Blast Thru

A Break-Out style game with bonus power-ups that change the game experience for the better or for the worse. It also has a level editor.

Unused Graphics
The game data file "ball.glo" contains the following images which remain unused in the final game:

The old title (filename "bibleballc.png") under which the game was developed reads "Bible Ball". Since Rocksolid Software developed "games for christians" this game was also planned to show some Bible verses at the start of each level (s. below for some verses which remain in the data file but are never seen). Funny enough: The new logo has the filename "bibleball.png", without the c.



The file "wincorner.png" contains GUI parts which were probably meant to be used for a level selection list in the editor and a scrollbar needed for such a list. However, the final editor only contains a textbox in which the level name can be entered.



Since Blast Thru uses the same engine as the other Rocksolid Game "Adventures with Chickens", a similar pause screen was probably used first, which just shows this pause string in the middle of the screen. In the final version, the main menu is opened with a "Return to game" button. Filename "paused.png".



This medium size font contains lower case letters but is never used anywhere. The filename is "fontlarge2.png" and the corresponding letter mapping table also still exists in the game data file.

Unused Sounds
The sound "chompgo.wav" is never used in game. It may have been planned to be played right after the paddle-eating chomp teeth start moving from the left.

Debugging features
The developer was able to set up a mode in which the game immediately crashes to log file when the ball hit the paddle. Into the logfile, a line "Zone: %n" was written, where %n was replaced with the number describing the side on which the ball hit the paddle, with which its new moving direction will be calculated eventually. This can be only reactivated through disassembling.

Level File Abuse
The in-game editor does not allow editing the top and bottom most rows of bricks to avoid bricks being placed over the game score and life numbers or creation of weird levels with bricks in the height of the paddle. However, the level files can be opened inside a hex editor and these rows can be filled with any bricks.

Changeable Settings
In the main directory there is a file called bt.ini where the player can change a number of settings, two of which cannot normally be changed. Changing "gsilence" from "off" to "on" allows the player to play the game without any music or sound. This was used internally by the game if it couldn't start up often enough (it also counts the number of game starts in "runcount" and the success in "runsuccess") - and then asks the player to disable sound output if that could be the problem.

Changing "gshowframerate" from "off" to "on" will make the game show the framerate at the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Level Skip
During a game, pressing Alt+H will bring up a cheat menu where the player can enter codes and submit them with enter. Typing in "inc me" will cause the game to skip a level. There are also a lot of other cheats, one skipping to the game finishing sequence ("i never prosper").

Quotes from the Bible
In the main directory the file 'ball.glo' stores most of the games assets. One of the files is unused and is called 'verses.txt'. It contains a number of quotes from the New Testament. Verses from the Bible are used in RockSolid Software's game Adventures with Chickens.

rom_8:1;Therefore there is now no comdemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of Life set me free from the law of sin and death. (The original doesn't have a line break after the first comma, but one has been added for viewing purposes) rom_8:16;The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. joh_9:39;And Jesus said "For judgement I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see may become blind."

Unused Music
Inside of the ball.glo file is a seemingly unused song with the filename Exmil.mds. It could have been used as an "Excellent!" screen showing when the player finished all 40 levels - like in Adventures with Chickens which also used such a short flourish after all levels were completed.