Play the MVP at http://caveinvaders.com or https://michaelmrose.github.io/caveInvaders/
- JavaScript
- CSS
- HTML
Riffing off “Space Invaders” a simple game made of incredibly simple pixel graphics where you spawn as a ship adjacent to a base in the heart of a winding cave. Alien invaders continually spawn at increasing speeds at random points towards the periphery and an proceed immediately towards your home base. If they reach your base they immediately explode ending the game. Score points for each alien killed before you yourself bite the dust.
Aliens proceed directly towards base.
The players weapon fires much faster than the alien
If the player comes within a certain number of spaces of the alien it will fire its weapon at the player. If another alien in the way it wont fire.
The player earns point for each alien destroyed until the aliens destroy the base.
The internal tick of the game clock is 1/30th of a second with different actions taking different number of ticks to actuate tuned to make the game difficult but feasible. In order to make it possible to handle many alies they both move slower and take longer to recharge their weapon
At game beginning a pixel art screen is shown with instructions. Last of which is press space to start.
Incredibly simple units are represented by a singular block on the map of different colors.
Empty Space: Black
Rock: Brown/Maroon
Player: Blue
Base: Gold
Alien: Dark Green
Alien Shot: Yellow
Player Shot: Red
visible screen is approx 198x196 blocks with each block taking an equal portion of the screen.
At Game End the screen flashes white and shows a score and rating based on number of aliens slain.
WASD: Move that direction at the speed provided Arrows: Left/Right Rotates and Up/Down go forward and backward space fire weapon P Pause Escape Reset
- Game turns out to be too complicated to implement within time-frame
- Getting too bogged down in making extra items instead of focusing on MPV functionality
- Javascript rendering isn’t fast enough
Each alien proceed only up and down not diagonally if it encounters a wall space it stops within 3 spaces of the wall and fires it’s weapon. It is only able to fire every so many ticks. Each shot upon impacting the wall dissolves that wall space impacted and each one touching turning it into traversable space. When no wall is within 5 spaces it continues to advance until a wall is again within 3 spaces.
The players weapon is much faster than the alien but does not destroy walls thus the player is obligated to use the passages or the holes drilled by aliens to traverse the map and destroy the aliens.
Make the cave system much larger than your single screen view.
Map can be arbitrarily large scrolling is accomplished by keeping the player in the center of the screen and drawing a different part of the canvas at a given time. Happenings off screen need to happen but only the blocks on screen should be drawn essentially around 50x50 blocks or 2500 elements around 30 frames per second.
Have aliens path through caves when it would be shorter than boring through or semi randomly to add variety
- large (2x2)bomb aliens that explode if the player gets within some number of spaces taking out a large amount of space. Rather than being instant this could be on a fuse allowing the player to dance around the perimeter and eliminate the alien and cause it to take out its fellows. Flash between green and white to indicate impending explosion. Speed 1 sq every 4 ticks/25
- fast aliens that can’t shoot or dig but move faster than the player 1 sq per 2 ticks/50
- slow large (2x2)pod aliens that can dig and shoot that turn into multiple regular aliens when shot.
Instead of having shots kill have it remove hp with differing number of hp per entity
- Faster movement
- Life restoration
- Faster shooting
Don’t show areas the player can’t see to heighten tension
used to indicate a upcoming alien breakthrough
fast shot and digging weapon