Hello everyone. Here's a little game I've been working on since... well, since Friday... inspired by a game (Moon Invaders) in the recent Ludum Dare. Except prettier. And, since it's pretty, let's see some screenshots.

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The objective of the game is, as one might glean from the screenshots, to prevent the invaders from reaching the bottom of the screen. This is done by deploying defensive structures, accessible from the bottom right; once deployed, towers will automatically fire on your enemies. Each costs money, which along with your remaining "life" is displayed in the bottom left. Towers can be sold, giving you back half of their original cost plus potentially valuable real estate, by selecting them with the left mouse button and clicking the "Demolish" button. Right click cancels selection and placement. Finally, Esc exits the game (after confirmation).

Laser turrets fire straight up every few seconds, dealing damage to the first invader the shot hits. Missile batteries fire seeking missiles at a slower rate, but they deal heavier damage, plus splash damage around them. The missiles explode if they fail to hit anything within a few seconds, though (although they still deal splash damage if they're close enough to anything when they do). Spark towers (not yet implemented) will deal heavy damage to a single invader, but have much shorter range.

Download Link (.zip, ~480 KiB, DLLs included)

It's still work in progress. Thus, there are planned features not yet in the game, such as the ability to upgrade towers once placed, more types of towers, more enemy types, and boss waves. With that in mind, it might be fun to play for a little while -- personally I can't beat wave 11, but maybe someone else will have better luck.

Finally, I would like to add sound and music to this, but I'm utterly incompetent when it comes to that. Any suggestions are welcome.

I made all the graphics, yes. And yes, it does get repetitive after a while, something I'm sure will be alleviated when more features are implemented.

Are the enemies deliberately cthulhoid?

cough

I bet it's subconscious.

Can't seem to get it working correctly, the game is halty, and has no sound. Maybe it is because I am right now importing over 1m entries to a MySQL database... Also, the screen does not refresh unless I keep forcing it (in example, keep the mouse cursor pressed against the window title). What are you using, page flipping? Here is a screenshot:

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Nice mini-game, I liked the graphics!
The missile batteries are not smart enough IMHO, when a few invaders remains it seems that the missiles can't find their target!
You should include another weapons before wave 11 appears, most people can't beat them (me included).

Nice start which may turn into a good game. I especially like the graphics. I got to wave 12 before I quit playing it.

My suggestions/feedback:

• The best strategy seem to be filling the entire floor with Laser Turrets. When I include Missile Turrets I haven't gotten as far. Missile Turrets would need to be a bit better.

• It would be nice if the aliens would shoot back. And I could buy little repairmen who would run around fixing my weapons.

• As it is now I want the possibility to do something else while I wait for a level to end. At defocus the game pauses which keeps me from doing that. If the game requires more interaction later on this might not be a problem any more.

I can't get the game to run. The error message I get is :

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Win2k, Athlon XP 2500+, GeForce FX 5900SE, 1.5 GB of RAM. And no, I wouldn't mind a debug version to track down the culprit.

You don't say?

I have defeated wave 12 but I think it is not possible to go beyond that, and it would be nice if you add a reduce CPU usage option.

Looks great from the screenshots! Very DS'ish.

Good job.

At work's computer (W2k, 1gb RAM, Intel 3Ghz), it crashes with the following (DrMingw):

CosmicInvaders. caused an Access Violation at location 0043c4a4 in module CosmicInvaders.exe Reading from location fffffffc.

Registers:
eax=00000000 ebx=00000001 ecx=fffffff4 edx=0047b0c8 esi=004218b0 edi=00000035
eip=0043c4a4 esp=0022f870 ebp=0022f908 iopl=0         nv up ei pl nz na po cy
cs=001b  ss=0023  ds=0023  es=0023  fs=0038  gs=0000             efl=00200207

The debug throws:

CosmicInvaders_ caused an Access Violation at location 0043d58c in module CosmicInvaders_debug.exe Reading from location fffffffc.

Registers:
eax=00000000 ebx=007facbc ecx=fffffff4 edx=007fb0d8 esi=00000055 edi=007f3f00
eip=0043d58c esp=0022fb70 ebp=0022fc08 iopl=0         nv up ei pl nz na po cy
cs=001b  ss=0023  ds=0023  es=0023  fs=0038  gs=0000             efl=00200207

Call stack:
0043D58C  CosmicInvaders_debug.exe:0043D58C
0043F5FD  CosmicInvaders_debug.exe:0043F5FD
00410001  CosmicInvaders_debug.exe:00410001  System::setup()  system.cpp:119
0040A707  CosmicInvaders_debug.exe:0040A707  _mangled_main(int, char**)  main.cpp:22
67A4DA89  alleg42.dll:67A4DA89  _WinMain