Welcome to my dev log. You can always find a working copy of the game here.

I’ve started work on recreating Beamrider created by David Rolfe for Intellivision.

I started by watching a couple of play-throughs to refresh my memory but then decided I didn’t want to create the original exactly. There were things I didn’t like about the original, and more modern ideas like multi-fire and various bombs which could add to the gameplay. I also didn’t like the fact that in the original game, the aliens could slide onto the screen diagonally and latch on to a line or not as they chose. To my mind the aliens should start at the top of a beam and move down the length of the beam, this makes it fairer for the player. I have taken some severe liberties with the graphics, sorry David and Intellivision.

Anyway, this is the dev log for the game and it is likely to be sporadic. I started posting this on a Simple Machines forum but it is much simpler to admin if I setup a WordPress…..

Progress to date:

I have set up the multi-screen navigation with various screens for various purposes. There is a main Intro Scene containing menus to all the other screens, a Play Screen, obviously, a Settings Screen to change the volumes and the settings, a Credit Screen for instructions and story background, and a High Score table. I had the idea of setting up a central high score table on the server with versions of the game adding their scores in real time but I’m not sure how much work that would be, we will see.

So far I have created a play screen with a moving firing ship and aliens that travel down the screen. There is no collision detection yet but this will be the next step…

Notice the musical notes coming out of the speakers. They increase in volume as the volume goes up.