How do I make a Space Shoot em up Side Scrolling game?

Love this genre.

1. Have the enemies spawn on a custom timer. Assign patterns and when they fire off to values.

2. Have the frame be the size of the window. Create the illusion of movement by having the backgrounds move through it.

Hope this sloppy response helps!

If you want to make something along the lines of Nemesis or R-type, and you don't particularly want to use timers for spawning enemies, you can make a really long level map and place static actives that represent your different enemies throughout. Depending on your attack pattern, when those actives approach the right or left of your screen, create the enemy at the actives position and destroy the active.

For scrolling, you can use a counter and set the screen co-ordinates at the counter's value. Alternatively, you can use an invisible active that constantly moves right. Simple set the screen position at the invisible active's co-ordinates.

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