Lets Make a Retro Game – Episode 12 – Player Collisions and Lives

This is the 12th video in my series, where I am going to work through the steps required to make a home brew game for a retro 8-bit console or computer system.

In each episode I will work through various topics, such as tools, methods and design.

All of the information referenced in each episode will have an associated article on my web site.

In the Intellivision game of Astro Smash, that we are basing our game on, the main enemies are Asteroids that fall down the screen, exploding when they hit the ground.

Points are awarded to the player, when one is destroyed and points are removed if one reaches the planet surface.

In this episode we are going to cover two things, detecting whether any enemy objects hit the player ship as well as display the number of lives the players has remaining.
This will also include detecting when the player is out of lives and ending the game. We will enhance this some more in a future episode.

I have included the complete code for this section, so you can follow through the various steps without having to worry about typing in code.

The supplied code has two folders:
Start – where we start in this episode and
End – the final code and a copy of the ROM file.

The corresponding article with all download links and more detail on what is covered in this episode is available on my website here:
http://www.electricadventures.net/ViewArticle.aspx?Id=146

Next episode we will be adding different enemy types and movement logic.

See general updates on both my web site:
http://www.electricadventures.net
and my Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/ElectricAdven…

I am part of the ‘Press Play On Tape’ podcast, join the mayhem here:
https://www.facebook.com/pressplayontap

I also do live game plays, usually high score practices on Twitch here:
http://www.twitch.tv/electricadventures