Time For a New XNA Project

Well I've finished what I'm doing on my first card game in XNA. I'm not claiming it's a fun game, or that playable, but it has rules, 2D sprites, mouse control, scoring, and a win condition.

Now I want to move on to something with a little more action. I still think that the Spacewars 3D project is a little beyond me right now though. I've gone through the video tutorials and followed them so I can move a 3D model on the screen, but I've yet to get the 3D co-ordinate system straight in my head and can't quite visualise it enough. I'm sure that will come in time though.

I'm not going to be terribly original in my next game idea. It seems everyone needs to write a version in XNA: like a rite of passage or something. I am, of course, talking about Pong--that age old game from the 70s that started it all.

It's an advance on my card game because (among other things) it's 2 player, it has moving sprites on screen, I'll need to detect collisions between bats and ball, and it contains some rudimentary physics to calculate how the ball should bounce from the bat and walls.

It also has plenty of opportunities for additions later. I could:

1. add AI to make it a single player game
2. add network play (I have no idea if XNA helps with this at all)
3. have a 4 player version with 2 bats on either side for a doubles game
4. allow the bats to be moved left and right instead of just up and down
5. allow players to set colours and control preferences
   

So it should be more of a real game. Certainly seems more substantial than a card game which I could really have written as a standard Winforms application.

Maybe after this I could create a 3D Pong. I know its been done before as well (I think the version on kontraband.com is highly addictive), but it might be an easier starting point than the full Spacewars project.