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pushbutton. The ball may be served whenever de-
sired, by pressing the flashing red LED pushbutton.
Before serving the ball, the Progressive Breakout
playfield contains two 4
X
13 brick walls (one blue and
the other green). The blue brick wall, which consists of
52 hricks,-isatthe top. Then occurs a space equivalent
to this wall. In the middle of the screen is a green
brick wall consisting of 52 bricks.
The brick walls move or "scroll" toward the pad-
dle at a rate determined by the number of hits on the
ball. As the bricks are knocked out and the walls
progressively creep up on the player's paddle, new
brides enter the playfield at a progressively faster
rate; four rows of bricks are always separated by four
rows of blanks.
As the brick walls scroll down, their colors
change (see Figure 2-9) which indicates a new point
score for that brick at that instant of time. There are
four different colors of bricks, each color with a dif-
ferent score value. The blue bricks are worth 7 points
when struck by the ball, 5 points for each orange
brick, 3 points for each green brick and 1 point for
each yellow brick. See Table 2-3 for a quick and easy
reference. Bricks that scroll off the bottom of the
screen are lost and are not counted toward or against
the player's score.
Table 2-3
Progressive Breakout Scoring Chart
Color
Points per Brick
blue
7
orange
5
green
3
yellow
1
The maximum attainable score for progressive
Breakout is infinite.
Ball Speed
Besides the slowest ball speed already described
(right after the serve), there are three possible speed-ups.
The first speed-up after the serve occurs on the 4th hit,
and a second faster speed-up occurs on the 8th hit. The
third occurs after the 12th hit and the fourth occurs
when a highpoint (either a 5- or 7-point) brick is hit,
regardless of previous speed. Ball speed is restored to
the slowest value at the beginning of each serve.
Ball Direction
When the ball intercepts the paddle it will re-
bound in any of four directions, depending on which
portion of the paddle was hit (see Figure 2-10). This is
still the case after the paddle has been reduced to half
its normal size. Note that the ball is not allowed to
move in a direction perpendicular to the front surface
of the paddle or perpendicular to the edge of the
paddle. These directions change with the number of
hits of the ball, just like the ball speed changes occur
at the 4th, 8th and 12th ball hits.
BALL DIRECTIONS
NOTES:
1. Angle of rebound is determined by which por-
tion of the paddle that the ball hits. The ball's
angle of incidence is irrelevant.
2. The angles of rebound become more perpen-
dicular as ball speed increases.
3. The diagram above, with four sections, still
applies after paddle width has been reduced to
half the normal value.
Figure 2-10.
Diagram of Ball Rebounds off Paddle
The player must hitthe ball first, otherwise bricks
cannot be knocked out, and the ball will pass through
all the bricks in its path. The ball with also pass
through any bricks if
it
has not gone at least four rows
from the last brick hit, and not hit the paddle or the
uppermost boundary at the top of the screen.
Immediately on hitting the uppermost boundary
at the top of the screen the paddle(s) will reduce to
half its width until the next serve if any.
2-15
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