Game

1. Gameplay

Space Defence, the final frontier in competitive arcade gaming. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to protect your home base against invaders from outer space (aka Space Invaders).

Up to four players can play against each other, protecting their home base whilst sending creeps to one another and upgrading their ship. The last player standing is the winner.

Shoot creeps, earn money. Or don't shoot creeps and still earn money, but watch your home base die.

2. Network

Unlike the old arcade games of the 80's, you don't have to be physically present at the same location as your friends in order to play a game together. Beat your opponents while sitting half way around the world. A client server model has been used where each player connected sends their local game changes to the server via TCP. The server in turn sends these changes to all other players.

3. Future implementations

Initially, the aim was to use professional sound FX and state of the art graphics provided by Industrial Light & Magic. These were later scrapped in order to achieve a true Asteroids look and feel.

But still, future implementations could be:

• Sound FX
• Sprites and high resolution textures
• Multicast to discover server with game initiated

4. Pro tips

• Firstly, focus on the network part
• Make distinct modules for game and network
• Slick 2d is nice but undocumented
• Use simple techniques on the network part(look at the labs for EDA095)