Space Invaders game in C# with an mBed game controller. The controller communicates with the game through a USB virtual COM port. This is an ECE 4180 final project by Hiroki Mii and Ali Rizvi.
The Space Invaders game was developed using MOO ICT's tutorial as a starting template.
The game is built upon the Windows Forms (.NET) framework allowing us to create multiple applications for start screen and main game screen, and communication between the two. We utilized System.IO.Port and System.Thread.Tasks libraries in order to implement serial port COM communication as well as multithreading within the game for communication efficiency.
When starting the game, there are 3 levels of difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard. The difference between the levels is the rate at which the space invaders appear on the screen. There are designated bottons on the mBed Controller which allow the level to be selected.
Once the game initializes, it runs through mainGameTimerEvent, a function that runs every 20 ms. In mainGameTimerEvent, it opens a serial port and reads data from the mBed controller, such as the analog joystick and shooting button. Simulatenously, makeInvaders generates invaders on to the screen, as well as makeBullet("InvaderBullet") which shoots bullets at the spaceship.
The game can be won by eliminating all the invaders before using up all 5 lives. The objective is to protect Earth and each invader you let past costs a life. In the current code, you would encounter 10 invaders.
The components on the controller include an analog joystick, push button for shooting, 3 push bottons to select difficulty, 3 LEDS to indicate the level of difficulty, and a speaker with a class D audio amp.
The mBed program uses RTOS multithreading to run main and bullet_thread simultaneously. main reads the analog joystick movements and pushbuttons, and sends the data to the C# game through the serial port. On the other hand, bullet_thread is reading data from the serial port to play audio through the speaker, such as a shooting sound.