Good example of survival style game? (endless waves of enemies) - for iphone

charlieaf92

I am curious to see what solutions people have come up with to handle a survival style game. Before I re-create the wheel, I wanted to see if anyone has good examples or ideas about how to accomplish my goal.

My ultimate goal is to have an endless stream of enemies coming onto the screen. However, since this will be running on the iPhone - there needs to be some recycling of actors (when they are killed, they move back out of view and restart). I am not quite sure how to do this and keep some random/chaos in the way they come into the play area (from all directions). The frequency of of the enemies needs to be somewhat random, but also within a set 'range' to control difficulty (that will increase with time) - but the points at which the enemies begin need to be randomized to avoid repetition and predictability (but also in a set range outside of the player's viewable area).

Thanks in advance
Charlie

UtopianGames

Could have a spawner actor that knows how many enemies are on screen so when you have an enemy spawn use something like "enemy = enemy +1" if enemy < 10 spawn enemy.

Darren.

design219

Here is a link to my first game Food Fight! (it's Free). http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/food-fight/id352646643?mt=8 It does just what you are talking about in the "Mixed Salad" mode. I used an invisible spawning actor and attributes to spawn actors when the count is less than 8, so there are always 8 enemies coming at you. The timing is random so they are not even. The harder ones come less frequently than the easier ones.

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Nesen Probe http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nesen-probe/id377766693?mt=8
Tickle Stones http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tickle-stones/id363484260?mt=8
Food Fight! (free) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/food-fight/id352646643?mt=8

charlieaf92

Thanks for the responses guys. I've been reading that spawning actors is fairly resource intensive and taxes the iPhone performance - have you found this to be the case?

When I am testing on the device using the preview app I get a slight hang up in the on screen action each time I spawn a series of enemies. Would publishing and installing the actual .app help reduce this?

beefy_clyro

nope, what you get on the viewer is pretty much what you'll get if you build it