Pong 🏓

Make the classic game

First we'll make a Ball sprite. At the start it should go to the center then point in a random direction. While the game is going it should move and bounce if it hits an edge.

Next we'll make two sprites to be paddles. The first sprite Player will be our player's paddle and it will move according to the mouse. When the game starts we will put the paddle on the left side of the screen. While the game is being played we will repeatedly set the paddle y position to the mouse's y position

The second sprite Bot will be our bot's paddle. When the game start we will put the paddle on the right side of the screen.

To help the bot follow the ball we will create a variable to track the ball's position. This variable should exist for all sprites and we will set it to the ball's y position when the Ball sprite moves.

The Bot sprite can then follow the Ball sprite like so.

We have a ball that bounces around the screen and paddles that move. Next we need to make the ball bounce off the paddles. Let's add a section in the forever block of our Ball sprite to point in the direction of a bounce if the ball touches either paddle.

Notice that nothing happens when a player misses the ball. Next we'll create two goal sprites called Player Goal and Bot Goal to help us determine when a player scores. Place the Player Goal sprite on the left side of the screen behind the Player. Make sure it covers the whole height of the screen, then do the same on the right side of the screen for the Bot Goal sprite.

We're also going to introduce two new variables called Player Score and Bot Score. Make sure they are checked in the block palette so that you can position the scores on screen for the players to see. Finally, we can add logic to the Ball sprite to increment the score when a player scores a goal. We will put it right after the section where we check if the ball is touching a player.

Press the green flag to play the game and notice what happens when either player scores a goal. The score goes up by more than 1! That is because the forever loop is repeating multiple times while the ball is still touching the goal. We can fix this by resetting the ball to the center of the screen once someone has scored a point.