SSC - 2D Geometric Space Combat

News

Introduction

Welcome to SSC, the 2D (OpenGL accelerated) arcade shoot-em-up featuring numerous colorful bouncy balls.

You can download the preview version of the game from

Requirements

Roadmap

Version 0.9 will introduce the following features:

• improvements to graphics (including texturing for nice effects)
• a scoring system
• more graphics improvements
• better gameplay, enemies, level goals, etc.

User Information

If you are looking for a quick five minutes of blast-em-up action, you'll have to get this thing compiled first. The basic steps are:

	tar xvfj ssc-0.8.tar.bz2
        cd ssc-0.8
	./configure
        make
	make install	# as root
	ssc

And this should produce an executable 'ssc' which can be run directly. The game looks for its datafiles in /usr/local/share/ssc/ (hardcorded for now, sorry).

To play, you can use the arrow keys to move and the key 'A' to fire, as such:

There is some code for mouse control, but it isn't an optimal configuration.

General tips:

• Bogeys (blue) move in flocks. Try to single them out for quick kills as they are more dangerous when they are near death
• Lunatics (white) have a negative mass, and can cling on to you, causing massive damage. Try to kill them before they touch you, otherwise, try accelerating/rotating/firing near walls.
• Fatso's (beige?) don't really do anything, but are very massive. You may be able to use them to your advantage if you can get bogey's to collide with them. Beware of Lunatics clinging on to Fatsos!
• Blackholes (green - go figure) suck you in and cause massive damage. They also affect Bogeys to a small degree, so you can orbit a Blackhole and try to lure Bogeys to their deaths.
• Smarties (grey) learn to fly as the game progresses - actually, they usually fly pretty well within the first ten seconds.. Smarties are not too dangerous, but mostly annoying; they constantly bash into you and can make you an easy target for bogies.

Developer Information

I am looking for input into the project. Goals are:

• maintain and improve the clarity of the current code base (maybe with a few more comments too)
• rely as little as possible on external data packs
• add more flashy graphics (how about a camera sweep introduction?)
• come up with level ideas and goals
• design new types of enemies
• support multiplayer and network
• implement a rigid body physics model which does not allow overlapping
• some sounds and effects (currently you can drop in the Chromium wav directory relative to ssc and get sound effects and music)
• add some more supported platforms

General game idea goals are a physics based game (not necessarily entirely composed of circles, but probably 2D) which features interesting enemies, intense gameplay, and AI/a-life themes.

I am open to suggestions!

Credits