History
Sopwith was a side scrolling sheet 'em game up by David L Clark. The game was punlished by BMB Compuscience in 1984.
The Grame used CGA graphics and was written in C and assembler.
The game could fit on a 360k 5.25" floppy disk.
In 2017, can we make a similar game?
Method
I'll create my game in the Unity Engine to save myself from writting my own engine. The game logic will be written in C#. I'll create the game models in Lightwave 3D. This verion can be 3D.
For player input I'll allow keyboard input and controller input.
For the screen, I've used Depth Of Field to blur out the background to allow the player to focus on bombing the tanks and shooting the enemy planes.
The Game background is kept very basic with trees, blimps and some hills.
I've created non textured objects for this game.
Once a plane is hit, I'll switch over to the engines physics to allow the fallout of the sky. In most cases the physics works correctly (the image above to the right shows the plane going out of control, with physics going a little wrong - but very funny).
The objects on the ground, once hit will explode. The object will fracture in to parts with the assistance of physics to give a more entertaining destruction of the object.
The enemy planes will travel forward to your side of the map and try and shoot you down.
Conclusion
Game programming has evolved to a point where you no longer need to program the game engine. With engines like Unity, Unreal and GameMaker to make that part of development easier. The Game engines allow you to focus more on the game logic itself - the game. The time taken to complete a project should be reduced with each iteration on the engines usage. However for your first project with a new engine or the same engine but upgraded, could take longer due to learning the changes or just how the engine works.
Game engines allow you to focus on what you originally wanted to achieve. You have have your ideas up and running with place holder art in a very short time.
The game engines allows you to collaborate with artist, sound designers and programmers right out of the box in many cases.
