The computer broke. Land it yourself!

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  The computer broke. Land it yourself!

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  Approaching the landing site

Inspiration

In most games, space based or otherwise, rotating your ship is an easy matter. Left turns left etc. But in the physical work rotation is accomplished through acceleration. Out of curiosity, I posed the question: What would happen if a space ship in a video game behaved the laws of physics?

What it does

This game provides a realistic simulation of a space ship lander.

How we built it

This game was built using Python and Pygame. It was packaged using a tool called Pygbag which allows it to be hosted by a web server and played in a browser. A web site called itch.io which hosts indie games is hosting the game for me.

Challenges we ran into

The addition of a history function in the game added many extra game states which proved difficult to debug. It is still not clear that all bugs related to this function have been resolved.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting this game published and available for play for anyone with a browser is an amazing accomplishment. Now, many many people can see this game and try it out.

What we learned

The design of game state logic is a very important element of game design. Game state logic should follow game function and without such forward thinking, implementation of the game will be difficult.

What's next for The computer broke. Land it yourself!

We will wait to get some feedback and see if it makes sense to update or add features or more levels to the game. Otherwise, we will let this game exist as a testament to why you don't want to conserve angular momentum in space games.

Built With

• itch.io
• pygame
• pygbag
• python