Baroody's Game Development Site

A Website to help you program computer games

Step 5: Options!

OK, so your first version of Pong is gone...congratulations!  Now, I've got some challenges for you.  For the one player game you've created, you can add the following options:

  • Add a Help Menu that gives directions for play and an About dialog
  • Add an Options menu item that allows you to change the speed of the ball (slow, medium, fast)
  • Add an Options menu item that allows you to change the size of the paddle
  • Add an Options menu item that allows you to turn the sound on and off

To get even more advanced (and to get an even better grade on your project!), then you should add the following options:

  • Add an Options menu item that allows you to set the number of balls that will be played in a game (as opposed to always defaulting to 3, which it does now).
  • Add an Options menu item that allows you to play a two-player game.  The orientation of this game is different...it goes side to side instead of up and down.  Also, there are two paddles.  If you're really good, you'll also have an option for playing against the computer vs. playing against another person.  If you play the computer, you should also be able to set the skill level that the computer plays ((I used Bad, OK, and Great).  This whole two-player thing is actually a major modification to the program...plan on spending quite a bit of time on this!  Hey...you've got to earn those good grades, right?!?!