In this chapter we will discuss the classic brick breaking game. Dating back to the early days of Atari, this game is a wonderful way to start exploring physics engines, because there aren't too many objects moving at the same time. If you are not familiar with this game, it is fairly easy to explain. The player controls a paddle at the bottom of the screen that can move side-to-side. The top portion of the screen has a number of bricks in fixed positions. There is a small ball bouncing around, and the player's job is to break all of the bricks without letting the ball past the paddle. Of course, the ball bounces around everywhere, so there are actually quite a lot of physics-based calculations needed to make it work.
Let's take a look at the final game:
