3D Beer Asteroids, Invaders, and Blaster

(c) 2007 Scott M Baker / SB-Software, http://www.sb-software.com/beerasteroids/

The spaceman thought he was safe. Through the wormhole he went. What kind of universe would he emerge in? Would the laws to physics hold true? Imagine his supprise when he was assaulted by wave after wave of giant beer bottles. If only he could go EVA and have a drink. But there's no time for that. There's fighting to do....

Overview, Requirements, and Installation

Overview:

3D Beer Asteroids, Invaders and Blaster is a collection of three different games:

Beer Asteroids is an asteroid shooter game, similar to the "asteroids" game that you might have played back in the mid 1980s, but of course rather than blowing up dull, boring rocks in space, you get to blow up beer bottles. Wave after wave more and more bottles arrive.

Beer Invaders is a space invaders clone. You guessed it -- rather than battling space invaders you are battling beer bottles.

Beer Blaster is similar to the game "AstroBlast". It's kind of a hybrid between asteroids and space invaders. Beer bottles fall from the sky and you have to blast as many as you can.

The beer bottles are rendered using 3D models, textures, and lighting. They roll, tumble, and break apart just like real asteroids would. There are several types of UFOs that can attack you, and lots of foes other than bottles.

There are also many different "power ups" available that will add advanced new capabilities to your ship, including multiple missile launchers and a starburst launcher.

The game still plays like a classic 2D arcade game, but uses modern 3D graphics techniques, and will fully exploit your fancy 3D graphics accelerator in your PC.

Requirements:

This game requires Microsoft DirectX version 9.0 or greater. It is recommended that you are running either XP or Vista.

This game requires a decent video card with 3D acceleration.

Installation:

The automated setup program will install Beer Invaders, Asteroids, and Blaster to your hard drive, and place an  icon on your desktop. It's as simple as that.

Getting Started

Launching the game:

The game is launched, unsurprisingly, by clicking the desktop icon labeled "Beer Asteroids" on your desktop. This will bring up a dialog box where you can configure game options, graphics settings, difficulty, etc.

If you want to jump right into things, then go ahead and click the <Play> button.

If, on the other hand, you want to study the full range of exciting configuration options available to you first, then continue reading...

Windowed vs Full Screen:

You can choose to play the game in a window, or on your full screen. Personally, I recommend full screen mode (who ever went to an arcade and played a game with windows and dialog boxes in it...)

Windowed mode is useful if you still  want part of your windows desktop visible. For example, if you're waiting for an important email message or some such nonsense.

Difficulty:

The difficulty levels range from a complete and total wimp level, to unreasonably difficult. Adjusting the difficulty level will make asteroids harder to destroy, and your ship easier to destroy.

Acceleration Effect:

The acceleration effect controls how responsive your astro-hunter fighter is. A low acceleration effect means that your ship starts and stops quickly. A high acceleration effect means it will take you longer to get going and longer to stop.

Playing the Game

The game is played using the keyboard, joystick, or mouse. To select an input device, use the "options" button on the main window, and select the "controls" page.

Keyboard commands:

[Note: By default, mouse support is selected. To use your mouse, use the options button on the main menu and select the controls page]

Left-Arrow Rotate your ship left (beer asteroids), or move ship left (beer invaders/blaster)  
Right-Arrow Rotate your ship right (beer asteroids), or move ship left (beer invaders/blaster)
Up-Arrow Thrust in the direction your ship is currently rotated (beer asteroids)
Ctrl Fire a nuclear torpedo (you have an unlimited* supply of them, so you have safely hold down the ctrl key if you wish)
Alt Fire a special weapon, such as Starburst
ESC Pause (or quit) the game
Shift Engage shield, if you have shield power available (you must collect power-ups)

Joystick:

[Note: By default, mouse support is selected. To use your joystick, use the options button on the main menu and select the controls page]

Joystick support is self-intuitive. Pressing left or right rotates your ship. Pressing up applies thrust. Weapon, Starburst, and Shield are controlled by joystick buttons 1, 2, and 3. You can also use the keyboard to fire the weapons and activate the shields.

