Objective/Summary of the game
For the final I decided to make an outer space themed game. The object of the game is to save the alien ship by guiding it out of our solar system. The problem is that each planet you come across, more asteroids appear. You control the alien character with the arrow keys and navigate it to the portals. The portals make you jump to the next planet. Once you get passed Pluto you win. You start with 5 Lives, each time you get hit by an asteroid you lose a life and your brought back to start on that particular level. Be on the lookout for a Gold Star that floats around, If you collide into it, you gain 5 more lives.
My Thoughts/ Behind the Scenes/ Problems Faced
I really became fascinated by Space after I watched the movie "Interstellar" which is now my favorite movie. The movie is set in a time where Earth is dying and NASA is trying to figure out if there's other habitable planets. So they send out a group of astronauts to look for our next home. The movie then shows the journey of these astronauts and the visuals are absolutely stunning. If you haven't seen it, I really recommend you watch it. Anyway, It inspired me to make the final project space themed, where you're able to go past each planet. I wanted to make a large level based game, where your not staring at one map the whole time. I downloaded a bunch of images and used the loadImage formula to make the images appear on the desired level. I gathered images of each planet and also downloaded an alien space ship image. I used the constructor function to create the Asteroids. This made it easier to make multiple objects of the asteroid. I created the different asteroids and randomized their positions and speeds. The biggest problem I had was the collision formula between the alien image and the asteroid. It would always be off, where sometimes it would hit and then other times nothing would happen after it hit the asteroid. But then after looking at some notes and raising the problem in class, I was supposed to have the function ImageMode(Center) in my setup. This makes the image draw from the center and easier to detect the collision. Before it was drawing from the left, so the distance collision formula wouldn't work well. The different speeds and sizes of the asteroids makes it challenging. I originally had the game at 3 Lives, but then I had to move it to 5. It was still challenging, so I added a Gold Star power up in the 4th Level, where if you hit it, you gain 5 Lives. This gives you a fighting chance to hopefully reach the last level. I had a problem figuring out the formula for when you hit the star it disappears off the screen. I settled on the If then function and stated that when the alien object hits the Star, the Star's X and Y positions goes to 450, which moves it off the screen. This worked with making it disappear, but then I wanted to add another star in a different level. The star wouldn't appear in any other level, so I believe it has something to do with that collision function. I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I also added a hidden timer in the game. When you beat the game, it shows you how much time it took you to complete the game. This also adds another exciting aspect of the game where you want to try and beat your time.
Where it can go from here
The game was fun to make, but it did take awhile. I enjoyed how it incorporated many of the different subjects we learned throughout the semester. I believe the game is at the right difficulty, where it's not too overwhelming. But changes can be made to either make it easier (slowing down or having less asteroids) or make it more difficult (adding more Asteroids, making the alien bigger, faster asteroids, etc.) I also think it would be cool if this game can be an app played on the phone. But I'm not sure how touchscreen would effect the code. I really enjoy the game and hope you have fun playing it. The link to the code is below:
Link: