Space invaders Do's and don'ts

[Jeroen]

I've been playing with the idea of a space invaders game lately for nes......Any suggestions on do's and don'ts? (example: I think you should do 6 rows of 5 aliens!)

[tepples]

There is an official port to the NES, with the full complement of 5 rows of 11.

TIP: Design your own attack patterns; don't use the same one every round.

[tokumaru]

Make it look better!

[MottZilla]

Add new gameplay components. Powerups, new enemys, extra goals. Obvioudly better graphics and music during play would be nice.

[dXtr]

drop down, reverse direction, increase speed :)

I guess new ai and new graphics as have been suggested. maybe some form of multiplayer? or maybe even reverse the idea and let the player control the aliens instead ^_^

[Dwedit]

I've seen way too many noob games which use a for loop to move the bullet upward, freezing the rest of the game in the process. Don't do that.

[tokumaru]

I've seen way too many noob games which use a for loop to move the bullet upward, freezing the rest of the game in the process. Don't do that.

If he can't even mimic the original mechanics, better not make the game at all!

But I agree, it's annoying when people use FOR loops to move stuff and think this is OK.

[tepples]

I've seen way too many noob games which use a for loop to move the bullet upward, freezing the rest of the game in the process. Don't do that.

If he can't even mimic the original mechanics, better not make the game at all!

The targets continue to inch forward while the player's missile goes up in Taito's port of Space Invaders to Game Boy and Super NES. In fact, that's required for activating the "skull trail" minor glitch.

[Jeroen]

K thanks for all the tips guys! Ya I wasn't planning on any stupid bullet loops...sounds stupid. Like I said in my first post.....there's no guarentee this wil ever be made. But it's nice to think about it

[Tootai]

Back when I was like 15, me and this swedish guy made a Space Invaders clone for the Super Game Boy called They Came From Outer Space. That was sort of cool. Just reminiscing, don't have any actual tips

[RetroRalph]

Some gameplay ideas.

1) Have a visible "world" you are protecting at bottom of the screen which gets damaged for every missile that gets past you
2) Have the "world" do something each new round based on how well the world is doing. If the world isn't damaged it should give you some maximum benefit (as to what I'm not sure), if it's damaged greatly the "world" helps you less.
3) Make the enemy missiles shootable so you can block them killing the world.

With these ideas it adds a little bit of persistence to the world round to round . Maybe some kind of optional "choose a building to build" type thing at the end of each round where the building does something unique, giving players a choice.

These ideas might already be in some space invaders games, after playing thousands of games it's hard to know what is original or not in your own head.

[tepples]

1) Have a visible "world" you are protecting at bottom of the screen which gets damaged for every missile that gets past you
[...]
3) Make the enemy missiles shootable so you can block them killing the world.

Congratulations: you just reinvented Missile Command

[RetroRalph]

1) Have a visible "world" you are protecting at bottom of the screen which gets damaged for every missile that gets past you
[...]
3) Make the enemy missiles shootable so you can block them killing the world.

Congratulations: you just reinvented Missile Command

Yes it's a bit like that but you could do it more in the space invaders way vs random missiles, also with the buildings having more interesting effects. Is there any version of missile command with more strategy involved? Maybe I've played it and forgotten it.

[Jeroen]

I was actually thinking of doing missile command. But I figured the lines would be a pain in the ass.

[Dwedit]

There's always Battletoads-style lines, where you place sprites next to each other to create that effect. Check how the Walker is animated in Battletoads for details. It uses very few sprite tiles to pull off the effect.