Bugs And Feature Request

I just downloaded the Mac OS X Version, and it doesn't open for me. =[ I'm on 10.3.9 ^^^Now it opens, but I get an error that says that it unexpectedly quit. ^More from me. I got the level editor, but I can't set the background, add any textures, or change the border. I've saved the images I want in PICT, and also tried more like .gif and .jpg.

A new release was posted on 4-23-07 (version 5.0). Try that version and see if it solves your problem.

Bug Report: Windows version 4.24

Posted: 4/12/04

Great Game. I experience the random dropping of achievements. It's very, very annoying. I can't quite figure out the common variable for when achievements are dropped and when they're not - although it usually doesn't drop the "bonus" level achievement. I suppose it's likely that something in the bonus levels is causing the problem. I frequently have games where I'll loose the achievments from the first part of the game, yet achievements made in the latter part are kept. I'd say this happens in about 75% of my games where I get near the end of the game.

For troubleshooting the "achievment dropping" problem (and just because), I'd like to see the achievements displayed across the bottom of the screen as I accomplish them. I often forget what I've done at the end of a long game.

Also, it's possible for the ball to pass through the paddle in these circumstances:

1. While having full up-and-down, put the paddle in the sand as low as possible. After a while the ball will land in such as way that it passes right through.

2. Suddenly moving the paddle up to catch the ball while it (the ball) is moving down.

-Bret

Achievements

I just got done adding a cleanSand bonus achievement and a redX bonus achievement... Also, I'm adding three more capsules. -CarsonWhitsett

What will the capsules be like? Any that are listed below?

The more achievements the better, because I routinely get all 11 in one game. (It is even easier on 3.0, you only need 9)

How about a "umphee bubble" achievement, a "super juggler" achievement (more than three balls) or a "re-spawned warp tunnel" achievement? -- Michaela

Ooh, a "all fruits" achievement would be cool too (even though I've never gotten all the fruits). Unfortunately, it would be silly if you could only get it once, since it wouldn't necessarily be on your "high score" score. (How 'bout showing our all-time achievements on the high scores list?) -- Michaela 6/26/00

An achievement if you make a capsule knock against the walls, or you make a capsule go through a transporter.

How about a prize for putting the umphee inside the shell?

EEK! BUGS! A few bugs I've spotted:

--If you already have a clam shell and you get two more clear capsules, smoke will appear but you won't get another shell.

--Sometimes if you have multiple layers of bricks, and the ball hits one of them, the bricks look like one is half overlapping one of them.

-- I also can't remember if the resume-game bonus level bug was supposed to be fixed in the latest release, but I'm still getting an occasional "Congratulations! You get Nothing!" from time to time. -- Michaela

Every time i get a achievement in a different level set and finish the game it erases the achievements i have already in every level set... Help me please???-nop

--i was playing today, and i paused the game and the screen flashed (like it was changing from macbrickout like normal) then all this stuff came up and macbrickout quit... what had happened was i was disconnected from the internet, and somehow when macbrickout is forced to 'lose focus' (of the os) it quit. what really ticks me off is that i had my best game ever going - 1.2 mil on level 21 or something and that's in the shareware w/o any bonus levels... is there anything you can do to prevent that from happening? - chimi

Might not be much of a bug, but if you have multiple balls of the same color on the screen, say 3 green ones, a capture capsule will make all of them stop if one is caught on the paddle. So far it's only happened to me with green balls, so i don't know if it'll happen with the other colors. I had it with 3 balls of different colors and pearl ball

:-D

Ideas

Oh no! MacBrickout has Competition! Someone just released Colibricks, a mac brick game. Bricks can be rotated to any angle, there are many different ball sizes, and it has a cheaper price! ($16) Hurry and put these features in MacBrickout!

How about special save capsules? Every time you caught one, you'd be able to save your game, and enter a name for it. That way, you could save more than 1 game at a time.

Hi. I LOVE making levels in MacBrickout. I'm making a level set that currently has 17 or 18 levels and 9 bonus levels. When I'm done, I hope to have 20--25 levels. When will you be able to download new levels???

Once I collect a set of great levels with cool custom textures and fun gameplay, I'll post them up on the site for download and add them to the high score area. -cw

I have a few suggestions for macbrickout

What does everybody think about these ideas?

-- A Rare Umphee capsule (clear caspsule w/ umphee running inside): if you catch it, another Umphee appears out of the sand. Uphees could come in different sizes, shapes, and colors.

--Special menu that lets you play a game that is a mix between pong and Mac Brickout

--Animal capsules that make different animals at the bottom of the screen and if you hit an animal it will turn into a ball

--Brick Ball: if you hit the Umphee with this, he will build a small brick wall. Every additional time you hit him he adds on to the wall.

