Okay, so today I messed around with building a “Mission to Earth” game. It started as a simple idea, and well, it kinda spiraled from there. Here’s how the whole thing went down:
First, I doodled some concepts on paper. You know, just stick figures and rough shapes to get a basic idea of the game layout. I envisioned a spaceship landing on Earth, dodging obstacles, and maybe collecting stuff. Pretty basic, right?
Then, I fired up my game engine – I’m using a free one, keeps things simple. I created a new project and started with a basic 2D scene.
Getting the Spaceship Moving
- I drew a super simple spaceship sprite – literally a triangle. Don’t judge, it’s a placeholder!
- I added a “player control” script. This is where the coding magic happens. It’s just basic stuff: up, down, left, right.
- I fiddled with the movement speed for ages. Too fast, too slow, back and forth until it felt kinda right.
Adding Some Obstacles
What’s a landing mission without some danger? So I created some asteroid sprites – again, just basic circles. I placed them randomly around the screen.
- I added a script to make the asteroids move. They just float down the screen at different speeds.
- Then came the collision detection. This is where things got a little tricky. I had to make sure the spaceship “died” when it hit an asteroid.
- Lots of testing and tweaking here. I kept crashing the ship. A lot.
Making it Look a Bit Prettier
The triangle spaceship and circle asteroids were… functional, but ugly. So I spent some time finding some free-to-use graphics online. Much better!
- I replaced placehoder with new graphics.
- I added some very basic animated.
The “Earth” Part
I created a big, green rectangle at the bottom of the screen. That’s Earth. Creative, I know.
- I added a “win” condition. If the spaceship reaches the Earth rectangle without hitting an asteroid, you win!
- I threw in a simple “You Win!” message that pops up.
The End …For Now
So, that’s where I left off. It’s a super basic game, but it’s playable. It’s amazing how much time you can sink into even the simplest projects. Still some small bugs need to fixed.