YARS - Yet Another Retro Shooter

This was the result of a presentation I gave in front of my colleagues at Exact on March 1, 2018. I created a shmup from scratch in just over an hour. I was using no frameworks, no stock images and no stock sound effects. My only tools were:

A computer with OS, command shell, web browser and web server
Vim (customized; yeah, I cheated a bit there)
GIMP
SoX

Later that year, I redid the whole thing in my attic. It was less fun without the audience and without the Bob Ross intro, but the recording was better, making it possible to follow exactly what I am doing. You can watch it on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/5V0jklDVT2g

HTML5 implementation (2018)

You can play the end result here:

https://helderman.github.io/yars/html5/yars.html

Scratch implementation (2020)

This time I added power-ups, music and a title screen, making it finally feel like a finished product.

You can play it here:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/417981359

Or watch a short video of the game here: https://youtu.be/-cLZ5ARs3PM

Instructions

Warning: loud sounds, bright flashes.

Click the green flag, then click ‘Play’ to start. Move the mouse to pilot the ship. Click to shoot. Pick up power-ups, or shoot them for instant carnage. Picking up or destroying a power-up will cancel any earlier power-up you picked up, so pick wisely.

Power-ups:

Cat - side shields
Giga - flamethrower
Gobo - triple fire
Nano - score multiplier
Pico - hot bullets
Tera - chain reaction
all 6 - everything!

The last one is extremely rare. It will appear after you picked up all other power-ups at least once, then shot a power-up.

Notes and Credits

Vertically scrolling shoot ‘em up, with explosive overkill! Good for blowing off steam.

Based on a simple HTML5 game I made in 2018:
https://helderman.github.io/yars/

Actually, the original game was just the side-effect of a presentation I did about writing games for fun:
https://youtu.be/5V0jklDVT2g

For the explosions, I am using the same ‘fisheye’ trick I explored in the ‘Explosion’ project I made earlier this year: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/389171074/

All graphics created either with Scratch’s costume editor (text, digits, buttons, power-ups) or with GIMP (ships, bullets, title, starry background). https://www.gimp.org/

Scratch Cat, Giga, Gobo, Nano, Pico, Tera taken from Scratch’s image library.

“Magic Spell” sound effect taken from Scratch’s audio library. Voice-over (power-ups) by me; post-processed with Scratch’s sound editor. All other sound effects (shooting, explosions) created with SoX. http://sox.sourceforge.net/

Music: “Sci Fi” by Benjamin Tissot (a.k.a. Bensound)
https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/sci-fi
License: free license with attribution.
https://www.bensound.com/licensing

BUGS:
Sometimes, lone invaders wander around at the start of the game.