Bouncy Ball v2.4

---Credits---
@Griffpatch for the ball physics engine
@Griffpatch for the scrolling background
@Rasgola28 for somewhat brutal motivation
@Rasgola28 for making me set a deadline
@Pandyfims for very small but still motivation. I wouldn't have put him here but he insisted on it.
@ThisTextWasRemovedBy for spotting a flaw with the win trigger that allowed a sub-1-minute run.
Me for everything else

---Development story---
Well, this was quite the adventure.

I started Bouncy Ball approximately 15 months ago. The project was originally going to be much smaller than the ending size. It turned out that the scope increased as I got better at coding and game design. I never imagined that I would get this far in the project.

This is by far my most ambitious project. 1,500 blocks of code are not small by any measure. And the map is just... huge. There are 184 different costumes required to build the level, which, in classic 4Mahoney21 style, are all completely black and undecorated. There is also a grand total of 20 different sprites, plus they aren't just copies of each other like most beginners seem to do. Do you really need a new object for EVERY PELLET IN A PACMAN GAME!?!?

I hope not.

At first, it was intended to be a small game. I had a basic engine going with simple scrolling. Note: Simple scrolling makes the game seem incredibly jerky, causing a few headaches. I didn't know how to remedy that, so I stuck with it and started on level design.

Ugh, level design. I often have trouble designing good difficulty curves, so this was an extreme nightmare. I was constantly tweaking and prodding at the level to make it seem fair. I've gotten told that in a good game, every mistake should feel like the player messed up. High-level game design is not easy.

After all of this, I was about 8 months into the project. That means procrastination time.

I worked off and on for multiple months, adding small touches like the background, timer, pause button, etc. That occurred for about 4 months. And then I went into true procrastination. Nothing happened except simply playing the game. Which doesn't actually get anything done.

It took multiple things to get me back on track. First, @HestiaHearth2504 shared how she lost motivation for her project and described it deeply. I realized that I had the exact same thing happening. I decided that I had to complete it, and I could have updates instead of sharing all the features at once.

Second, @Rasgola28, an in-person friend and a fellow band kid (although a woodwind, shame on him), helped out. He kept mentioning the idle 95% on my profile and asked when it would come out. I said February 10th, but I hit bedtime before I could put the finishing touches on it. Sorry for it being a day late.

That's it. This was quite the journey, and it's not over. See you in the next version.

Alright, it's July 2023 4Mahoney21 here. I've just finished v2.0, and I feel like there are some things to add here.

First, I mentioned to one of my friends how my battery always seemed to drain because of this game. He doesn't have an account (As far as I know), and I don't want to give away his name... I'll just say that he's in the D&D club at school, he's German, and he is good at science. That should be enough for anyone that knows him.

Anyway, the conversation that sparked it went like this:
Me: "Oh - my battery is already at 25% percent and we're only halfway through the school day. Maybe I shouldn't have played it before school started." Him: "Why is it taking so much battery?" Me: "I don't know." Him: How many scripts are you running?" Me: "About 200." Him: "THAT MIGHT BE WHY!"

So fundamentally, each part of the level was each running a script, and there was almost 175 of them. I shaved that down to 9. The scripts are significantly more complicated now, but it still should work.

Anyway, that's about it. I'm not sure if the next version will be 2.1 or 3.0, but either way, see you in the next version. Edit: It was 2.1