Pong?

I've been programming in C++ for about 2 months, then I decided to take a break to keep my grades high. Now, I'm almost in high school and I've decided to take a Java class. So, I decided to get back into programming. I tried to make a pong game in C++ but just couldn't do it. Any help or suggestions or anything to start me off would be MUCH appreciated.

Start with something simpler then.

What's simpler than pong?

tic-tac-toe maybe?
hangman
various guessing games

> I tried to make a pong game in C++ but just couldn't do it.
Well that's vague - which bit was the problem?
Choosing a graphics library?

Don't go with java, C++ would be better.
If you can deal with C++, you should move on to DirectX or OpenGL. I personal like OpenGL. pong game only take me 10 to 15 mins to make with opengl. It's your choice then.

Actually, Java is the only programming class at that school, other that QBASIC which I don't want to take. The problem is, I just don't know how to start. Like, how do I make the ball bounce, how do I make the "walls" for the ball to bounce off of, how do I make the ball bounce off the paddles and etc. etc.. Oh, yeah I also have a question. Do I need to use some kind of graphics library like OpenGL or is it possible to program the whole entire game in just C++ using Dev-C++?

And I've already made a few Hangman and Tic-Tac-Toe games but Pong is just stumping me for some reason.

You can make pong using Dev. It has an openGL project option - look under new project, click the mulit-media tab. Learning OpenGl is tricky, it involvs mainly windows programming, which is tough anyway. If you have a good handle on the basics of C++, and the more advanced topics like pointers, OOP , templates and vectors, then learning OpenGL should not be too tough. Read the tutorial on this site about openGl to get you started.

> Do I need to use some kind of graphics library like OpenGL
> or is it possible to program the whole entire game in just C++ using Dev-C++?
Well if you want everything drawn with printable text, then some kind of graphics is in order.
Dev-c++ has a downloadable package of libsdl (http://www.libsdl.org/index.php), which is a bit like opengl-lite.

If you make your way through the tutorials on that site, you should be in good shape.

If you want the ball to bounce :
Declare float X, Y, dir;
X,Y - current position
dir - current angle
the ball should go like this
X += cos(dir);
Y += sin(dir);
when the ball hits something, just change the dir

Actually you will want something like this so you don't have to mess with angles except to set the initial x,y vector amounts for the ball. This also allows you to account for frame rendering time as well as ball speed which you can alter at will to increase/decrease the difficulty of the game.

Code:

---

class Ball
{
  float m_fVx,m_fVy;
  float m_fSpeed;
  float m_fX,m_fY;
  public:
    ...
    void SetAngle(float angle)
    {
      m_fVx=cosf(angle);
      m_fVy=sinf(angle);
    }
   
    void Update(float fTimeElapsed)
    {
      m_fX+=(m_fVx*m_fSpeed*fTimeElapsed);
      m_fY+=(m_fVy*m_fSpeed*fTimeElapsed);
    }
    ....
};

---

For collision with walls and response you can do several things:

1. Simple collision detection based on position (x>wall.x, y>wall.y, etc..)
2. Collision using dot product and normals for response.
3. Per-pixel collision detection via time intervals instead of option 1. Compute the time at which the objects will collide. If interval is empty or infinite, objects will not collide in next frame.
4. For response, create triangle using last x,y of ball and wall hit x,y for ball. Use trig to determine resulting vector. Set last x,y of ball to current x,y, wash, rinse, repeat.

i posted a thread dealing with a problem regarding my pong game, after mr wizard helped me out i posted the working code

http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showt...highlight=pong

it's pretty messy but maybe it will help you out

edit- put the actual URL in :o

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SniperSAS

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sho...0&pagenumber=1

---

I remember this thread, that was you or just the wrong link?

d'oh! i copy and pasted the wrong thing!

also hell no that guy was retarded, and i stick to FYAD pretty much