Argh-steroids

Asteroids-like game using pygame. Python 3 compatible. Install pygame and run main.py.

Alternatively, there's a WebGL version.

Features

• Asteroids bounce off each other. It uses a map to make collision detection fast.

• Your ship has a shield and you can bump into asteroids a few times. The shield regenerates slowly.

• Mouse and keyboard controls.

• Vector graphics using an affine transform rather than a lot of trig functions.

• Particle system for explosions.

• Small, simple code. It's only 1,300 lines for everything, it should be easy to hack on.

• It's fast enough on a Raspberry-Pi 2. On my modest laptop it can animate more than 200 asteroids and more than 5,000 particles at 60 fps.

Secret keys

• Hold 'S' during level start animation to spawn extra asteroids for testing.

• Hold 'I' to see object and FPS counts.

• Press 'P' to toggle particles on and off. This can help the framerate on slower systems.

• Press 'N' to skip to the next level. Handy for testing.

TODO

• More sounds, audio on/off.

• Can we make sound less laggy? There's a long pause between pressing fire and the shot sound being played, for example.

• Have a key to change shield behaviour on the start-screen.

• Collision detection is just touching circles, we could look at the geometry as well to get pixel-perfect detection.

• Collision physics just exchanges the two velocities, we could do true billiard-ball collisions.

• The wrap-around is rather crude. We could draw sprites as they wrap.

• Gravity, grappling hook, bombs, etc.

Changes

Text character designs taken from https://github.com/rickwight/meteors

John Cupitt, 24/5/15

• Copy sounds from webgl version.

• Added annoying background music.

Pierce Lally, 21/5/15

• Added sounds.

• Made python 3 compatible.

• Option for "conventional" shield behaviour. Shield mode 1 uses a key press ("F") and stays on for a period of time before turning off. There is a cool down between key presses. Use 0 for author's original shield mode. User can select SHIELDBEHAVIOR with the global variable on line 23 in ship.py.

Authors

Rick Wight, John Cupitt, Pierce Lally