Okay, been working on this whenever I could find the time. I have a few ideas on what to do next but I'm afraid that I might be changing the game too much or for the worse. So before I spend a bunch of time adding questionable features to the game I thought it would be helpful to get some critical feedback.
I am considering making bullets reverse direction when they are repelled, this would allow the player to indirectly attack enemies. Also if I do this I would consider adding bosses. However I am wondering if this would change the gameplay too much.
Secondly, I am considering removing the ability to commandeer asteroids because I think in practice its not very useful/fun. I may be wrong.
Finally, I wanted pirate ships to rob the player ship of junk. I thought of making pirate ships stun the player ship and then take some loot, but that proved difficult to implement because the game is auto-scrolling forward, and if the player ship is stunned they will probably get killed by asteroids, or I would have to make a massive programming effort to sort of pause everything in the game other than the pirate ships on screen so they can loot the player ship...
Anyway, I couldn't think of a good way to implement it, so for now the enemy ships are just like enemies in any other shmup.
CONTROLS:
Arrow keys to move ship
a - attract nearby junk
s - push back nearby objects (can only use when blue bar is full)
d - Commandeer nearest asteroid (the asteroid will be destroyed if it collides with a ship or gets shot enough)
PLAY THE GAME -->
http://mamin.exofire.net/spaceScavenger.jnlpRequires Java 1.6+
The web host I have sort of sucks, so if you can't get to it you may need to try again.
Downloadable versions coming soon.
titles?:
Scraps
Scrappers
Starjunk (+Scavenger?)
SpaceTrash
I like StarJunk Scavengers and Scrappers the best. Thanks!