Pixel Wars
Pixel Wars is a top-down roguelike endless shooter.
Shoot at a variety of enemy types while upgrading your ship with randomly generated abilities and see how high you can make that score climb!
Never a dull moment thanks to the ai director that can increase spawn limits and upgrade your foes making them faster, tougher and stronger!
Explore over 30 different upgrades and multiple build playstyles in this roguelike "enemy" hell game!
If you like this game don't forget support me and more will be on the way!
Development log
- Protoearth Update 3 (Spoiler Warning!)Aug 12, 2023
- Pixel Wars Update NotesAug 08, 2023
- Update 2Aug 06, 2023
- Update 1Aug 03, 2023
Comments
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surprisingly fun!
love it
Aww shucks!
bug:
when you upgrade, and pause
you can click the upgrade cards even tho the pause menu is on the way
then you can move and have a perma pause menu on screen...
hope i explained it well
I think I get it... anyway looks like a simple oversight by the incompetent developer, I will go down to the basement and bang on the bars, and I am sure he will get it right this time.
I have noticed that a lot of the circular enemies (like the blue things) actually have square hitboxes for player damage. Is this intentional? It makes it a bit hard to weave through the enemies when there are a lot of them, so it may be preferable to have circle collisions
It is indeed intention, I used square hitbox's instead of circles ones because it takes up less of the system resources to run the game.
I'll update the collision on the game later and if you notice a difference in performance make a comment, I am interested know how much of an effect it actually has on the game.
I have noticed that the game is actually very laggy, especially in the higher particle counts (my highest XP was ~73000. the lag actually helped me by giving me slow mo hacks lul). However, some comments regarding performance:
- Circle x circle collision detection is very similar performance to square x square collision. The circle x circle collision code would be like ( if (circle1.pos - circle2.pos).sqrMagnitude < (circle1.radius + circle2.radius) ^2 ). (Notice how we are using sqrMagnitude of the vector and the radius to avoid using the square root function). A square x square collision would be like ( if !(r2.left > r1.right || r2.right < r1.left || r2.top > r1.bottom || r2.bottom < r1.top) (I just stole that one from stackoverflow as I couldn't think to write it myself at the moment). It is only a little bit faster.
- I am not sure about how you have implemented the game, but if you implemented each object as an individual script, this will be very slow and you are better off making all the entities into structs and then putting into an array, so that they are all allocated next to each other in memory and it is faster to iterate them. I.E use a "BulletManager" script that has a Bullet[] array and manually iterates and updates them from it's one Update rather than having each bullet as it's own script with it's own Update. More info about this kind of optimization here:
(I have linked to 5 minutes into the video, but I remember the whole thing being a pretty good watch)
- also do object pooling. Where instead of Destroying and Instantiating each object manually, you have a list of the objects, and you just hide them when they are 'dead', and then unhide them when they are no longer dead: https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/introduction-to-object-pooling#
If you don't use unity engine then probably a lot of that specific terminology like 'instantiate' didn't make sense, but the concepts apply to game dev in general
good luck with your game
Hmm, that is actually very interesting, I am mostly just us using simple shapes for collision but maybe 2 squares, 1 at a 45 degree angle will be a bit cheaper then using the circle collision system since that may function as multiple squares with small degrees of angles overlapping or something...
i am really looking up to this game
it has SO MUCH potential
for example... what if there was ships with unique way of attacking? like a sword-like or a sniper! or maybe a big tank that can take more hits
imagine all the upgrades you can do!!!!!
maybe when you get hit... something happens?
maybe a laser that will make bullets traver into your curson and disapear, it might synergies with an upgraded that makes bullets explode!!!
yea bombs exist but... they too can have upgrades, maybe land mines? bombs that shoots bullets!!!
n u k e
the possible abilities are ENDLESS!!!!!!!!
man, i would LOVE to share more ideas with you, even if they might not end up in the game, just the idea of making unique upgrades makes me exited
i see so many unique ideas
so many possible abilities
so much... potential
man, i would love to play a good roguelike game with endless unique upgrades, maybe even a mix option that let you mix two upgrades? as i said, endless
man
have a great day gentleman, and thanks for making this game that let me bring some ideas to life, and if you want to hear more
PleaseDoIWouldLoveToSharethen contact me on discordrandomlol_tda
thanks again, and have a great day :>
I am glad you enjoyed the game so much you would like a sequel, I might look into something like that in the future, I have to admit your words got me so excited that I almost want to do it now... but I have already started on a new project so I will look into it after Project Protoearth!
