Creator: Michael Pavek
This is a space shooter based off a scene in Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back where the Millennium Falcon escapes
capture by hiding in an asteroid field. Instead of piloting the Millenium Falcon, I thought it would be fun to be the
bad guy and fly a Tie Fighter. Here's a breakdown of some of the things that went into developing this game.
Gameplay
The objective of the game is to destroy the Millenium Falcon by shooting it. Players star off with a limited
number of hitpoints representing the Tie Fighter's hull integrity. Impacts with asteroids and the Millennium Falcon reduces the
number of Tie Fighter hitpoints while destroying asteroids increases hitpoints.
The player wins when all the Millenium Falcon's hitpoints are gone.
The Tie Fighter is destroyed when it loses all its hitpoints.
Models
Starships (Tie Fighter/Millennium Falcon)
Lasers
The lasers were a rotated cylinder that were created each time the 'fire' button is pressed.
The lasers match the Tie Fighter's position and rotation and then move on a forward vector. A collider ray is attached
to the back of the laser and projected forward to determine laser impact.
Asteroids
- All the asteroids in the game are the same model with the X,Y,Z proportions modified on a random basis.
- Models created based on a tutorial at
BlenderGuru
- Asteroid Textures were textures of rocks taken from numerous sources.
Lighting
Lensflare
The primary method for the lensflare effect was based on the Three JS lensflare example, available
on the Three JS website. It used point light and a sprite to create the effect of the light source and light effect. It then
used separte sprites with additive blending to create the illusion of lens reflections. Other effects include:
- A muzzle flash which is a green point light attached in front of the Tie Fighter that flashes as a laser is fired.
- A booster light which is a blue point light attached to the back of the Tie Fighter that lights up when the afterburner is engaged.
Sound
I used the HTML5 Audio tag for the sound effects and background music. HTML5 Audio is not specifically
designed for games so there are some limitations (like overlapping the same sound effect multiple times) but this did allow me
to repeat sound effects while resetting their start point (i.e. Tie Fighter blasers).
Music
- The actual soundtrack from the asteroid scene in Empire Strikes Back is used throughout this game
Sound Effects
Particle Effects
Smoke and fire particles effects are used for both the Millennium Falcon (above) and the Tie Fighter (below) to
represent damage to the starships.
Cutting Room Floor
There were several features that I had planned to include but could not for various reasons. The primary reason
was that implementing the lasers was much more difficult than expected due primary to having to match the Tie Fighter's position and rotation
using quaternions. These features include:
- Ship and Asteroid Explosions
- This was going to require both a smoke and fire texture creation along with asteroid particle modeling.
- More detailed Tie Fighter HUD overlay with graphics rather than text
- Physics model applied for asteroid and ship-to-ship collision.
- Millennium Falcon AI that would allow evasive manuevers and return blaser fire
- Opening Star Wars Scroll similar to what the movies portray