Rotation was the first “real” game I wrote as part of the Computer Games Technology degree at Abertay. The brief was to use Flash with Actionscript to create space invaders style game, featuring a moveable player, attacking enemies, and some type of protective shield. I approached the project by focussing on a central circular world, and basing player and enemy movement around this.
Whilst working on this project also reinforced my understanding of the strong relationship between mathematics and programming, the real aim was to look at how games in general function. Key concepts, such as the game loop, dealing with player interaction and collision detection were all demonstrated in the simple application. Even in a simple game like this working in a procedural language proved challenging, and I gained a strong feeling for why Object Oriented programming is now an essential part of games development. All my projects from this point on have adopted an object oriented approach.
The Movement pattern of various enemies.
The first level of Rotation in progress.
Controls
- Options and menu screens can be navigated with the mouse.
- The keyboard is used to play the game.
- Left and Right arrows – move your ships clockwise and counterclockwise.
- Space – Fire your weapon.
Files
- Play Rotation online.
- Download the executable.
- Download the .fla file to modify the project.
Please let me know what you think of the game in the comments below, and check out the rest of my portfolio.