Approaches to space shooter levels

[rubes]

I am working on a space shooter, and have been contemplating my approaches for the various "waves" of enemies that will appear and their increasing difficulty. I know the least efficient way to do this would be to do a different frame for each level, and that's not even a consideration. I'm thinking about using a string where the numbers 0-9 correspond to my enemy types, where 0 are the easiest, and 9 are the most difficult type of enemy. I would use a hyphen to designate the end of a particular wave, so i'd have a loop to read the list and randomly place an enemy until it hit -. Once all of the enemies are destroyed, i'd pick up again reading the next wave.

Here's what my string might look like "010001000100-11111111111-1220122210221-3333210123333-04040404030404040-555555555-666666366666-757576757575-88888888888-9999999999-"

Does this seem like the right approach to take for this? Any caveats I should be aware of before delving in on this?

thanks,
rubes

[Shawn]

Well I guess it depends on how you're handling the wave. I've never really seen your method of using a string before (not that I've looked at a lot of examples). I'd probably just run a fast loop and create them using X and Y values.

You could just set enemy type to a random value. And use wave value to determine which enemy difficulty type to create. Using your string method you're not really creating random waves.

Wave = 1. Set Enemy Type to random(4).
Enemy Type = 0, create Wave 1 Enemy 1.
Enemy Type = 1, create Wave 1 Enemy 2, etc.

Wave = 2. Set Enemy Type to random(4).
Enemy Type = 0, create Wave 2 Enemy 1
and so on

You'd have to position them setting X,Y to random values in your events too. random(4) would refer to 5 enemy types (0-4). you could also use random(4)+1 if you didn't want to use 0 based index. But anyway, you'd replace random(4) with whatever number of enemies you have.

Edit - Actually I guess your string would be random if I understand correctly. randomly generate numbers and add them to the string, then loop through the string and place those random values. Still, parsing a string seems like extra work that's not necessary.

[King_Cool]

Hey Rubes
Im not sure i have understood your theory correctly, but if i have the method work pretty well!

Here i made this example:
- WASD to move
- SPACE to shoot
- 'R' to restart

...
The gameplay is pretty boring, but its the Wave Editor which is cool!
It consists of:

1
Waves Object
- This is a String Object
- Paragraphs represent Waves ( Paragraph 1 is Wave 1 and so on )
- The numbers plotted in the Paragraphs represent the number of, and type of Enemies in the Wave ( i have 4 types of Enemies in my example, so the valid input is 1, 2,3 or 4 )

2
Current Wave Object
- This is a List Object
- Each List entry represents a Unit
- This Object is used to spawn Enemies onto the playfield

...
This is how it works:

- When there are no enemies, the Units/ Enemies from the next wave/ paragraph in the 'Waves Object' is loaded into the 'Current Wave Object' ( through a loop )
- As soon as this is done, the 'Current Wave Object' randomly places the correct Unit types intoo the playfield and eliminates them from the List ( through a loop )

...
To create waves you simply create a new paragraph in the 'Waves Object'
To create Units in a wave, simply plot in 1, 2, 3 or 4 in the paragraph as many or as few times as you want

...
As i said, the gameplay is pretty boring because this is just an exampl of the Wave Editor.
But by using this kind of editor, you can easily create hundredsof Waves in a matter of minutes if your careless enough!

[rubes]

King Cool, that's what i've been working on and you've nailed it. I am playing with doing this with a random approach to the types of enemies, probably doing something where the enemy type is based on a randomness and the current level being played, so that players wouldn't experience an enemy type 4 (more difficult than type 1) during the first wave. Still, this is pretty sweet and i go back and forth as to what i'm doing.

Sorry for the delay in response, work is kicking my kiester, and i'm trying to model some of the enemies in lightwave, which is taking a bit of time. I'll keep you posted on progress