airattack

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 21:36:51 UTC

airattack

by pixelshenanigans

[Click to Play]

Controls

Press "X" to drop a bomb.

Rules

This a one button game. The aircraft flies by itself and will descend each time it reaches the end of the screen. Destroy all the buildings to land safely on the ground! A bomb has to explode {destroying 1-4 building blocks) before you can drop another, so use them wisely!

Behind the Scenes

This is my first Pico-8 game and is based on the Commodore Pet game, Air Attack, by Peter Calver. It was released in 1979 by Supersoft. This was the game that sparked my interest in computers and video games. We had a Commodore Pet at college and I typed in the code for this game from a magazine (possibly the December 1979 edition of Personal Computer World). The magic of being able to play this game, even with no understanding of the code at the time, was certainly a seed for my career in software and my love for game development.

The buildings are created randomly, using a seed (incremented between levels) to ensure levels are the same for everyone. I'm basically picking a column, then dropping that block in the column. I'm using mset() to control the map programmatically and mget() for collision detection. Each bomb will destroy 1-4 building blocks - this rule was in the original game. Some new features include a simpler aircraft and animated explosions. I added speeding up the aircraft on new levels to gently ramp up the difficulty, also not in the original game. I'm still learning about sound, so I'm not 100% happy with the sfx.

Credits

Thanks to Lazy Devs Academy and SpaceCat for the awesome YouTube videos on Pico-8 game development!

pixelshenanigans [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

airattack