Playable Now!!!! https://astro9811.itch.io/alien-annihilation
Annihilate Aliens! Power up your ship! Enjoy this casual endless runner game built off of Space Invaders! Start as a humble cyan ship constructed to the original Space Invader ship standards and upgrade to a battleship. Power-Ups include classic upgrades such as increased bullet damage, extra lives, increased bullet capacity, and boosted speed. Additionally, your ship's internal guns can be upgraded to fire as fast as a gatling gun to maybe even a laser cannon. Finally, there are the additions of newer unconventional power-ups. First, you have the opportunity to break free from the left-right movement of Space Invaders and fly in all directions. Second, you have the ingenius mechanism to triple your shots which triple your alien annihilation! And, finally, you have access to the mysterious Deus Bullets that strike down anything they touch.
- Use arrow keys to move
- Press/Hold space to shoot
- Press P during game to pull up power-up menu
- Press Q or ESC to quit the game
- Python 3.9.6 (Using older version because Python 3.10.5 does not support Pygame as of making this game) To download Python, go to https://www.python.org/downloads/ to download Python
- Pygame 2.1.2
To download Pygame, go to your terminal and type
pip install pygame
Afterwards, simply run the program and a 1000 by 750 window will pop up and play the game.
I've always wanted to make my own game from scratch even if it would be simple game, and this is my official first attempt. Yes, it would have been easier with a dedicated game engine, but from scratch means from scratch so I used Pygame exclusively. What separates this game from the other Space Invader clones? First, this project is more complex than the typical build-your-first-game Space Invaders, as it utilizes timers to for sprite animations and frame rate independent movement of characters. Furthermore, the concept of the game has also changed to be a more casual endless runner game. Finally, there is a sleek power-up menu, intro screen, and more. All of this totaling to over 1500 lines of code. While the code was much cleaner at the start, multiple bug fixes lines of code later left behind a messy but full operational game. The code could definitely be more efficiently written, but that will be something to look for in the future!
Takeaways: With this project, I've grown an appreciation for game developers everywhere. Programming this gave a lot of practice for me with Git, Pygame, OOP, and killer graphic design Photoshop skills on the fly. The big takeaway I have is that it is 100% true that code gets ridiculously harder to work with the longer it is. I remember fixing early-stage bugs with a few lines, only for those to be made into a joke by late-stage bugs which usually involved multiple fixes in all parts of the program.
Cheers!
Hey, don't cheat!
What, you want to see all the upgrades but don't have time to play the game?
Fine...........
Go to the Credits screen.
Click the 5th credit bubble three times, the 4rd credit bubble two times, the 2nd credit bubble four times, and the 1st bubble once.
You might notice a change, specifically 999,999 Space Credits you now have.....
SHHHHH don't tell anyone I told you this.....