Asteroid Defender by Dr. Mo

made by Dr. Mo for LD23 (COMPO)

Asteroid Defender is a shooter where you move around a tiny asteroid defending it from waves of falling bombs. Spare pirates want to kick you off your asteroid and plunder its resources! Move left and right with the arrow keys or A/D, and aim and shoot with the mouse.

This was my first Ludum Dare compo, and I had a lot of fun! Source is included in the zip file. The .gmk is a Game Maker 7.0 project, code included, that requires the Pro version to compile. The .vge file is a VGM Music Maker module file for the title screen music.

I've written a postmortem now! Basically, I was going to add a lot of different structures that did different things, but the only structure that made it was the turret. You can read it at http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/05/15/asteroid-defender-postmortem/

Windows	http://hitstun.bakamostudios.com/AsteroidDefender.zip
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=8780

Ratings

Coolness	20%	1007
Overall	2.92	452

Audio	3.00	216
Fun	3.17	239
Graphics	2.58	593
Innovation	2.67	549
Mood	2.36	626
Theme	3.25	314

Feedback

bcdefg123

23. Apr 2012 · 02:32 UTC

Gratz on making it through. I like the concept, but it seems you could have easily done more with it (different asteroids, types of enemies, etc.).

The twinkling sky in the background is a REALLY nice touch! Not sure why it always had to be spinning, though.

Also, I don't know what's to blame, but my first time through, the game randomly crashed on me. I think it might have just been Windows, though...

bcdefg123

23. Apr 2012 · 16:55 UTC

*I apparently need to comment again for the voting*

🎤 Dr. Mo

23. Apr 2012 · 22:01 UTC

Yeah, more maps would have been a good idea. For the background, I painted the background all black then applied a noise filter that randomized the color of 1% of the pixels. For some reason, the pixels seem to twinkle when rotated slowly. Asteroids naturally rotate anyway, so it works.

I wonder what caused that crash. It crashed a few times in development when the function for how many seconds between enemy spawns had a divide by zero. I thought I fixed that.

Beerman

24. Apr 2012 · 09:49 UTC

Needs a little more variety in the gameplay, but not bad.
The asteroid rotation works really nicely.

Zerot

25. Apr 2012 · 11:04 UTC

Played nice and was kinda fun, but could use a proper HUD and more variety.

BubuIIC

25. Apr 2012 · 23:29 UTC

Nice fluent gameplay but gets repetitive quickly. But quite a solid entry.

Topaz

27. Apr 2012 · 01:29 UTC

Wow! :D

🎤 Dr. Mo

27. Apr 2012 · 02:35 UTC

I wanted more of a HUD, but I couldn't draw text in a consistent location on the screen. For the radar and everything in it, I had to calculate its new position in the level every frame based on the camera's current location and rotation. I was able to rotate the text, but the location of the upper-left corner of the text would skew a little bit based on the camera's rotation.

In retrospect, I could have still done a health bar for the player. Next time I compete, I'll try to set aside some time at the end for adding variety.

Jack

28. Apr 2012 · 12:01 UTC

Fairly fun, but very, very easy and ultimately could do with more content or deeper exploration of the mechanics

cltatman

01. May 2012 · 00:58 UTC

The concept is good, and moving around on the surface works really well. Unfortunately, the gameplay stops being interesting really quickly.

The minimap is a nice touch.

The sounds are good, the title screen loop is good aside from the harsh looping.

Congrats on getting something out there. :)

demonpants

10. May 2012 · 23:32 UTC

I think I just ran into my 10th Windows-only game in a row. Too bad I can't run it...

Khayet

13. May 2012 · 14:59 UTC

A nice little game. I especially liked the sound effects, but I can't understand why you only used the music in the menu. And a little more challenge could have improved the game a lot. Nevertheless, It worked really well. Nice.