Venus Wars

Venus Wars

Humanity's colonization of Venus is under siege!

My first libGDX JAM submission.  For libGDX JAM #21, June 2022.

Intro:

By 2052, after 3 failed SpaceX missions to Mars, with the complete loss of crew due to massive radiation exposures,  NASA finally abandoned any more attempts at establishing a human colony on Mars.

It was long known by NASA that Venus was not only closer and cheaper to get to, it was far less risky for humans to colonize. Not on the Venus surface, but floating in the clouds.

At about 50km above the surface  of Venus, the environment changes to the most Earth-like conditions within the Solar System .  The atmosphere on Venus also provides the various elements required for human life and agriculture: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur.    Also, the upper Venus atmosphere provides protection from harmful solar radiation.  

In just 20 years, humanity had built five  self sustaining floating cities above the clouds of Venus.   Humanity had finally colonized another world.   

However in 2072 reports were coming in that the floating cities were being attacked by crafts of unknown origin. All five floating cities went dark in 2073.    

You are part of a special forces unit sent to investigate.  

Controls:

Cursor keys to move your ship.

Strategy:

Every floating city you liberate will offer your an upgrade.  There are 5 cities but only the first 4 will offer upgrades. Enemies get more shields, and spawn faster each city you liberate.  Choose your upgrade wisely.

There are 20 enemies to destroy on route to each city. Each enemy is worth 100 points.  Once these enemies are defeated you engage a large ship ('boss').  Destroying the large ship earns you 1000 points.  Once all five floating cities are liberated you win the game.  You get 1000 points for each remaining ship you have after you win the game.

High Scores

Scores are saved and persisted on a web server.  Please set you name in OPTIONS if you want people to know how great you are.

Future Enhancements - Post JAM

Enemies attack logic is random.  Interested in looking into group formation flying, attack patterns, spawn patterns, similar to Galaga (https://galaga.cc/ ).  Boss fight definitely needs major attention.

Add Powerups (temporary shields, immunity, firing speed, extra lives).  Meteors will hide the power up, and so you need to destroy the meteors to see the random powerup.

The Science:

Floating cities on Venus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus

Licenses:

Enemy graphics: Space Shooter Redux from https://kenney.nl/assets/space-shooter-redux.  License: (CC0 1.0 Universal)

Player and background graphics: NASA: https://sacd.larc.nasa.gov/smab/havoc/

Music Intro: McFunkypants: Draft Monk - ambient loop for games - CC0 public 

Music Enemy: Komiku: Run against the universe -  CC0 1.0 Universal License

Main Menu Music: One Cool Minute by Loyalty Freak Music - this track is free to use without attribution even commercially (monetization). However, linking back is greatly appreciated. >>> Music: https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

Shaders modified from: 

Protean clouds by nimitz (twitter: @stormoid) > License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 > https://www.shadertoy.com/view/3l23Rh

Nitrostasis > by Otavio Good > License CC0 >

To the extent possible under law, the author(s) have dedicated all copyright and related and neighboring rights to this software to the public domain worldwide. This software is distributed without any warranty.

This means do anything you want with this code. Because we are programmers, not lawyers. -Otavio Good > https://www.shadertoy.com/view/llj3Wy