[November, 2022 FINAL UPDATE] A video game release coming to a Vision Launcher near you to include a Perspective Companion Website

[jaaortega]

Hello Fellow Scared Humans,

Our Cosmos is under assault! Will you stand to defend it? Watch the release video for more details:

Cosmos Assaulters Release Video HERE

I am pleased to announce the official date for the Cosmos Assaulters public test release: this weekend, January 16th, 2021 @ 12pm EST / 9am PST

(or use this handy Chronus link to see your own relative time: https://a.chronus.eu/199A6DC )

Around that time, http://cosmosassaulters.com will go live. Visit the site, follow the 3 easy steps on the homepage and you will be playing on the Client Launcher in no time.

Some important notes:

Cosmos Assaulters is a test project, a work in progress and first installment for my long-term goal: to help build a “Scada Arcade” that brings fun and interesting games to the platform many of us work with day to day. My mission is to bring more awareness to the power and versatility of SCADA systems, particularly to aspiring developers; to help inspire creativity while building real world skillsets with best-in-class technology.

As such, this is a trial test release to see how things go and gauge interest, which means that the Ignition Gateway running Cosmos Assaulters will be in Trial Mode. Every 2 hours the Gateway will reset, this will affect any active clients running the game or navigating the website by ending the connection with a TRIAL EXPIRED warning and will require a refresh or a Client Restart to reconnect to the Cosmos Assaulters gateway.

I imagine the game will vary in performance across systems and given the heavy re-paint nature of the project, you may see different degrees of performance on old hardware. Any form of GPU is likely to make a clear improvement. I also have a report that Mac performance might need to be investigated so let me know if you have played Cosmos Assaulters on a Mac and how it went.

Please send any bug reports to bugreportCosmosAssaulters@gmail.com instead of posting them here.

You might also notice that there is no SSL on the Gateway on launch day so please keep that in mind.

I plan to hold the servers up for the majority of the day and will make an announcement here when the time comes to wrap things up.

If there is anything else that comes to me, I will edit this post with an update.

All Inductive Automation names and marks, including, but not limited to, Ignition by Inductive Automation®, Perspective®, Vision™ as well as the company name, Inductive Automation® are trademarks of Inductive Automation, either through federal registration or continuous use. Inductive Automation trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Inductive Automation LLC. All rights reserved.

[jaaortega]

Hello Fellow Scared Humans!

As the Cosmos Assaulters public release draws closer, I welcome you to Day 2.

Did you know that there was a private gameplay test held where I invited members of the Inductive Automation team to compete to become the inaugural Cosmos Assaulters High Score Champion? The trophy was well earned by the Support Team:

That’s right, one of the cool new features coming to Cosmos Assaulters are Leaderboards!

Compete with other players around the Cosmos by submitting your best efforts against the Alien threat to the online Leaderboards! Get the biggest hit streaks, the largest scores and defend against the assault.

Ignition made it easy to connect the game to MariaDB and use an Amazon RDS instance to seamlessly submit to the Leaderboards where all the world will see your domination of the Alien forces!

There is a Leaderboard for all three game modes, I suppose you will have to play to see which game mode is your favorite

Since Nov 14 2020, this is how many times I have play-tested something new for Cosmos Assaulters!

I am excited! Soon there will be a playable, public release for everyone to have fun with.

There are many features I didn’t dare think I could have fit in with enough time. I really would like to thank the Inductive Automation Support Team for all their knowledge, they are where Wizards roam.

Release details, features and pictures to come to this thread daily as the New Year approaches!

I look forward to bringing you more details on things like Game Modes, other features and pictures as we draw closer to the New Year.

[jaaortega]

Hello Fellow Scared Humans,

Many of us are likely doing what we can to spend time with those close to us these few days, but let me ask you this: would you be able to if it were not for the great Defenders of our Cosmos? Someone must end the Assault and that is where you come in!

So, what exactly is Cosmos Assaulters?

What started out as a small project I was using to learn Ignition soon became the game it is today. If not already clear by the title, this is a Space Invaders-like “Shoot ‘em up” that you will soon be able to play using the Ignition 8.1 Vision Client Launcher.

Great, how do I defend the Cosmos?

You board the next spaceship off the planet and get to work!

Upon launching a Vision Client, the Player finds themselves presented with a Main Menu screen. You can choose to Log In or Create a User but it is not required; Cosmos Assaulters features a User Profile system you might find fun to track stats with though.

From there you can either Start a Mission, learn How to Play, use Options to customize your Cosmos or glare longingly at the #1 place in the Leaderboards. Check out the post above this for all the juicy Leaderboards details.

What do you mean, Options?

I’m glad I asked! You likely saw the Options menu in my last post and most are self-explanatory but let me explain the Mutators!

Sometimes you just want to relax, and what better way than taking control? You can Enable Mutators to customize certain parts of the game like how many maximum aliens can spawn or how fast they can move. Keep in mind, Mutators will not qualify for the Leaderboards, that’s a place of honor. They also only apply to Linear and Hit Count game modes.

What are these Game Modes you speak of?

