Pokemon + Ping Pong = Pokemon Pong

Meet Ryan C.! Like Ryan S., he works with instructor Michael L. as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. Ryan C.’s a Portal 2 fan now building his own challenges in Construct 2, a development tool for web-based games. His most recent creation – Pokemon Pong!

Ping Pong’s simplicity makes it a great project option for developers-in-training. To build his special Pokemon Pong version, with a Pokeball in place of a regular Ping Pong ball, Ryan first dug up images of a paddle and a Pokeball and added them to his empty gaming environment, where Construct 2 displayed the graphics as props. While both paddles derive from the same image, Ryan edited a copy of the image to change the right-hand paddle from red to green. (All the better to tell the sides apart!) He then determined how these objects, the paddle and the Pokeball, will operate within the game. Ryan set boundaries on the paddles’ range of motion to ensure they never go off-screen, and instructed the Pokeball to rebound off the red paddle, the green paddle, and the upper and lower walls. Elsewhere, goals and a scoring system track wins and losses. Basic game functionality, complete! Watch the video to see Player 1 score a point.

Ryan didn’t stop at basic game functionality, however. There’s such a thing as style! So he matched sound effects – like the smack of a ball striking a paddle – with events, such as a rebound. The sounds add realism as well as provide feedback for the player. The finishing touch? Background music for an upbeat gaming ambience!

Cool game, Ryan! Thanks for sharing it with us. Good luck as you reach the finish line of Portal 2, and keep building games of your own! We’d love to play them.