NEW PROJECT – Centipede
Centipede is a bare-bones facsimile of the classic arcade game of the same name.
Objective
Continuing my exploration of Game Development with the Javascript Canvas API, I moved onto Centipede mostly by accident. Once again I avoided tutorials in order to try and work through the logic myself. The key goal with this game was handling more complex nested arrays.
Development
I accidentally developed the base movement for the Centipede object while working on Space Invaders. The linked segments gliding back and forth was easier to program initially than the ticked timeout movement of the aliens.
There is an array for centipedes, with each centipede containing an array of segments, and each new centipede generating on hit by a missile. Shooting a segment causes the split segment to reverse velocity. When the segments are gone, you win.
The mushrooms are generated randomly within some min and max ranges to prevent them from spawning to close to any edges.
Hurdles
Handling the centipede split was the most challenging part of the build and it’s still a bit bugged as of writing. When a missile collides with a segment, the parent centipede splits in two new arrays of the remaining segments. Sometimes incorrect segments disappear when another one is shot, and the total segment count seems to get lost sometimes.