Space Protector -- Le protecteur de l'espace

[sporniket]

Game design

Overview

A shoot'em up, greatly inspired by the tabletop electronic game variations of galaxians/galaga, e.g. Super Galaxy 2.

Game loop

• The player is on the bottom of the screen, and can move to the left or the right. It can shoot one bullet at a time, between 5 and 6 bullets per 2 seconds.
• A cloud of basic invaders lurks on the top of the screen, and some of them goes down in an intricate manœuvers to avoid being shot down. All of them drop bombs regularly in the hope to destroy the player.
• When the cloud of invaders is finished, some mid powerful invaders comes to dog fight the player
• When the wave of fighters is finished, a bunch of powerful invaders comes to plumet the player with a bomb pour.
• A bonus phase allows to get some points
• The game cycles until a goal score is reached, e.g. 9999 points.

Difficulty settings

Some player selectable parameters allow to tune the challenge :

• Speed : normal or quick, describe the speed of the invaders and the frequency of their shooting
• Number : one or two basic invaders can try to come to attack at the same time (basic invaders and fighters)
• Score goal : 9999 or 19999

Achievements to unlocks

Ranks

• First class soldier : finish any score goal at the easiest settings
• Corporal : finish a score goal of 9999 with enhanced speed
• Chief Corporal : finish a score goal of 19999 with enhanced speed
• Sergeant : finish any score goal with enhanced numbers
• Chief Sergeant : finish a score goal of 9999 with enhanced numbers and speed
• Captain : finish a score goal of 19999 with enhanced numbers and speed

Titles

• The slayer : complete successfully 30 loops (bronze), 60 loops (silver), 90 (gold)
• The dodger : avoid 1000, 2000, 3000 bullets (bronze, silver, gold level respectively)
• The fine hand : accumulate a streak of 3, 6, 12 successes at the bonus phase (bronze, silver, gold level respectively)

look at official military medals to inspire the look and actual name of the titles and their levels

Playground model

• a 7×12 grid (column×rows) of 16×16 pixels tiles
• an actor occupy 1 tile at most ; its movements are smooth but are "snapped" to each grid position

Marketing

Target computers : 

• Thomson family : MO5 (basic graphism) and TO8 (enhanced graphism)
• Atari ST : any model of the ST family (no blitter, no DMA sound). If it can runs on TT and Falcon unmodified, it's good.

Development

Assets

• 3 types of invaders, 1 player, bullets for both sides, and may be some special items for the bonus phase
• explosion, ingame text display
• General text display (presentation / help)
• Basic sound effects

Coding

• To save achievement, a floppy drive (real or emulation) is expected
• Playable through keyboard or game controller
• Full assembly, low level. Access to media is done through low level access (direct access to tracks/sectors, especially to store/retrieve achievements)
• MC6809 ISA for Thomson computers, MC68000 ISA for Atari ST computers

macro schedule

• A 3-monthes period to design all graphics assets
• A 3-monthes period to code each platform (coarse) ⇒ 9 monthes, to spread between the 3 platforms as needed
• A 3-monthes period to polish all the platform
• A 3-monthes period to prepare demonstrations for each platforms
• A week to publish the release and announcing to the relevant audiences

+--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-------+
|Phase         | 3-monthes | 3-monthes | 3-monthes | 3-monthes | 3-monthes | 3-monthes | 1-week|
|--------------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-------|
|Assets        |############           |           |           |           |           |       |
|Coding ST     |           ####   ##   ##   ### #  |           |           |           |       |
|Coding MO5    |           |   ###    #| ##        ## ####     |           |           |       |
|Coding TO8    |           |        ## |   #   # ##| #    ######           |           |       |
|Polishing     |           |           |           |           #############           |       |
|Demo Capture  |           |           |           |           |           #############       |
|Go Live       |           |           |           |           |           |           ########|
+--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-------+