--Bubble machine: instead of the bubbles appearing at the top of the screen, they come out of this machine. It runs around at the top of the screen on tracks.

--And hitting the bubble machine with a ball could change the rate at which it blew bubbles. -Ther�

--Bubble Ball: if you hit the Umphee with this, he crawls up to the top of the screen and blows giant bubbles. If you pop them you get lots of points.

--Evil ball: when using this ball another brick appears under the one you hit. Luckily lots of capsules fall with this ball.

---Rocket Umphee!; Once you get the pearl ball into an open clam shell, Sr. Umphee crawls out, builds a rocket ship, and blasts off to the Moon!!!!!! That'd be awesome!

You guys are getting silly! -CarsonWhitsett

--If you let a fruit fall, the umphee would eat it and grow larger! Unfortunutely, he shrinks back to normal size in a minute.

--'Smart' capsules that move away from your paddle!

--Magnet capsule that makes capsules and balls go towards your paddle.

--teleporters that move in circles, squares etc.

--ice ball that will freeze the umphee

--different things on the ground instead of sand like water where the umphee rides around in a boat!

--Beginner, Normal, and Hard settings. In hard the ball goes faster, but you get much more points.

I like the different umphee and rocket achievements. Except the red umphee should still be special and the bubble machine one. Except for the rocket one you should make the ball umphee go inside it.

You should get an achievement for getting all the achievements.

--What about a chocolate ball? Think about that...

--I think a chocolate ball would be interesting. If you get a chocolate capsule, the ball will turn into chocolate. If you get that ball into a clam, You'll get some achievement. Maybe if you get an R capsule, it will be a radio-active chocolate ball! Maybe if you do something special, it'll turn into dark chocolate and you'll get an achievement. Maybe if you make it into a radio-active chocolate ball, and the Umphee comes and eats it, you'll get something special! - Checkmate

Cheesepuffs falling... mmmmm...... - chimi

---Maybe you could add an excited capsule, it would look like a happy capsule just it would be a different color. These capsules would only fall when you had a "MULT" of 100+, so they would only fall in great numbers. Dodge these capsules to make them happy, if you caught one, the next 20 brick would give you X capsules, unless you finished a level first. -PJA

Mystery capsule: can give you any kind of capsule

--I think if you get more clear capsules after getting the clam the clam should get bigger so it's easier to hit. - chimi

On that idea, if you get two clear capsules in a row after you have a clam shell, something else, maybe a sea star, would appear in the sand. -PJA
Maybe catching two clear capsules in a row would give you a different colored shell each time, and the shell color would correspond to the color of the ball it spits out. Then you could get a "rainbow achievement" for making all the different colored balls. -Ther�

---Also some more ideas for capsules:

       - a capsule capsule- makes a warp tunnel lookig thing appear at the top of the screen and drops capsules one at a time.
       - a super bonus capsule- gives you as many bonus' as necessary untill you win the one you're on 
       - a super free ball capsule- every ball in sand = 1 free ball

You could make a chance ball- if you hit the umphee with this, he runs around shooting up all the balls in the sand and they go toward your amount of balls that you have. If, however, there weren't any balls in the sand and you hit the umphee, then your total amount of balls would go to 0 -PJA

-- Wait a second. You will find that you can play with the Umphee as a ball. It's really funny if you get to play around with the red Umphee as a ball. What you do is get a radioactive ball and a bomb ball in the same place in the sand. Then you blow it up with the Umphee walking around it. He turns red and plays hilarious music! By the way, what if something happens special if you get the Umphee ball into a clam? - Checkmate

---This happened to me once and the umphee turned into a pearl ball, but until you lose a ball after that, there is no umphee. ---PJA

I think that the font for the "Get Ready / Paused" Text should be another font. I like Comic Sans. -- Checkmate

-- How about Moving Bricks?

Umphee in an airplane that flies around the screen.

--I think the web site needs an area for level set created by people and people can submit a level set so the game stays new!

-- Also mabye when you end a game and you arent finished you should be able to save or... at least enter your highscore. especially in the mac version cause when we play at school and run out of time we have to lets all the balls drop to enter a score. -scott

Level Editor

The level editor needs a serious facelift (How so?) How: Have a windows version!

There needs to be a floating palette, with all the features that are in the tools menu (I thought of that but it would get annoying unless you had two monitors. You'd constantaly have to move the palette out of the way to see what you were doing).

The editor should be a whole seperate app! That way, the level you are working on could have a seperate window, and the palette right next to it--it wouldn't get in the way.