Mouse:

The left button fires your primary weapon, regardless of which game you are playing.

How the mouse works depends on which of the three games you are playing:

Beer Asteroids: Your ship can move about the screen, so you have two dimensions of travel. Moving the mouse left or right will rotate your ship. Pressing the right button will apply thrust and move your ship in the direction you are currently pointed. The keyboard may also be used to apply thrust by using the up-arrow key.

Beer Invaders, Beer Blaster: Your ship is restricted to the bottom of the screen, and so you only have one dimension of movement. Moving the mouse left or right will move your ship left or right. Since there is no "thrust", the right button will fire your alternate weapon.

Shields and Alternate weapon can be fired using the keyboard by using the shift and alt keys respectively.

Bottles:

The bottles will appear from the sides on your screen and tumble across the screen, at which point they will wrap† around to the opposite side of the screen. Your job is to shoot these bottles, and make them go away. It usually takes several shots to destroy an asteroid, especially a big one. When you destroy a big asteroid, it typically breaks into several smaller bottles, which travel even faster, and you have to hunt them down and destroy them. This is simply the bad luck commonly associated with the universe. 

Hull Plating:

Your ship is equipped with a limited amount of hull plating. Hitting an asteroid, or being hit by a UFO's nuclear torpedo,  will damage your hull plating and reduce it's protection by exactly one.

When you run out of hull plating, your ship is extremely vulnerable, and any hit will destroy it. That would be bad.

Power-ups:

Sometimes when you blow away an asteroid, it will leave a "power up" behind. Power-ups are equipment, materials, and treasure that were hidden by space pirates inside of the asteroid. Chase down the powerup with your ship and you will get a bonus. Here are some power-ups:

Hull Plating Adds to the existing hull plating rating of your ship.
Starburst Adds to your available starburst missile inventory. A starburst fires multiple missiles in multiple directions, and is usually fired with the alt key.
Extra Missile Launcher This will add an extra missile launcher to your ship, allowing you to fire two missiles at once. It will last a while, and then eventually burn out, leaving you with just one missile. If you already have two missile launchers, and you pick up this power-up, then you will be able to fire three missiles at once.
Extra Ship Add another ship to your inventory. Useful. Very useful.
Shield Picking up a shield powerup will increase your shield reserve. Shields are activated by using the Shift key

 UFOs and other things

There are a variety of UFOs that will show up periodically and harass you. UFOs differ from asteroids and other hazards in the respect that UFOs also have nuclear torpedo launchers. Fortunately though the UFOs are exceedingly poor shots, and rarely hit you. Here are some common UFOs:

  Beer Keg You don't know why the beer kegs are hostile, nor do you understand why they keep hurtling missiles in your direction.
  Spinner Spinners appear in beer blaster. You'll know them when you see them. A spinner is a special sort of bomb in the respect that if it hits anywhere on the bottom your screen, your ship will be destroyed, regardless of how much hull plating you have. So, be sure to kill the spinners!

Footnotes:

* You may ask yourself how we managed to fit an unlimited supply of nuclear torpedoes inside such a small space ship. This is not as difficult as it seems, because infinity is not nearly as a big a number as most people think it is, and the inside of your ship is bigger than it looks. We ensure you that your ship does in fact hold an infinite number of nuclear torpedoes and we encourage you to count them if you do not trust us. We would never lie.

† At first, it may seem contrary to physics that an bottle should "wrap" and appear on the opposite side of the screen when it goes off-screen. However, we assure you that newtonian physics is wrong, and we are right. In the real world, if an asteroid was to fall off one side of a flat universe, wrapping and appearing on the opposite side of the universe is exactly what it would do. We encourage you to go out, find a flat universe and some asteroids, and try this experiment for yourself.

Revision History

Contacting the Author:

website: http://www.sb-software.com/beerasteroids/

email: smbaker@sb-software.com