My Little Adventure with “Pal Baseball”
So, I had this idea buzzing in my head for a while: “pal baseball.” Sounds a bit silly, right? But I just wanted to make something simple, something fun, maybe something I could even share with a few friends. It wasn’t about making the next big hit game, not at all. Just a little project to get my hands dirty.
The whole thing started, as these things often do, from just messing around. I was thinking about those really simple, old-school games and how charming they could be. And baseball, well, it’s got a straightforward appeal. The “pal” part? I envisioned cute, quirky characters, not super realistic players. More like little buddies playing a game.
Figuring Out the Basics
First off, I had to decide what this “pal baseball” would even look like. I’m no pro game developer, so I knew I had to keep it incredibly simple. My grand plan was something like this:
- A pitcher “pal”: Throws the ball.
- A batter “pal”: Tries to hit the ball.
- Super simple controls: Maybe just one button to swing.
- Basic outcome: Hit or miss. Maybe a home run if you hit it just right.
That was it. No complex rules, no running bases animations, nothing fancy. Just the core action. I thought about maybe using some super basic graphics, like pixel art, or even just shapes. The key was “simple.”
Getting Started: The First Innings
I decided to try and make a really basic version using some simple web stuff. Just to see if I could even get a ball to move and a bat to swing. My first step was just getting a circle (the ball) to move towards another shape (the bat). Sounds easy, but let me tell you, getting that timing to feel even remotely okay took a surprising amount of tweaking.
Then came the “swing.” I made it so when I pressed a key, the “bat” would quickly change its angle or position. The tricky part was detecting if the bat actually “hit” the ball. Lots of trial and error there. For a while, the bat would swing right through the ball, or the ball would just ignore the bat completely. It was a bit frustrating, to be honest.
I remember one evening I spent a good couple of hours just trying to get the hit detection to feel less… random. Sometimes it felt like I hit it perfectly, and nothing. Other times, a wild swing would somehow connect. Classic beginner struggles, I guess.
Introducing the “Pals” (Sort Of)
Once I had a somewhat working pitch-and-hit mechanic, I thought about the “pals.” I wasn’t going for complex AI. Not at all. For the pitcher “pal,” I just made the ball throw at slightly different speeds and heights, randomly. It wasn’t smart, but it added a tiny bit of unpredictability.
For the batter “pal” (which was essentially the player), it was all about that single button press. The challenge was making it feel like you had some control, even with such a simple system. I played around with the idea of different “pal” characters having slightly different bat sizes or swing speeds, but I decided to keep it even simpler for this first attempt. Maybe something for later, I thought.
What I Ended Up With
So, after a bit of tinkering, what did I have? Well, “pal baseball” turned out to be a very, very basic little thing. You click, the bat swings. Sometimes you hit the ball, sometimes you don’t. The “pals” were just simple shapes on the screen. There wasn’t much of a “game” in terms of score or innings, more like a digital toy.
Was it a masterpiece? Absolutely not. Was it fun to make? Mostly, yeah. There were those annoying moments, for sure, when things just wouldn’t work. But getting that first successful “hit” after struggling with the code felt pretty good.
I learned a lot about breaking a problem down into tiny pieces. And I learned that even the simplest ideas can be trickier to implement than you first think. It wasn’t really about the baseball, or even the “pals” in the end. It was more about the process of trying to create something, even something small and silly, from scratch. And you know what? I might just go back and add those different “pal” characters one of these days. We’ll see.