Cosmos Assaulters first started with just one game mode so I will start there:

Game Mode: Linear

Linear mode gradually increases the number of maximum aliens and how fast they move over time. Currently, each “round” is 15 seconds.

Game Mode: Hit Count

Hit Count is the 2nd mode to be implemented. The maximum number of aliens and how fast they move increases after hitting 5 Aliens.

Game Mode: Arcade

This is my favorite. Arcade mode introduces a standardized format where you will defend against 30+ levels of increasing difficulty. That is, if you can survive the Boss levels. Alien bosses are not to be taken lightly and only the bravest pilots will attempt to take them on, it is no shame to live to fight another day.

What happens if I lose?

There will come a time for all brave Defenders where they will meet their match; never underestimate the Aliens! You can choose to submit your efforts to the Leaderboards where they will be ranked accordingly.

To help you delay your demise, every Defender will gain access to weapons that help you repel the Cosmos Assaulters!

Did you say weapons?
I did! But that is a present for tomorrow. I look forward to introducing more features, details and pictures with you all then. To all a good night!

[jaaortega]

Hello Fellow Scared Humans,

As we lead up to the release, I welcome you to Day 4. I hope there were many things to enjoy this day but if there were not then we can always learn how to play Cosmos Assaulters!

Where do I start?

When you Start a Mission, you will be presented with this screen; the left side is the game world and the right side are the game stats.

On the left, you control your Ship at the bottom and try to hit the Aliens that spawn from the top. On the right, the game stats track things like your Score, hit streaks and other Game Mode specific stats. One Alien may not seem so scary, but there will be more. There are always more.

Will I have any help?

To help you defend there are 3 powerups that spawn every 30 seconds. You can hit them with your weapon to gain temporary special powers!

When you hit the Barricade powerup, the next shot you fire with your Weapon will spawn a Barricade in front of your Player that will absorb the next 3 Aliens that try to make it past.

When you hit the Freeze powerup, all active Aliens will freeze for 3 seconds before resuming movement.

When you hit the Shield powerup, your Ship will be surrounded by a protective barrier that absorbs any one Alien whether it hits your Ship or reaches the bottom of the board.

How do I do anything?!

Cosmos Assaulters is simple to play. You can move your Ship left and right using the A and D keyboard keys. Sometimes, you will be notified that you can move your Ship up and down as well using W and S keyboard keys.

You fire your Weapon and place the Barricade powerup using the Spacebar keyboard key. You can also switch between 4 unique weapons using 1,2,3 and 4 keyboard keys.

You keep talking about these weapons…

Yes, and now that you are prepared, head out and earn the right to wield the most powerful Weapons in the Cosmos! Different Game Modes unlock Weapons in different ways. Linear and Hit Count game mode unlock new weapons when you reach 25, 50, and 75 Score. Arcade Game Mode unlocks weapons at its own pace.

Use your shots wisely, some Weapons have ammo that take time to reload and others can only fire one shot at a time; don’t forget to try not to miss to increase your Score Multiplier!

Here is a video preview I had created when first developing the weapons:

Jason A. Ortega on LinkedIn: #cosmosassaulters #builtwithignition...

I look forward to continuing to drop new details, features and pictures as we lead up to the Cosmos Assaulters release.

[jaaortega]

Hello Fellow Scared Humans,

Welcome back from wherever you might have been. I’m glad you are, we must defend our Cosmos after all! Did you know that Cosmos Assaulters will launch with a companion Website built in Perspective?

On launch day you will have access to things like User Profiles & Stats, How to Play tutorials and the Online Leaderboards; all easily accessible on the Cosmos Assaulters website. The Perspective module is awesome for bringing your project data directly to the Web.

As we draw closer to launch, I will likely be busier working out all the last minute kinks and lighter on the teasers here, but I hope these info drops are helping shed light on the cool features you can take advantage of when the Aliens—I mean the release arrives! See you all soon

[jaaortega]

Hello Fellow Scared Humans,

2021 is upon us and I hope your first week of the New Year has not been spent in fear of the Alien threat approaching! In preparation of the need for ever increasing preparedness, I committed a redesign to the Cosmos Assaulters website!

The above post has been edited and the pictures of the old website design have been removed and replaced with the new one, including extra screenshot previews.

Cosmos Assaulters release draws nearer every day, thank you for preparing to Defend along side me against the Alien menace.

[jaaortega]

Hello Fellow Scared Humans,

Our Cosmos is under assault! Will you stand to defend it? Watch the release video for more details:

Jason A. Ortega on LinkedIn: #cosmosassaulters #games #videogames

I am pleased to announce the official date for the Cosmos Assaulters public test release: this weekend, January 16th, 2021 @ 12pm EST / 9am PST

(or use this handy Chronus link to see your own relative time: Chronus Relative Time Service )

Around that time, http://cosmosassaulters.com will go live. Visit the site, follow the 3 easy steps on the homepage and you will be playing on the Client Launcher in no time.

