Download the game and/or its source code here.
Departure is a game that I decided to make to dabble in the top-down shooter genre and see how modular code I’ve written in the past could be. The game started out as one of my one day challenges; however, it turned out to take a bit longer than that as I wanted to work on Polishing up the look of the game.
The weapon firing system code was taken out of my previous project called Glory. I wanted this top-down shooter to implement the same reloading method as Glory did as I think this system incorporates more skill than the traditional one button reload, or even no reloading. This style of reloading, especially for this genre of game, makes the game more difficult because the player must stop moving in order to reload, which is hard to do when enemies are always come towards the player. The system can be further designed to penalize the player for putting in the wrong sequence to reload. the gun. As of right now, initializing the reload sequence (by pressing 1) will unload all of your current ammo in the gun.
The gun used only holds 24 rounds + what is in the barrel of the gun. Since the ammo packs take a while to spawn the player must try to ration their ammo and try to time their pick ups!
Above is a picture of how Departure would of looked like if I decided to post it as a one day game. It looked like a Spaceman lost in a bland looking jungle with only one tactic involved to survive, stay in the middle and shooting enemies. Mechanically the game functions exactly the same as it does in its final form now, except I believe the looks really help bring it up a level.
Below is a screenshot of how the game looks now. With another few hours thrown into doing artwork the game looks a bit more respectable and presentable. The tiles made the game look more interesting, and can be used to create new and larger levels quickly. The player also looks less cartoon-y and fits the overall feel of the artwork more than a Spaceman in a jungle.
In game screenshot of Departure
Finally, the last thing every game can benefit from is a nice looking menu page. The menu page is usually the first thing the player will see when a game is loaded up. I believe having a good looking menu page can really add to the user experience. My design concept for the menu page was that I wanted a clean looking menu page that would tell the user the name of the game and how to play it in a simple, straight forward fashion.
Creating the game gave me lots of ideas for op-down shooter games that I may try to create in the future. In the meantime, the source code is available for free to anyone that wants to expand on the concept or wanted to learn how the mechanics of the game were programmed. If you do decide to make something using anything from this project please post a link to your project in the comments below so others can enjoy your creation(s)!