Introduction

Each year, as part of the Real-time Interactive Science (RTIS) degree at DigiPen Institute of Technology, students are separated into teams of three to five and work on a game project of the course of that school year. For our senior project we developed the game Base Invaders.

Base Invaders is action-oriented RTS best described as a combination of “Tower Defense”, “Defend Your Castle”, and “Lemmings”. Gameplay occurs as Invaders march toward the Tower and it is up to the player to stop them before they destroy it. The player can defeat invaders either through traps they place in the level, or by grabbing and throwing the invaders. The game features a large variety of traps and invaders, each with unique uses and abilities.

Levels generally have a series of “waves” where a preset group of invaders attempt to destroy the tower, while in-between Traitor, the player’s only friend, introduces new traps and invaders, and offers various words of wisdom.

As a senior level project we had five primary programmers, and three artists. We had an 8-month core development time, with a 4-month polish time after the school year ended. Approximately 12 months had been spent on the previous engine design.

Base Invaders was programmed primarily in C++, with Lua used for level scripting. Subversion was used for source control. We used Direct3D, and FMOD for rendering and sound. Flash, 3DS Max, and Audacity were used for most content creation.