M1W2 – Challenge Activity (Pt. 2)

As previously stated I have had difficulty in thinking what to do for this challenge, and I have felt more than a little anxious and nervous about not submitting anything.

However, as I was tidying up my hard drive on Saturday 6th February 2021 I came across some old assets for a game a friend of mine wrote and published online somewhere. I was supposed to have ported it to another platform, but never got the finished code, so it never happened, although I had all the assets.

The game in question is a Space Invaders rip-off, and this got me thinking about how this could be re-worked.

SCAMPER

I decided to employ the SCAMPER method to see whether I could come up with anything.

S – Substitute

My driving thought here was how I could change the rules of the game, and pretty quickly I came to the assumption that I think most people come to. That the player is a plucky pilot saving the Earth from invasion. However, what if this wasn’t the case, and the player is actually the “invader” and the aliens are just trying to protect themselves.

This quickly led to the concept of designing and writing the game to be able to play as the invaders.

The substitution is the game mechanic change this brings into play.

C – Combine

The game will actually still combine the two main elements as in the original Space Invaders, with the human ship moving across the bottom and the invaders moving left to right, top to bottom from the top of the screen. It’s a formula everyone knows.

A – Adapt

The key change is in this stage. The player, instead of controlling the ship at the bottom is able to move a highlight around the invaders that are still alive to “take control” of them. The invaders still move in the same pattern, and will still fire when they think they should, expect for the one the player is controlling. The player decides when to fire.

M – Modify

The original game uses a “one-hit death” model where if an invader or the ship get hit they blow up. This mechanic will still hold for the invaders, but I have modified the ship so that it has a “health” bar.

This is because in the normal, original, Space Invaders game you have to destroy 55 invaders. This means when you play as the invaders, you have to hit the ship x times (currently 40), and there are 45 invaders.

P – Put To Another Use

As an extension, this could potentially, with careful balancing, be made into a 2 player game, with one player being the invaders, the other the ship.

E – Eliminate

The elimination phase is relatively easy. I have eliminated the barriers that the ship can hide behind, for no other reason than they give the ship an unfair advantage.

From my perspective as well (having written a few clones) this is often the most difficult part to write, as it involves real-time deformation of objects.

R – Re-arrange

The re-arrangement aspect is actually a side-effect of the game mechanic change decided upon in the substitute stage. We have re-arranged the perspective and view of the game by now playing as the invaders.

Work In Progress

2D Engine

I decide to dust off my old 2D engine that I hadn’t touched in about 6 years which has all the supporting functionality I know well, as it is shaped around the 2D engine I have carried from platform to platform for about 25 years.

It allows me to rapidly develop software, as it has full control of sprite handling, text handling, audio handling, zone and touch control and a load of other features.

To do this properly I decided to set up a scrum board in monday.com which is a system I use in my every day professional environment. I set up a product backlog and the first iteration/sprint. See the screenshot below.

Result Of Iteration/Sprint 1

The video below shows the outcome of the weekend’s work up to 15:30 on Sunday 7th February 2021. I believe it shows enough to give people an idea of how a Space Invaders game turned on its head would work.