All the windows need to have a window bar and close boxes, like the Mac OS. There needs to be an undo command, & save AND save as options

More Ideas --Music? (Would make the game too large) You could make the music as a seperate download. A version of MacBrickout could have music, a smaller one no music.

For music, I think somebody already suggested this, you could have a patch file on your web page that updates MacBrickout to use music. Unfortunately, writing code for patching games looks kind of hard... - Checkmate

--I don't know if this bothers anyone else, but getting a high score seems to be more about getting really lucky with 3 and 6 capsules on top of the bricks than it is about beating levels and getting achievements. If you get a really good multi a few times, you can get a high score without beating nearly as many levels, and without getting nearly as many acheivements as your other games. Obviously the multi is important, but I don't think that it should be quite as much of an over bearing influence as it is now. Perhaps the multi should be weighted less while beating levels and getting achievements should be weighted more.

--more 3-D looking bricks (Easy enough to do. Just need some cool textures)

--Different powerups other than capsules

--Bubble capsule (clear capsule with bubbles popping inside) If you catch it, bubbles appear as a line across the sand. If you hit the ball on the sand, it'll hit off a bubble, bouncing it back into play. Once the ball hits a bubble, it pops. It'll ruin your clean sand bonus, however.

--Get a certain number of placebo capsules and you'll get something.

On that idea, what about a "bad side-effect" achievement? You'd get it by catching only placebos for an entire level (avoid other capsules), or maybe catching a certain number of placebos during the entire game. (It would be called "bad side-effect" achievement because the side-effect of catching only placebos is that nothing cool ever happens) -Ther�

--Moving bricks and gate switches, Making them harder to hit. You could set their path like you do with moving teleporters.

--Bricks in shapes other than squares and rectangles. I was seriously considering this right before I released 4.0. I finally talked myself out of it because it would have required a major rewrite of the brick engine, collision detection and texture drawing routines. It would have seriously delayed the release of the game. If I ever make a MacBrickout 5.0, I'll definitely do this -CarsonWhitsett

What if something happened when bubbles hit the umphee? Maybe they would pop (and you'd keep your clean sand bonus), maybe they would bounce back up and you could use them as a ball until they popped (the bubble ball would be much slower than a normal ball), or maybe the umphee would collect the bubbles and something would happen. -Ther�

I think the umphee could "eat" the capsules that you don't catch. Wide would make him grow bigger, narrow would make him grow smaller, the 3-capsule would make him multiply, catch would make balls stick to him temporarily instead of bouncing back up immediately, etc. -Ther�

Music [from above] --Music? (Would make the game too large) You could make the music as a seperate download.

I have some robust QuickTimeMusic code I could donate to the cause... Are you thinking of this kind of MIDI music? Or would you want it to play MP3's and stuff? -- BillKelly

Actually, I'm planning on adding music to my next game but am still researching how I'm going to implement it. I don't think I'm going with MP3 because it's file based and it's slow. Definitely MIDI (because I can add MIDI commands that my game can use to trigger music based events (like a projectile launching on every beat, etc.)). Haven't decided if I was going to use Quicktime Musical instruments or go through the tedious task of sampling my own sounds. Is your QuickTime? Music code fast? What features does it boast? - CarsonWhitsett

Well, it's reliable - checks all error conditions, recovers gracefully where possible or fails "silently" (pun intended I guess :) if something goes wrong. It was used in a game actually, though I can't say which in public. ;) -- BillKelly

I'm kinda thinking of using MODs for my next game. But I'll need to be able to change the tempo during gameplay. Don't know of MODs support that yet... --CarsonWhitsett

What are "MODS"? - Checkmate

MODs (Short for Modules) are sortof a combination MIDI + sampled-sound format... Rather than being composed of "pure notes" (and vibrato / pitch-bend, etc.) information like a MIDI file, the MOD files also contain the "instruments" or sampled sounds that are played or sequenced by that particular MOD file. I hope this makes some sense. For more info, see: http://www.uni-giessen.de/faq/archiv/sound-file-format.mod-faq.part1-2/msg00000.html -- BillKelly

Shareware Version i've noticed a couple of things with this game (and i have the shareware version) - the mult doesn't go above 300 and i don't know how to post high scores - is there some secret to it? - chimi

Have you registered? You can't post high scores unless you have the registered version. Also, Mult never goes above 300, registered or not.

ok cool, (must register) - because i have a mania levels score that would at least fit on the monthly high scores list (i think it's around 3.1 mil), it'd be nice if the mult went higher than 300 - chimi

Windows with the PC version, can that run over network (i have two PCs)? also, if it can run over network, will the register code (or whatever it is) work?

another thing - will the windows version have the level editor? (Ever???)

 - matt

WinBrickout (and MacBrickout) will not run over a network. Initially, WinBrickout will not have the level editor.

I just started playing WinBrickout. Really cool game!!!! I am stumped on completing Level 21 (Side Chambers). Any/all hints would be appreciated. Thanks

Level Editor Sometime, PLEASE! (Maybe some of us WinBrickout fans could even help if its not happening...)

A couple of bugs On the Side Chambers (Standard Level) and The Eye (Mania) (and another I can't remember which the moving wormholes often freeze - preventing completion of the level.

A work around was to exit the game and resume - this allows completion of the level - but I found that all the achievments prior to this do not appear on the high score (but do on the total achievements. Peter

Another bug When I get a ball into the clam shell, I have tried to pause the game (version 4.1 on an iMac running OS 9). Unfortunately, when I hit the space bar to resume play, the bubbles will start coming down and it seems "normal," but my ball *never* comes out of the clam shell. The only thing I can do is to force quit, and I've lost several high scores because of this. Anyone else have this problem? Is there a workaround? -Kim

I had this happen, too, Kim, and after trying all sorts of things, ended up just hitting a few keys -- wish I knew exactly which ones, but it was with my left hand and they were keys like "S", "D", "F", etc. -- and then all of a sudden the ball came out of the shell, and I could continue the game! I was glad, because I had a pretty good score going, and didn't want to have to trash it to get out of what seemed like an endless rain of bubbles with nothing else happening on the screen.

Bug in the Mania Game Puzzle Bonus Level

Weird bug -- I just got to the highest bonus level I've ever reached in Mania Levels -- it's called "Puzzle," and oh, it's hard! Anyway, I managed to get two balls (my only balls) into the gated area to the right that is surrounded by gold bricks. I didn't mean to have this happen, but it did. Well, I couldn't get out of that for *anything*. The balls started going faster and faster, but I couldn't do a darned thing to lose that bonus level so I could go on to try it again (I had just caught a few bonus capsules). It was so depressing because I had to quit the game entirely. I had tried hitting various keys but that didn't work. I also tried pausing and then quitting and then coming into the game again, but that didn't work. Has anyone else had this happen?? What a bummer!! My highest bonus levels ever!!

OK, I just had this darned thing happen again -- there is some sort of bug in the puzzle level for version 4.1 for the Mac -- it's so frustrating; you can't lose *or* win the bonus level once your balls get stuck, you just have to quit and lose the game!! Anyone else know a way out of this, or have clues about how to approach the puzzle bonus level to avoid this? Thanks -- !

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have version 5.0 running on Mac OS X on a PowerMac. Bugs I've spotted.... No fruit appears in the "Over the Top" levels in standard levels. It makes the fruit bang sound when I catch the fruit capsule, but no fruit appears in the upper right (or anywhere). It doesn't seem to be invisible either. Also, I cannot seems to get the Secret menu (which I think contains the level editor) even though I have won in all versions. ...Liz

Help! How can you release a "stuck" ball. On several occasions I have gotten a ball stuck in an indestructible block section of the puzzle bonus level in the Mania version. I have to end the game since there is no way to get past this, at least no way I know of. Is there a way to get the ball out? Or to just lose that level to move on with the game?

Sharon, 9/26/07

Hmmm. I'll look into it. Balls should never get stuck -CW

              ------

Continued from above post, 2 years later!! --- This continues to happen, a ball gets stuck in a section surrounded by gold bricks and there is no way out without quitting the game... very frustrating!

Sharon 9/1/09

Aloha CW this is the best game ever. I have a Powermac G5 Quad, 30 in screen with Tiger and this is awesome. NO other video game need apply... period. What has happened is whilst playing in the bonus levels in 3.O it just drop out of the program and reset me to guest. I then Reopen the game and I am the guest and my high scores are gone, only twice this has happened. I was playing iTunes only as well. Also when I changed the screen dims back and forth from full screen to a lower size it dropped out (quit) of the program. I didnt get an error to inform apple either. So maybe its the screen size 2560x1600 conflict? I restarted the computer and still no old scores. ??????? mahalo

 Reid

11\09\07

Hi- yellow ball stuck in 'in order' bonus level (the one with all the green bricks) between gold bricks. Help! can't get out other than to end game. What do I do? 11/11/07 thanks, Lisa

Carson it's still happening! Mania In order bonus level stuck gold ball no escape w/o ending the game!

Shouldn't you have fixed this already?

Matt 2/15/09

CW: Yes I should have fixed this already. I think I know what might be happening. I'll take another stab at taking another stab at looking at it.... 9/2/2009

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