Vacuum Invaders by deshipu

[raw]
made by deshipu for LD 40 (COMPO)

This is a game for a custom game console that I'm making, called Β΅Game (details at https://hackaday.io/project/27629). It's written in MicroPython and uses a tile-and-sprites library that I wrote.

IMG<em>20171203</em>171355.jpg

I really wanted to make a space shooter, so I just rolled with the Space Invaders clone. But how to accommodate the theme? Well, in Space Invaders the more aliens you have in a row, the worse it is, since they advance faster. But that somehow didn't feel good enough, so I tried something more. In the original Space Invaders you could only have one missile on the screen at a time β€” if you missed, you had to wait for it to travel to the edge of the screen before you could shoot again. That encouraged more careful aiming. But what if you could shoot a second time, but the more you have missiles on the screen, the worse it is in terms of fire power? So the second missile you shoot is much smaller, and the third is simply embarrassingly tiny. Turns out that this doesn't affect the game much, though.

As you can hear, there are hardware problems with sound on my console right now. The sound circuit is just under the player's fingers, and touching it gives you nasty warbling and clicks. Plus there are a lot of clicks from the way the wav files are being played. I will need to fix that in the future versions somehow β€” move the circuit to a different place of the board, maybe add some shielding, we will see.

Finally, I know it sucks that you can't play the game yourself to rate it. I wanted to provide an emulator, so that you can at least play it on your computer, but it turned out to be harder to make than anticipated and it's not ready yet. If you really want, you can build a similar console yourself from stock modules (there are instructions on the project's page), but of course I can't expect everyone to do this. So there is the video: (https://youtu.be/fCqvTueoG7I). Sorry.

Ratings

Overall 177th 3.667⭐ 23πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Fun 350th 3.25⭐ 20πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Innovation 13th 4.275⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Theme 507th 3.025⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Graphics 109th 3.925⭐ 22πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Audio 243th 3.188⭐ 18πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Humor 323th 2.714⭐ 16πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Mood 238th 3.281⭐ 18πŸ§‘β€βš–οΈ
Given 19πŸ—³οΈ 12πŸ—¨οΈ

Feedback

acoto87
04. Dec 2017 Β· 01:09 UTC
That's cool! I saw the video, and it's running well. Let's see what other games can be programmed in there. Good job!
I've a Raspberry PI and I want to build a handheld console myself. Maybe I need to get back to it, and finally finish it.
AdroitConceptions
04. Dec 2017 Β· 04:07 UTC
Sounds like you got the theme by having issues with fitting your code on your micro controller.
Fun was lacking in that watching someone play isn't the same as playing it.
Bonus points for building your own handheld game and creating a game for it.
SvenFrankson
04. Dec 2017 Β· 11:59 UTC
Quite impressive ! Well done :)
bigmetre
04. Dec 2017 Β· 12:02 UTC
i would buy the shit out of that miproc. seeing a recreation space invaders on a miproc is weird on LD but man, i would BUY THE SHIT out of that miproc.
Ale
04. Dec 2017 Β· 16:45 UTC
I love projects like these, it's just too bad we can't test it out. Looks pretty good from the videos though, and it even has audio
AcsiD
04. Dec 2017 Β· 17:15 UTC
this seem like an interesting project keep going
GistNoesis
04. Dec 2017 Β· 17:18 UTC
Very cool project. Doing an old game, on the modern equivalent of the old computers but doing it with Python :) Well done getting it to work ! Embedded platform games coming to Ludum Dare LOLOLOL :)
cenullum
05. Dec 2017 Β· 18:39 UTC
daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn 5/5 uGame is something like arduino?
mess110
05. Dec 2017 Β· 19:01 UTC
Really cool, gonna read more of the console. Wish I could play it
🎀 deshipu
05. Dec 2017 Β· 19:59 UTC
@mess110 yes, it's a microcontroller like the Arduino, however instead of C++ you can program in with Python
Sean S. LeBlanc
10. Dec 2017 Β· 08:15 UTC
Really cool project! Reminds me a bit of Arduboy.

Having an emulator would have made rating the game itself a bit easier, but completely understandable to just have a video instead.
wwwhizz
16. Dec 2017 Β· 20:48 UTC
Too bad we can't play it, I like the console. Do you know PICO-8 as well? Looks a tiny bit like this :)
🎀 deshipu
19. Dec 2017 Β· 00:43 UTC
@wwwhizz I know about pico-8 (though I haven't written any games for it), though it is both more and less powerful. The resolution is the same, I allow 16x16 sprites and tiles, each with its own 16-color palette (pico-8 has 8x8 with one common palette, iirc), but I can't do screen scrolling (too slow refresh) and I have no music (only one channel for sounds). And I like Python better than Lua.
megabrutal
25. Dec 2017 Β· 12:45 UTC
WOW, yay, microcontroller programming! \o/ Sorry, I just can't say more, it's so awesome!