My four year old son and I have a Saturday morning ritual where the two of us go our for a “special” breakfast at a local restaurant. While we are waiting for our food, Owen always draws a very exciting battle scene on the back of the paper placemat using the crayons provided by our server. This week’s battle scene was that of an army battle that involved a very large spaceship and a tank and some helicopters. Once he was done drawing, he asked “Dad, can we turn this into a video game?”. I answered that of course I could make a video game!
So we went home and pulled out an old scanner, scanned his drawing, and went to work in Flash! The result, is a fun little game that I had fun making (and relearning a bit of trigonometry) and Owen had fun playing. I thought I’d share it as a small lesson in how to make a video game.
The game is aptly titled “Army Battle“. To play the game, you try to blast the helicoters with a bullet from your tank. To move the tank use the up and down arrows. To rotate the tank, use the left and right arrows. To aim the turret, move your mouse pointer around the screen. To fire the cannon, click the left mouse button!