I Ran Out of Creative Titles – Amina’s Game

After watching some of the Coding Train’s (Dan Shiffman) YouTube tutorials on OOP, I took my inspiration for the game from this purple rain. Except that instead of the falling droplets I decided to make falling balls of random colors, and the whole trick of the game is to catch all of them with a net.

I started by creating a class for the ball object, along with the functions to initialize the objects, make them fall, create a net, and check if the ball is caught by the net.

One of the things that I was not too sure about is whether I should have had my net as a separate class or a part of the Ball class. I chose to go with the latter, because it allowed me to have functions inside of one class that checked the position and the catch:

void makeNet() {
    fill(0);
    rectMode(CENTER);
    rect(posX, posY, netWidth, radiusX);
  }
  
  void checkNet() {
    if (locX + radiusX >= posX 
    && locX + radiusX <= posX + netWidth 
    && locY + radiusY == posY) {
      locX = -200;
      score++;
    }
  }

My second challenge was to connect the keyPressed() function to the class for the net to move. I was a bit confused about whether to make it a part of the class functions or let it be a function outside the class, so I started to experiment. Being a part of the Ball class, the function did not work properly when I pressed the necessary keys, so I let it be outside the class. However, that chunk of code still seems a bit inefficient to me so far:

void keyPressed() {
   if (keyPressed) {
     
    for(int i = 0; i < balls.length; i++){
      if (key == 'a'){
        balls[i].posX -= 100;
      }
      
      if (key == 'd'){
        balls[i].posX += 100;
      }
     }
   }
}

One of my main intentions for this game was to display the score, which is calculated based on the number of balls caught, on the console. However, I still could not figure out the best way to do it:

print(balls[i].score);

There is room for improvement in this code, so I hope to figure out by the end of the week!

// Declare the object class
class Ball {
  float radiusX, radiusY, locX, locY;
  color ballColor;
  int score;
  float posX, posY;
  float netWidth = 250;
  
  // Constructor 
  Ball () {
    radiusX = 50;
    radiusY = 50;
    locX = random(10, width-10);
    locY = random(height);
    ballColor = color(random(255), random(255), random(255));
    posX = width/2;
    posY = height-10;
  }
  
  // Make the object
  void makeBall() {
    fill(ballColor);
    stroke(1);
    ellipse(locX, locY, radiusX, radiusY);
  }
  
  // Updating location of the object
  void falling() {
    locY += 1;
    
    if (locY > height+radiusY/2) {
      locY = -radiusY*2;
    }
  }
  
  // Make the net
   void makeNet() {
    fill(0);
    rectMode(CENTER);
    rect(posX, posY, netWidth, radiusX);
  }
  
  // Check if the object is in the net
  void checkNet() {
    if (locX + radiusX >= posX 
    && locX + radiusX <= posX + netWidth 
    && locY + radiusY == posY) {
      locX = -200;
      score++;
    }
  }  
}


// Initialize an array of objects
Ball[] balls;



void setup(){
  size(1280, 720);
  // Put objects in the array
  balls = new Ball[10];
  for(int i = 0; i < balls.length; i++){
    balls[i] = new Ball();
  }
}

// Display and run the game
void draw(){
  background(255);
  for(int i = 0; i < balls.length; i++){
     balls[i].makeBall();
     balls[i].falling();
     balls[i].makeNet();
     balls[i].checkNet();
     print(balls[i].score);
  }
}

// Move the net if the keys are pressed
void keyPressed() {
   if (keyPressed) {
     
    for(int i = 0; i < balls.length; i++){
      if (key == 'a'){
        balls[i].posX -= 100;
      }
      
      if (key == 'd'){
        balls[i].posX += 100;
      }
     }
   }
}

You can watch the demo here: