Side-Scrolling Shooter

William Dugger
CPE471 Final Project
Fall 2010

Project Description

This project is a side-scrolling shooter. The player controls a blue ship with the goal of killing enemy red ships and not dying. My project's features include:

Collision detection between different entities: bullets, ships, and the ground.

Smooth controls, with smooth changes in the pitch of the player's ship.

A time-based system that prevents the player from firing more than 3 bullets per second.

A constantly moving backdrop that gives the feeling of movement.

Project Goals

The goal of this project was to get a shooter that included the features above as well as:

AI: Enemies that fly in patterns and shoot.

Different types of guns for the player's ship, which shoot bullets in different patterns.

These additional goals were not implemented due to time restrictions.

Models and Collision Detection

The models in the game are very simple -- I could not find good free ship or mountain models, so I used very simple ones I made myself.
However, the game is quite capable of using other, more complicated models in replacement.
The collision detection in this game is modeled as a plane for the ground, and Axis-Aligned Bounding Boxes for the player and enemies.

Controls

To control the program, use the following keys:

'w' : move blue ship upwards and pitch ship up
's' : move blue ship downwards and pitch ship down
'a' : move blue ship backwards
'd' : move blue ship forwards
space : fire a bullet
'c' : reset game
'q' : exits the program

Screenshots

The images, left to right:

The beginning screen that the player starts on.

The player moves his ship upwards.

The player shooting the gun. The bullets are the yellow cubes.

A bullet hitting an enemy. The explosion animation is the rotating red cube.

The player colliding with an enemy.

Resources

None