Catapult

This is a game that I designed as a way to teach my kids about how software is envisioned, developed, and coded. I let the boys decide what the game would be about, and what it would look like (roughly), and then developed the idea into an action game over the course of a week, and polishing it off some time after that.

The object of the game is to operate a catapult using the mouse and buttons to move the catapult around, load, and fire boulders at the approaching enemy. Keep the enemy from reaching the catapult! At each level, target spots appear on the ground. Hitting these targets with a boulder gain you castle walls to build, bombs (very useful in a pinch), extra lives, or extra points. By collecting enough castle walls and building a complete enclosure around the catapult, you can hold off the enemy indefinitely and win the game. Beware of enemies carrying bombs, who can destroy your castle walls, and beware of enemies who will try to take the targets before you do! Also take care not to destroy your own castle walls with boulders.

The game is written with OpenGL graphics and is entirely open source. It uses Tcl/Tk as an underlying interpreter platform. The interpreter accepts commands typed into the console while the game is running, a good diagnostic tool for game development.

Source code available here:
helpme_v2.0.tgz (October 22, 2009)


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Last updated: July 19, 2012 at 9:40am