Concept
My concept for the midterm project is to recreate and build upon the 1978 Atari game Asteroids. As an iconic arcade classic, Asteroids presents an exciting challenge for modern reinterpretation and expansion.
Design
Here’s a breakdown of a possible architecture:
Main Class:
- The main class serves as the entry point of the game and manages the overarching game loop. It initializes key components such as the player, asteroids, bullets, and handles user input and game state transitions. This class orchestrates the flow of the game, updating and rendering elements accordingly.
Player Class:
- The player class encapsulates the behavior and attributes of the player’s spaceship. It includes properties such as position, velocity, rotation, and health. Methods within this class handle player movement, shooting bullets, and responding to collisions with asteroids or other game entities.
Asteroid Class:
- The asteroid class represents the asteroids that populate the game world. Each asteroid object possesses properties such as position, size, velocity, and rotation. Methods within this class manage asteroid movement, splitting into smaller asteroids upon destruction, and rendering.
Bullet Class:
- The bullet class defines the behavior and properties of the bullets fired by the player’s spaceship. It includes attributes such as position, velocity, and lifespan. Methods within this class handle bullet movement, collision detection with asteroids, and removal from the game world upon reaching the end of their lifespan or hitting a target.
Collision Detection:
- A separate module or class is dedicated to collision detection algorithms. This component detects collisions between various game entities, such as player-asteroid collisions, bullet-asteroid collisions, and potentially asteroid-asteroid collisions if asteroids can collide with each other. Implementing efficient collision detection algorithms, such as bounding box or circle intersection tests, is crucial for optimizing game performance.
Game Manager Class:
- The game manager class oversees high-level game logic and state management. It handles tasks such as initializing the game world, updating game entities, checking for win or loss conditions, and transitioning between different game states (e.g., main menu, gameplay, game over). This class facilitates modularization and separation of concerns, promoting code readability and maintainability.
User Interface (UI) Components:
- UI elements such as score displays, health bars, and menu screens may be implemented as separate classes or modules. These components interact with the game manager and player classes to reflect changes in game state and provide feedback to the player.
Risk Management and Mitigation
One challenge lies in implementing the collision detection algorithms, especially considering the dynamic nature of objects in the game world. To mitigate this risk, I will allocate time to research and experiment with different collision detection techniques. By prototyping and testing these algorithms early on, I aim to identify the most effective approach and integrate it into the project.