Moon Defense

by Michael C Palmer

Mindless alien invaders are bounding free from their meteor home and bombarding the moon as they pass it. Afraid that the attackers might use the moon as a staging area for an assault against earth, the Orbital Marine Command has assigned all remote combat operators to deploy defense vehicles to the moon's surface in order to destroy the alien invaders as they land.

Download the APK

Browse the FTP


Features

Randomly generated landscapes

A landing sequence with variable wind, gravity, and crash velocity settings

Left and right handed controls for landing and weapon selection

3 animated alien monsters

9 weapon power-ups

17 sound effects

A custom, console-style menu with transparency, scrolling text, and background animation

Three difficulty levels and a custom mode with slider controls

Detailed mission statistics after every game that are summarized in the hi-score database

Separate hi-score records for each skill level and the custom mode

History and Development

Moon Defense was originally written in yBasic for devices running Palm OS 3.0 or greater. It featured randomly generated landscapes and crude animation of an alien monster drawn as an 8x8, 1-bit per pixel (black & white) sprite. I spent three weeks developing and testing the game, which eventually included 3 skill levels, 3 weapon power-ups, and a "moon lander" sequence.

The Android version of the game took two weeks for me to port using RFO Basic! on my RCA Viking Pro 2-in-1 tablet/laptop. I have not tested it on other hardware, but on my device, it runs smoothly without ever dipping below the 30fps limiter. It is a fast-paced, retro style shooter with simple but addictive gameplay (for me anyway).

The development was performed on an RCA Viking Pro 10.1" 2-in-1 Android laptop using the following apps.

RFO Basic! - Source code edited and tested in this free basic interpreter for Android

Basic! Compiler - APK compiled by this 3$ app

Ivy Draw - All graphics were designed in this great vector graphics app that costs 6$ to register

SFXR - All sound effects were generated in this free app

WavePad - some sounds effects were processed with this 10$ app

OmniNotes - this open-source note taking app was used to document agendas and to track bugs

DroidEdit - associated text files edited in this free app


Distribution

Moon Defense is public domain and may be freely used, distributed, and modified with the following exceptions. One, I reserve the exclusive right to distribute it where software is bought or sold. Two, derivative work may not use the name of Moon Defense.

Questions and comments welcome in my mailbox, MichaelCPalmer1980@gmail.com

Best regards