Shoot-'Em-Up

The first space shooter game is fifty years old! But game developers keep improving on the basic idea, coming up with new twists on the classic formula. In this Activetuts+ Session, you'll learn all about creating shoot-'em-up games for the web. Pew pew!

Posts in this series

An Introduction to FlashPunk: Creating a Spaceship Shoot-'Em-Up
In the last tutorial, we introduced FlashPunk and its capabilities. Now it's time to build a game with it! We'll build a top-down, mouse-controlled...
Daniel Sidhion
17 Nov 2011
Games
Create a Simple Space Shooter Game in HTML5 With EaselJS
Last year, I showed you how to create a shoot-'em-up game with Flash and AS3. With HTML5's rise in popularity (and capabilities), let's take a look at how to...
Carlos Yanez
29 Feb 2012
Game Design
Build a Stage3D Shoot-'Em-Up: Sprite Test
In this tutorial series (part free, part Premium) we'll create a high-performance 2D shoot-em-up using the new hardware-accelerated Stage3D rendering engine....
Christer Kaitila
7 Mar 2012
Games
Build a Stage3D Shoot-'Em-Up: Interaction
In this tutorial series (part free, part Premium) we're creating a high-performance 2D shoot-em-up using the new hardware-accelerated Stage3D rendering...
Christer Kaitila
14 Mar 2012
Games
Quick Tip: Add a Blurry Trail Effect to Your Bullets
In this Quick Tip you will learn how to use BitmapData's copyPixels() method to create a very fast blurry trail effect for the bullets in your shoot-'em-up...
Daniel Sidhion
15 Mar 2012
Effects
Starling Particle Effects for Stage3D Shooter Games
I'm sure Stage3D is not foreign to most readers; it's the new API that gives AS3 programmers access to the GPU. However, coding against opcodes in Stage3D...
Kah Shiu Chong
17 Mar 2012
Effects
Build a Stage3D Shoot-'Em-Up: Explosions, Parallax, and Collisions
In this tutorial series (part free, part Premium) we're creating a high-performance 2D shoot-em-up using the new hardware-accelerated Stage3D rendering...
Christer Kaitila
21 Mar 2012
Games
Quick Tip: A Simple Score Display for Flash Games
Almost all games out there use a scoring system to help players see their progress. It is essential to show the player’s score in a clear and fun way. In...
Daniel Apt
27 Mar 2012
Games
Build a Stage3D Shoot-'Em-Up: Terrain, Enemy AI, and Level Data
We're creating a high-performance 2D shoot-em-up using Flash's new hardware-accelerated Stage3D rendering engine. In this part of the series we add new enemy...
Christer Kaitila
28 Mar 2012
Game Design
Animating Game Menus and Screen Transitions in HTML5: A Guide for Flash Developers
HTML5 and Flash development may have a lot in common, but as a Flash developer I've still found it to be a monumental task to re-learn my old skills in...
Tyler Seitz
30 Mar 2012
Games
Activetuts+ Workshop #5: Frantic 2 - Critique
Continuing our new series of critiques, this week Matt Porter gives us a detailed rundown of an excellent Flash shoot-'em-up: Frantic 2.
Porter
3 Apr 2012
Critique
Build a Stage3D Shoot-'Em-Up: Score, Health, Lives, HUD and Transitions
In this part of the series, we’re adding gameplay elements such as health, score, and lives, the GUI elements to display them, and game logic transitions to...
Christer Kaitila
4 Apr 2012
Game Design
Pixel-Level Collision Detection Based on Pixel Colors
In this tutorial, I'll follow the approach suggested by Richard Davey (Thanks, Richard!), and used by him and others, in detecting collisions between bitmaps...
Kah Shiu Chong
12 Apr 2012
Games
Build a Stage3D Shoot-'Em-Up: Full-Screen Boss Battles and Polish
In this tutorial series we will create a high-performance 2D shoot-em-up using Flash 11's new hardware-accelerated Stage3D rendering engine. We will be...
Christer Kaitila
30 Apr 2012
Game Design