TD2S does seem like a good game to learn from, I'll give it a go later and drop a comment on the game!
please contact me when you do so
it would be nothing but pleasure to give a few ideas
also happy to make you inspired :>
and hearing the new project... i will love to check it
you walking a path of great possible abilities
also one thing i also wanna mention, the art-style this game has, you know what i like about it? it's simplistic, which makes it actually easier for you to add new enemier/stuff into the game
also try TD2S
great game, this is a way you synergies with upgrades, i wish this game would be more updated, since it's one of my favorite roguelike :>
(that i can affort)and every project similar to it gives me hope, beacuse there's something about seeing how different upgrades interact with eachother... it's... beautifull
imagine being inspired by the TD2S and somehow mix them together, where you get upgrades and depending on how you put them, they do different stuff
i believe in you, i see you great potential my dude
and i am happy that your words motivate you, i will stick here or maybe even become a friend and will support you, your game makes a great time :>
have great day!
Very cool game. I got very far in the game, with a very high level character with near maxed out firing speed, and bombs, it was very OP. but then the game went black and I saw this in the dev console:
gmlmessage: "Unable to find any instance for object index '84' name 'Core_Spawn'", gmllongMessage: "Unable to find any instance for object index '84' name 'Core_Spawn'", gmlstacktrace: (100) […], gmlscript: "", gmlline: -1, __yyIsGMLObject: true
maybe it is related?
That should be a simple fix, I'll take a look at it in a bit and update the game. :)
Ok I think I found the problem and I have updated the game, thank you for letting me about this crash, I want my games to leave a positive impression on all.
Really fun! difficult at first but its really fun when you get the upgrades and everything is really well designed. Well done!
Cheers mate!
Dude...
Out of all the shooters I've played on itch (which isn't very much but still), this is by far the best.
This game is incredibly well designed, has some very creative ideas, has awesome graphics and sfx, and is extremely fun and addictive!
The panning sounds took me by surprise and was a nice little touch! The sound in general was quite good.
I think the upgrades are what really makes this game stand out! It would normally be a problem that they come around too often, but it resolves this with the sheer amount of enemies you have to kill. The ability to mix around the upgrades is an excellent choice, and the plethora of creativity in them is just astounding.
And boy is this addictive! I had to hurry up and click off the game before I got sucked back in! I love the choice of presenting new upgrades every time you die, so that not everything is completely reset and you can find an insanely fresh and creative upgrade whenever you restart!
For instance, I died the first time and was like "oh well gotta restart with the baby upgrades" but then I was like "wait... fanblade... what is that??? That's awesome!" and I got sucked right back in (I love the fanblades!). Same thing happened with the bombs!
It's choices like these that brilliantly expand upon the slow, ineffective shot at the beginning, and turn it into something completely badass at the end of the day. I mean, triple shots, bombs, fanblades, bouncing bullets, drones, and MORE, all in one shot?! Amazing! XD
The flavor texts for the upgrades are a little vague at times, but they are quite comical and fun to read (I read "Party Time!" and laughed when everything got strobe lights LMAO)
I can't even find anything else negative to say... maybe just a level system with progressively harder waves? It might not even need that tbh...
In short: This game is AMAZING and please keep this up!
I am honored by the amount of effort and expertise you put into this comment, you really are a cool person!
I hope to one day be just like you!
if you like this, there's another fun game i found
TD2S
check it out
nice game
Thank you!