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Bugs:Blast Thru

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This page details bugs of Blast Thru.

Game Logic Flaws

Crashing the game from the menu

After the game has been started, the "Return to Game" button is correctly invisible and Escape cannot return to any paused game, as none has been started yet. However, going to the Instructions screen and leaving it makes the "Return to Game" button visible, even though there is no game active. Clicking this button or pressing Escape to return to this non-existent game crashes the game completely.

Extra life removes power-up effects

Collecting the rare extra life also erroneously removes the following effects caused by other power-ups:

  • Brick-lowering when a ball hits the paddle
  • Magnets keeping the balls on the paddle
  • Any rockets or traction beam left
  • Possible ability of balls to go through bricks

This is done on purpose if one checks the code executing the extra life powerup (and cheat) as it clears the special level state flags, though the behavior is highly unexpected by a player.

Scores get multiplied by count of balls hitting the brick in the same frame

When having more than one ball flying at the same X or Y coordinate, and hitting a brick with them, the score is multiplied by that number of balls hitting the brick in one frame (e.g., having two balls hitting a brick at once gives twice the points, even though it was a one-hit brick). Bricks which require more than one hit have their status decremented by that number of balls (e.g., a fully-healthy three-hit iron brick is removed immediately if 3 or more balls hit it at once), and all balls bounce back. However, if fireballs are hitting the brick, the second and every following ball just continues to fly through the brick destroyed by the first ball.

Ball split combinations cause wrong number of balls

When collecting a power-up which splits your ball in 4, and losing two specific balls of those 4, and then collecting a power-up which splits the remaining balls into 2, one ball erroneously splits into 3, resulting in 5 balls onscreen.

Ball going through bricks destroys bricks on other side of level

When a brick is hit on the rightmost or leftmost pixel of the level, a ball with the ability to destroy bricks by running through them can destroy bricks on the opposite side of the level when hitting a wall (e.g., hitting some bricks on the very right side of the level will destroy bricks in the next row on the left side).

Golden brick status not lowered with bricks

The indestructible golden bricks are actually destructible after ~20 hits. The status for each brick is stored for the position of a brick in the level. If the bad brick-lowering power-up is collected, this status is not moved down with the bricks when the ball hits the paddle (e.g., if you hit a golden brick 19 times and it is about to get destroyed on the next hit, but is lowered before, it has to be hit another 20 times again; the exception is if there's another golden brick below it, which would pass its status now to the golden brick above).

Bricks are lowered more than once at one paddle hit

If a ball is caught by the paddle while it was already halfway below the paddle height, and the bad brick-lowering power-up is in effect, bricks will be lowered more than once immediately, since the game corrects the ball position to be on top of the paddle pixel by pixel, but lowers the bricks one row for each pixel (e.g., catching the ball while it is already 4 pixels lower than the paddle surface, the bricks are lowered 4 times instead of once).

Level end is not checked every frame

The game calculates whether all bricks were destroyed to go to the next level every frame, but only triggers the move every 8th frame (apparently to allow some frames to draw the empty area and play effects that occurred from destroying the last brick). This allows the ball to be lost between destroying the last brick and the next trigger frame if moving fast enough. The player loses a life and the death fade-out is played, returning to the empty level just to fade it out again on the next trigger frame to finally go to the next level.

Visual Artifacts

Level design flaws

Some levels being obviously symmetric versions of themselves have quite a few bugs on one of their mirrored sides. This is mostly noticeable in Level 2, where the fire ring does not fully go around the smiley (which might have been done to keep the fire chain-effect, since this searches for bricks only in a specific direction in the level array). Also, there are two yellow bricks near the mouth being darker on only one side for no reason.

Paddle enlargement animation goes out of bounds

Normally, when collecting the paddle enlargement power-up, the paddle is adjusted to still stay onscreen. The computer demo AI however can overcome this feature, and make the paddle enlarge outside of the walls on the left and right on specific occasions.

Two fade outs to high score after completing all levels

After finishing all 40 levels (10 in the shareware version), the game fades over white instead of black to the high score table. However, a black fade is previously done, and an additional white fade afterwards, looking bad as the last level screen becomes visible again for a short time.

Not enough space for lives

If you get an excessive number of extra lives, they will start to overlap the score on the left. This isn't really possible without cheating or getting very lucky, though.