Inspiration
I love to play table games, especially one called battleship since it was the first game I received from my parents. I could spend hours playing it. Another thing I love is space travel, I gave up on becoming an astronaut but I definitely enjoy movies and games about trips and battles in space. So I wanted to mix those two important parts of my life into one game that could bring joy and happiness to other people
What it does
Spaceship battle is a strategy game that uses Alexa voice commands to control the location of the attacks, there are two boards one is for the player ships and the second one is for the enemy ships, but, the enemy ships are hidden behind a wall of clouds. The player has to select the right coordinates to attack and destroy all enemy spaceships before the enemy destroys all player spaceships.
How I built it
Using the Framework PIXIJS and Javascript I was able to generate the game state machine, then I linked the required commands with Alexa. the back end was done using NodeJS and the libraries Express+ ASK-SDK
Challenges I ran into
It was my first time publishing games for some contest, I have worked in game development in the past with Unity but I did not know how to create a game in Javascript. Then I found the Framework PIXIJS and its documentation was very user-friendly but it took me some time to master the basics.
The second challenge was to configure the back end, I have worked on some projects with NodeJS in the past but it was still challenging to fulfill all the requirements in order to pass skill validation.
The third challenge was to design the game flow for voice commands, receive the user's commands and pass it to the game trying to make it as frictionless as possible.
The final challenge was the certification but thanks to the certification team I was able to identify the issues and fix them
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I feel really comfortable building on PIXIJS now and I will start creating more content there.
What I learned
Animation, PIXIJS, NODEJS, Alexa Web API for games.
What's next for Spaceship Battle
I started to work on the skill a few weeks before the deadline so I was not able to add all features I wanted but I will definitely add them after, I want to build a multiplayer mode in which players can play against friends, I have some friends with Alexa devices with a display so it would be nice to play against them. Another feature I want to add is wildcards, for example, if you fire to a wildcard you would destroy one of your own ships, or if there is a protection wildcard your ship would need two shots to be destroyed, and so on.
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