ong. Not Pez-ong, sadly. Pez is something I like. Or at least I used to. Not the dispensers. God no. I could never get the damn things loaded right, and there’s something disconcerting taking candy after it had been in Chewbacca’s mouth. Actually, it doesn’t really come out of their mouth, does it? It comes out of their neck. That’s just sick. It’s like they had some kind of tracheotomy performed by Willy Wonka.
Oompa Loompa Doopy Dool, Hello Kitty smoked too many Kools.
But the candy? Oh that stuff was good. Was being the key word. For all I know, it still might be. My problem is I can never find the fucking things, or at least the flavors I like. The only packages I see is for stuff like the Cola flavored ones. I drink a lot of cola. That shit does NOT taste like cola. It taste like motor oil filtered through the jock strap of someone with the clap. All I want is Strawberry and Lemon. Maybe I’ll settle for Cherry flavored, but that’s it. I don’t want Strawberry-Vanilla, which tastes like the byproduct of some kind of industrial paint thinner. I don’t want Orange, which always seems to be brittle. I don’t want Grape, which has a disgusting aftertaste. I sure as shit don’t want Raspberry, which some states now offer as an alternative to lethal injection. What’s really a shame is they now offer a putrid Lemon-Raspberry mixture. So wrong. It would be like offering filet mignon that’s been seasoned with anthrax.
Sure, I could order it online. But then I’m getting bled for shipping & handling. Why should I have to deal with that? Why can’t they just put the refill packs in stores and stop sticking those unholy flavors spawned from the hemorrhoidal ass of Satan himself in the package? Look, I’ll even put up with Orange and Grape if I have to. Just don’t fucking stick Raspberry, Cola, or any mutli-flavored combination in the package. Nobody in their right mind can possibly want them. If you actually do, go grab a vacuum cleaner and stick the hose up your ass. With a little luck, it might just unclog your head from it.
What was I talking about?
This, you attention-span deficient bitch.
Oh yea, Dave’s Pong game. It fucking sucks. Not as bad as Cola-flavored Pez does, but then again, what does suck that bad? If they mixed Hitler’s DNA with a dinosaur to create an army of Hitlersaurus Rexs, it wouldn’t suck as bad as Cola flavored Pez. And by the way, Piz-ong isn’t a Hitlersaurus Rex. It’s not even a TriStalintops. It’s just a really bad idea. A single-player only Pong game with no frills in 2012? I believe my good buddy has gone raving mad. It’s not that the game is broken or unplayable. It’s just so bleh that I can’t believe he actually put it on the marketplace. What’s really sad is that for the second straight review, the best part about a game is the cover art. That’s like saying the best thing about Pez is the foil wrapper. In the case of Raspberry flavored Pez, that’s actually true.
Piz-ong was developed by Dave Voyles
80 Microsoft Points can’t believe Armless Octopus has only been updated once over the last month because he was working on this piece of shit in the making of this review.
Love ya, Dave.
Brian says I’m not allowed to sell out my principles and offer a Chick Seal of Approval to the first developer who buys me 5lbs of Pez off of Amazon. It’s just as well. Knowing my luck, it would probably be full of Raspberry and I would have to kill myself then.
Indie Gamer Chick 
that was … actually a fun read 🙂
Thanks. I then spent the next few hours looking for a place that carries Pez 😛
What happens at 1:00? The ball gets past the paddle, but bounces off the goal?
What the FUCK? Oh David..
Must have something to do with how often it checks for collision….. hmmm… I’ll add that to my list of things to fix!
Add “make piz-ong 2 piz-layers” to the fiz-ix list. 😀
I think I know what the problem is.
You want to know if the paddle is in front of the ball. But you only want to check this when the ball is in a certain position on the field. (Like, if the ball is in the middle of the field, it doesn’t matter where your paddle is).
So, you have some code that says:
if(ball.position < 50)
then check the y position of the paddle.
The problem is the "less than 50" part. You are checking the paddle position ANY TIME the ball is somewhere on the left side of the screen, even if it is BEHIND YOU.
You want to change that code to say:
if(ball.position 45)
then check the y position of the paddle
That is, you only want to check for collision if the ball is in the area of the front of the paddle, but NOT extending all the way behind the paddle.
Am I right?
Oops… my code was eaten up. That should read:
If ball.position is less than 50 AND is greater than 45
The problem is that the field is acting as a paddle. Big no-no in pong clones. 🙂
IMO, the only collision checks that should be occuring are if the rectangles(X/Y/W/H) interact(paddle#1 and ball + paddle#2 and ball) and if the ball reaches past the boundaries of the field(if ball.X500 for example)
For those of you that are code impaired…
1. Check if ball touches paddle#1…
1b. If it does, reverse its direction(bounce the ball to the other paddle).
2. Check if ball touches paddle#2…
2b. If it does, reverse its direction(bounce the ball to the other paddle).
So basically, you can crunch those into one collision check for the ball. Then…
1. If the ball’s X position goes too far to the left(Xgame’s X resolution) then GAME OVER
I can give you guys the source to my pong game if you want. 😀
LOL the site ate my post! :p
1. If the ball’s X position goes too far to the left(Xgame’s X resolution) then GAME OVER
Again? 😀
I can see it.
On my end, the site seems to selectively omit certain parts of a post, even though the whole post has been entered.
CJ, can you tweet me a picture of what it looks like on your end to @IndieGamerChick
So much code in all of these posts! But really, I think that you’re way of doing it is definitely the most efficient means of checking, as right now I’m checking every frame (I haven’t looked at the code in a bit). But with your way it saves a lot of checking.
Can’t tweet now, in a hurry. But I’ve uploaded it.
I recently got a dispenser in the form of a small black Wii-mote. It only dispenses fake PEZ I am afraid. They are round instead of brick-shaped.
I was setting out to make the most simple game that I could, as a way to learn XNA and C#.
This is literally the most simple thing you could play :p.
I had 2 player mode at the beginning, but it caused a lot of issues as I went on and added more features. I actually had quite a few things in there:
Slow mo, which transitioned the screen’s colors into black and white but the ball remained colored, and moving just as fast, before transitioning out, Matrix style.
Bats increased/decreased size, there were health pickups.
But in the end it created a few bugs here and there that I just didn’t have the time or energy to fix. 3/4 of the way through making the game I knew that it would be far easier for me to start from scratch and take everything I learned, but I didn’t want to waste those 4 months, so I told myself just to get it out there and no procrastinate, then come back to working on a better version of it in the future.
And for reference: My mother collects pez dispensers. I’ll put a picture up tomorrow.
You did awesomely. Congrats on getting something done all the way to the end. Now *I* need to finish something…. All you dang over achievers are making me look bad.
I’ll go back and make an improved version as soon as I’m done with my current project.
I’ve learned so much from doing all of this, that doing it a second time becomes far easier.
You did finish something George. I’m the one that hasn’t. 😦
It’s at least ten times better than Island Adventure :The Beginnig.
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