This is a tutorial following from a presentation I gave on building a HTML5 game using the phaser.js game framework. We will be building a classic vertical scrolling space shooter game, and will focus on polish and production value. In this part we set up the player’s ship and movement.
In this part we will build on what we started in part 1, adding some special effects to the player’s ship, and the ability to shoot. We’ll tweak the firing logic to get the right look and feel. While we’re at it, we add the ability to control the ship by the mouse as well as the arrow keys.
In part 3 of the phaser.js game tutorial we add enemies to shoot at! We look at adding “personalities” to our enemies by defining their movement style, and we’ll wire up the necessary collision detections.
At this point, the basic mechanics of the game have been figured out, and the attention shifts to adjusting the timing and mechanics as the player progresses in the game to keep it fun and challenging. That is what pacing is all about.
In this final part, we add a lot of code to create a powerful boss with its own movement behaviour, weapons and firing mechanism, and a simple yet effective AI to make it respond to the player’s movements.