STAR - Small-time Asteroids Revival

STAR - Small-time Asteroids Revival - 1

Guillaume Salagnac (gyom)

Tags:

arcade 2d shooter action space asteroids

Description

Classic Asteroids-like shooter putting the focus on fun gameplay rather than fancy graphics or sounds. Enemies are simple geometric shapes (stars, square, circles) with various behaviours.

This is my first game with pygame, all suggestions about the code are welcome. Also, this is work in progress, so there might be new features added in the future.

Try the "Big dots" option (in the options menu) and tell me what graphics you prefer.

Ideas stolen from:

asteroids (of course)
spheres of chaos (countless hours of pure fun)
geometry cometry (dave cooper) for the shapes
many other asteroids clones.

Links

Home Page: http://www.pygame.org/project/1135/
Source: http://drop.io/wwfi5jx

Screenshot

click to view original size

Releases

STAR - Small-time Asteroids Revival - 1 - May 27, 2009

Pygame.org account Comments

If you wish to leave a comment with your pygame.org account, please sign in first.

October 24, 2009 1:17am - Jared - nickname: (jabapyth)
broken link?
May 29, 2009 12:51pm - Ian Mallett - nickname: (geometrian)
The framerate is indeed jumpy, but it is true it's not as jumpy as it would be if nothing were done. I remember having something like this for my asteroids game. When approximating the equations of motion in discrete steps (frames), there's error unless you account for it.
May 28, 2009 4:55pm - Nathan Woodward - nickname: (thedalailama)
I'm noticing the framerate jumping quite badly, and I'm not looking at the FPS counter.
May 28, 2009 4:43pm - Nathan Woodward - nickname: (thedalailama)
woooah trippy Big dots mode is awesome.
May 28, 2009 4:14am - Guillaume Salagnac - nickname: (gyom) - 5/5
Thanks for the feedback. @Ian: Actually, the game speed is supposed to adapt to the framerate to provide a smooth gameplay. it's not quite true in practice (because of the way the pygame clock computes FPS), but it works more or less. Was it really painful (i.e. would you have notived a lot without the FPS counter ?) My idea is to use idle CPU time to display the moving dots for eye candy : the dot demographics is directly related to the framerate (so with a 2015 PC, the screen will be full of explosions!). @Andy: Thanks again for the feedback. I do not like the "lines" mode either (because it is actually clutter :-) but I had consistent positive feedback from non-programmers about it, so I left it by default. I much prefer the "big dots" modes myself. I will make a "no dots at all" option for the next version if you prefer not to be distracted by eye candy. Purple guys are my favourite as well. If you have other ideas of behaviour, I'd be happy to implement them (it's only a few lines of code each time)
May 28, 2009 2:16am - Ian Mallett - nickname: (geometrian)
Very interesting graphics concept. I recommend a constant framerate (mine varied from 30 to 500) and a dark colored ship.
May 27, 2009 10:41pm - Andy Hanson - nickname: (rhodiumgames)
Congratulations on putting a lot of effort into your first game. It's pretty fun. But! Games are only as fun as people are made to think they are. If you leave a lot of ugly clutter on the screen and leave the whole game completely silent people will start criticising the gameplay. So! Big dots mode is definitely better than lines mode. Lines mode looks like some kind of noise at a glance. Big dots ain't that much better though. I think a 'black background' mode would beat both of them. I just realized that asteroids would be a lot more fun with a control stick. But that's irrelevant. Oh, be sure to use pygame.quit(). Purple guys are fun to shoot!