Space Challenge

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?!

This is where the fun starts. Game development!  This game is a 2D retro block smashing game. Yes, there are many like it but this one is mine. The game was developed for the iphone so it uses some of the neat little hardware gadgets that are included with the iphone. Like the accelerometer which I used to control the players ship or paddle if you prefer.

With this game you attempt to destroy all the blocks on the screen by hitting them with a ball that is bouncing around the screen. The game includes a small physics engine to give the ball and ship a more realistic feel. When the ball collides with something it will react based on real world physics calculations. This mean the ball has mass which is obviously simulated and when it hits something of greater mass, which is everything else in the game, I know I designed it that way, it will react appropriately by bouncing off in the appropriate direction and with the appropriate velocity.

Similar to the ball the players ship is also under the influence of physics. When you tilt the phone right or left you are applying a force on the ship which causes it to accelerate in that directions. If you switch directions, force will be applied in the opposite direction and the ship will eventually move that way. This is the challenging part! You can not merely move right and left you must make calculate movements being careful not to over shoot the ball if you do you will have no hope of recovering fast enough to get back to the ball before it explodes into a million pieces. Okay it’s not really a million it’s more like a hundred, but who can tell?

So everything seems to involve physics, but what about the blocks? Yes even those involve physics, however their mass is so large they don’t move they just die. This very same concept even applies to the walls or bounds of the screen if you want to look at it that way … WOW!
WHY WOULD YOU DO SUCH A THING?

I always wanted to make a game and not just one of those computer console text based games. I did that in college and it’s not visually stimulating at all which leads to boredom very quickly. So I would say this was the first real game that I every developed. And I do mean that I fully developed it. I did all of the graphics, all of the music, and all of the code, from scratch. Well I did get a significant amount of help with the code. Mike Daily of 71squared posted some really great tutorials on how to write OpenGL game code for the iphone and you should definitely check out his site. I should also mention that John is responsible for the development of the 71squared site and he pointed me toward WordPress which is what I used to created this site.

So anyways this game was a real experience and I learned a lot. Many of the techniques such a singletons I learned from developing my own game and they helped me to greatly improve the code I write at work. It’s always great to learn something new that opens yours wider than you thought they could be.

SCREEN SHOTS

Start Screen
Start Screen
Go Screen
Go Screen
Ready Screen
Ready Screen
Playing Screen 1
Playing Screen 1
Playing Screen 2
Playing Screen 2
Playing Screen 3
Playing Screen 3
Losing Screen 1
Losing Screen 1
Losing Screen 2
Losing Screen 2

WHAT’S NEXT?

More Games! I had so much fun developing this game that I will definitely be doing more. I already have some great ideas it’s just a matter of getting it into code and to be honest that’s my favorite part. Especially with games. I mean testing it is playing a game and how fun is that! Provided your developing a fun game. This is also why I enjoy doing GUI development. When your done you’ve got something that’s not only computationally satisfying it’s also visually satisfying.
BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD

Unfortunately I will not be providing a free download of this game on my web page. As as I said above this was a learning experience for me a what good is the experience if you don’t completely follow through? All the way through to publication that is. Luckily the iTunes store makes that easy. If you would like to try this game it can be downloaded from the iTunes store for the whopping fee of $1. And of course you’ll need an iPhone.
Download: Space_Challenge

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