Week 5: Midterm Updates

For my midterm, I want to work on a super pumped up, full specs, IM-ified, super ultra Ant Smasher. I played Ant Smasher a lot as a kid, and it was awesome. I want to replicate that experience with p5.js.

The goal is to have ants / enemies run down from the top of the screen at various speeds/patterns, have them explode when smashed, and include sounds, animations, and various themes (e.g. not just ant smasher, but fruit slicer, rocket shooter, butterfly catcher, etc.) or levels of difficulty to make the game more fun. I also want to store high scores and names in a quasi-leaderboard to make it feel like a real game.

So far, I’ve built out a basic version where the ants / enemies are objects that randomly fall down, and there is a very simple login screen. There is a timer, a score counter, and a way to stop ants and count them in the score.

I’m planning to work on it over the weekend to add animations, levels, different kinds of enemies, perlin noise, skins, 3 “lives” that you can deplete, and game over screens. I’m also planning to illustrate my own ants, rockets, etc. in my own game sheets if I have time.

I’m expecting to face some challenges with keeping everything organized, so I might break up the code files or make a game design document to remind myself of all the mechanics going on.

Leave a Reply