Alien Invaders - Final

The title of the game is called Alien Invaders which is a Tower Defence type game created by James Hodges in Adobe Flash & Adobe Flash Builder using AS3.
The sounds were pulled from freesounds.com

Menu

After several attempts and some good advice I was able to come up with a nice look to the game.

Title Screen

The buttons rollover effect was not able to be shown with the screenshot function. The effect inverts the colors and has a ship floating beside the selected button.

Instructions Screen

The Instructions Screen explains how to play the game over five pages that are accessed by the arrow buttons.

Game play Screen

The game was not balanced as well as I would have liked to have it but I think overall it turned out pretty good. I learned a lot of new things in AS3 and had many challenges to overcome with this piece.

High Scores Screen

The High score screen has the top 10 scores and the five levels of aliens circling around the board.

For the most part I stayed on schedule for the games production phase but did start to stray towards the end resulting with a few unfinished things I would have liked to see. I am very proud of what I have accomplished in the short time we had from (January 2014 - April 2014) and learned a lot while working on this project. 

My favorite thing about this project is looking back to what I drew on paper in January and seeing it come to life in the final stages. I have progressed so much over the years and it is very noticable in my work.

Some of the challenges I had working on this game were getting the enemies to move down the path and having them function properly when hit by a bullet. I spent countless hours ironing out bugs and trying to get everything to work smoothly. One of the biggest helps was talking to people in class about different ways you could do things. I think this was helpful because when you're sitting at the computer for hours getting frustrated because something you think should work and should be simple is giving you a huge problem and talking to someone not only gives you some ideas of a new direction to go in but it gives you a break to think and relax. I know there must be other programmers out there that get so frustrated they just start typing in every possible thing they can think of without thinking at all.

This project was a great opportunity and once again I am proud of what I accomplished.

James Hodges 

Alien Invaders - Progress

Week 1-2

Pre-Production Documents & Game Pitch

Week 3

Assets

·      Turrets

·      Machine turrets 4 lvls + gue upgrades

·      Rocket turrets 4 lvls + gue upgrades

·      Alien enemies 5 lvls

·      Alien ships 5 lvls w/ spin animation

·      Gold icon

·      Gue icon

·      Score icon

·      City health icon

·      Several txt graphic symbols

·      Displayed assets on main scene

Week 4

Menus

Main

·      Title

·      Added 4 buttons

1.     Start game

2.     Instructions

3.     High score

4.     Exit

·      Fixed Sizing on Buttons

·      Added background and detail

Instructions

·      title

·      added back button

·      added instructions

High score

·      title

·      added 10 slots for names and score

·      added back button

·      added background and detail

Gameplay

·      added title

·      added gui

1.     gold

2.     gue

3.     score

4.     health

5.     turrets section

6.     upgraded turrets

7.     back button

8.     my name at bottom

·      game grid

·      enemy path

·      background

Game Over

·      title

·      added back button

·      added background and detail

Week 5

Need to do:

·      Link up all menus

·      Create gameplay level grid with code

1.     2D array for placing turrets and path (view tic-tac-toe)

All

·      Link up menus

·      Added ship to btn rollover

Gameplay

·      added time

·      added path with code

Week 6

Need to do:

·      2D array implemented for levels so that you can add multiple levels to the game

·      working on algorithm to move enemies through path

·      porting over your game to Flash Builder

Game play

·      created a 2D array to save different levels for path and turrets

·      made enemies move along path

·      made working timer

·      made working score over time

·      added gold, gue, and city health

·      added enemy reaching the city makes –health

·      added when health = 0 game over screen is displayed

High Score

·      Implemented a working top 10 high score board with names and score that save

Game Over

·      Enter name that adds to score board

·      Clicking “enter name” makes it blank to enter name

·      Displays final score

All

·      Ported to Flash Builder

Week 7

Gameplay

·      Added drag & drop on first turret

1.     Turret pops onto game board

2.     Place on available spot, then you can no longer move it and it adds a new turret to the gui

3.     Place on path and it goes back to gui

·      Added waves

1.     Wave delay

2.     Wave

3.     Enemy generator

4.     Updates health

5.     Listens for health at 0 for game over with no errors (removes listeners)

·      Added Bullets

·      Enemy Updated

1.     Bullet collision

2.     Enemy dying

·      Tested and no errors(on normal game speed)

Week 8

Next Week:

·      Death animation for alien

·      Implement all turrets in the first two rows

Gameplay

·      Enemy death animation

·      Added enemy health

·      Created and implemented a wave counter

·      Updated gold, gue and score

·      Implemented the first 2 rows of turrets

1.     Made different levels for the turrets which determines the rate of fire

Week 9

Week After Break:

·      *Visual game object adjustments (bullet color for different turrets, etc)

·      Other enemies implemented (ships dropping them)

·      Other turrets implemented

·      *Adjust enemies that take multiple hits to visually change appearance to demonstrate they have been hit

Gameplay

·      Added background

·      Changed path color

·      Made bullets non hollow

·      * Visual game object adjustments (bullet color for different turrets, etc)

·      Cleaned up code/ more efficient

1.     Turrets

2.     Enemy

·      Fixed enemy death

1.     Alpha enemy on death

2.     Removed bg from behind death animation

·      *Adjust enemies that take multiple hits to visually change appearance to demonstrate they have been hit

·      added all aliens to the waves(not ships)/ updated waves

·      changed enemy death/hit reward

·      made enemy health do same damage to your health/city shield

·      made the first turret have a cost of 150 gold

Week 10

Week After Break:

·      Other enemies implemented (ships dropping them)

·      *Other turrets implemented

Gameplay

·      Fixed “Error” while shooting enemies if too many bullets fired it would throw an error if it hit the same enemy to fast

·      Added turret auto targeting

·      *Other turrets implemented (Added other 8 turrets)

1.     Drag drop

2.     Different bullet color

·      All Turrets

1.     Added prices

2.     Fade when not selectable

·      Changed gui set up

·      Changed gui color

·      Arranged turrets and displayed prices

·      Played with alien speeds

Week 11

Next Week

·      *Other enemies implemented (ships dropping them)

·      *Smooth animation of aliens

Gameplay

·      *Smooth animation of aliens

·      Adjusting variables and speeds

·      * Other enemies implemented (ships dropping them)

Week 12

Instructions

·      Updated Instructions

·      Added 5 pages plus flipping through them by clicking an arrow

Week 13

Next Week

·      *Balancing the game (finishing touches)

·      *Implement sound effects

Instructions

·      Fixed right button

Gameplay

·      *Balancing the game (finishing touches)

·      Adjusted waves

1.     Adjusted enemy speed

2.     Adjusted enemy spawning speed

3.     All enemies in the same array

4.     Enemies per level with limitations including what kind

·      Added turret range

·      Changed font color and sizing

All

·      Changed buttons

·      Changed Backgrounds

·      Changed Layout

1.     Font color

2.     Asset positions

·      Changed buttons again

Sounds

·      *Implement sound effects

·      Added to menus

·      Added to game

·      Added to button rollovers and clicks

·      Added enemy dying sound

Week 14

Next Week

·      Finished Game

Gameplay

·      Wave 1 has 9 enemies

·      Changed ships health

1.     First ship has 10 health

·      Reset enemy array each wave to override turrets getting stuck on a dead enemy

·      Fixed sound bug on game over

·      Alien drops by ship instead at first

·      Fixed ship not taking away city health

·      Updated all turrets range, damage, and cool down time and gold/gue cost

·      Added range and dmg/s on gui

·      Added event listener for range/dmg/s to display stats when rolling over turrets

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