[SixOfEleven]

Here is a new challenge that the Game Programming and XNA Forum Leaders and team members have been discussing. We are providing a starter kit for the challenge. The catch is that there are errors in the starter kit and they can be developed into a more complete game. The challenge is to take the starter kit, find and fix the errors, and extend the starter kit to include suggested features. The challenges will get progressively harder with more difficult bugs to fix.

For this first challenge I have a 2D space shooter, the project is at the bottom of this post. It contains two game states, a start screen and a game play screen. Alien ships fly from the top of the screen to the bottom and shoot bullets at the player. The player can fly their ship around the screen and fire back at the aliens. A few things don't work quite right. Find the bugs and fix them. Following are a list of suggested enhancements you can make to the game to make it more complete.

• add a pause state for when the game is in play
  
• add a high score state that displays the top five scores and save them
  
• make the aliens more intelligent instead of firing randomly
  
• have killed aliens occasionally drop power ups for the player to pick up
  
• add in a better game state manager rather than what is provided

This is an open ended challenge and there is no deadline. The idea is to get a better understanding of game programming with XNA.

 AlienInvasion.zip (71.3K)
Number of downloads: 173

[ShadowsEdge19]

What are the posting instructions for finished challenges SixOfEleven?

Nice work getting one of these started, I might give it a go at some point!

[SixOfEleven]

Screen captures would be nice. Posting the bugs you found with spoiler tags isn't necessary but might be helpful. The idea is to fix common bugs in games, logic bugs, and try and extend working code. I'm hoping that the challenges will become more and more difficult.

[ShadowsEdge19]

It would be nice to have each challenge still open to try even when the others have been announced, it'll be sort of a training exam.

[bonyjoe]

Will give this ago on my lunch times at work I think, or when I have to run a crap ton of unit tests.

[racidon]

Guess I'll give it a go after the 5th challenge - which I'm unlikely to finish at my current pace with constant life interruptions and my poorly created editor

[CasiOo]

I love this challenge! And it is a good way for me to learn some XNA