Some important notes:

Cosmos Assaulters is a test project, a work in progress and first installment for my long-term goal: to help build a “Scada Arcade” that brings fun and interesting games to the platform many of us work with day to day. My mission is to bring more awareness to the power and versatility of SCADA systems, particularly to aspiring developers; to help inspire creativity while building real world skillsets with best-in-class technology.

As such, this is a trial test release to see how things go and gauge interest, which means that the Ignition Gateway running Cosmos Assaulters will be in Trial Mode. Every 2 hours the Gateway will reset, this will affect any active clients running the game or navigating the website by ending the connection with a TRIAL EXPIRED warning and will require a refresh or a Client Restart to reconnect to the Cosmos Assaulters gateway.

I imagine the game will vary in performance across systems and given the heavy re-paint nature of the project, you may see different degrees of performance on old hardware. Any form of GPU is likely to make a clear improvement. I also have a report that Mac performance might need to be investigated so let me know if you have played Cosmos Assaulters on a Mac and how it went.

Please send any bug reports to bugreportCosmosAssaulters@gmail.com instead of posting them here.

You might also notice that there is no SSL on the Gateway on launch day so please keep that in mind.

I plan to hold the servers up for the majority of the day and will make an announcement here when the time comes to wrap things up.

If there is anything else that comes to me, I will edit this post with an update.

All Inductive Automation names and marks, including, but not limited to, Ignition by Inductive Automation®, Perspective®, Vision™ as well as the company name, Inductive Automation® are trademarks of Inductive Automation, either through federal registration or continuous use. Inductive Automation trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Inductive Automation LLC. All rights reserved.

[jaaortega]

T-Minus 30 minutes for the public test release of Cosmos Assaulters! Join the countdown and visit http://cosmosassaulters.com at the drop to play!

[accyroy]

Great job with this, quite a fun little game! I played on Mac and no performance issues here.

[jaaortega]

Hi accyroy,

It is so great to hear you had fun. May your Defenders memory live on in the leaderboards to inspire all future Defenders of our Cosmos!

If you are willing to provide Mac specs/hardware/os versions I would be most interested and grateful.

[jaaortega]

Thank you to every Defender who fought against the Cosmos Assaulters! The public test release will be winding down tonight, a bit before 9pm PST.

I appreciate all of the involvement from this helpful and insightful community. There is plenty of work for future titles on the horizon, when the time comes, a new forum Thread will be born, but until then feel free to use this thread for any future or ongoing Cosmos Assaulters talk.

Until the next project! Be well!

[Michael_Harper]

thanks for creating and posting about this game…very fun! i’d like to create a game as part of my learning process, and i have one in mind. did you have to do quite a lot of module/api development for this, or is it pretty much “off the shelf”? my game will require some network-building capabilities at runtime, and so my first research is how to add components like pipes and valves during runtime instead of design/build time. should be fun! thanks again…

[jaaortega]

Hi Michael!

I am glad you enjoyed it and thanks for reaching out with some questions.

As far as Ignition, no module development was necessary. The entire project is composed of stuff built in Perspective, Vision and heavy use of Project Library scripts which are all off the shelf!
Its funny you mention this because I am actually planning to open-source this project to Ignition Exchange.

It has been run on a free tier on AWS but I want to use my AWS for other projects and so unfortunately it will need to go offline; Cosmos Assaulters will live on though and to celebrate the upload to its new home on the Exchange, I will be releasing a video that outlines how I built the project and Itll include trying to beat the game as well, haha.

Im curious about your project, when you say network-building capabilities and adding components during runtime, what do you mean specifically?

[Michael_Harper]

thanks for donating to the exchange…i’d like to do the same.

i am very new to ignition (just certified…waiting for the gold certification test so i can go for that), and in searching through the documentation, i see “pipes” and “components” can be added at design time, but i am not sure if there’s a way to add them programmatically while the app is running. for example, can i script something like “add two components, connect with a pipe”

right now, i am experimenting with using images that can start off as invisible and then become visible and move around to “connect” them. it would be better if i could use the connectivity of pipes and components, since i’d like to be able to have the network have part-to-part communication after they are connected.

sounds sketchy, i know i think i’ll be better off after i get the gold certification test and start working on it. i am looking forward to checking out your code!

[pascal.fragnoud]

I don’t know about pipes, but you can programmatically determine instances for a view canvas, which might ultimately be what you’re looking for. I can see a game board being built at runtime by adding things to the instances of the canvas.
I use it, not for a game, but for maps of photovoltaic farms, passing the coordinates and type of each device. The coordinates are obviously used to place the components on the map (with some scaling) and the type is used to determine the component’s path.
I’m not sure what it would be like performance wise with a game, but unless it’s very time sensitive I think it would work.

[jaaortega]

Hello fellow Scared Humans!

After just short of two years of successful production, I am proud to finally retire the cosmosassaulters.com domain by the end of the year as it has served its purpose!

The good news is, Cosmos Assaulters itself will live on! Cosmos Assaulters is now on the Ignition Exchange, fully open for you to download, explore how it was built, and defend the cosmos in your own universe.

You can download either a full gateway backup or the individual project resources to import manually into a gateway.

Check out Cosmos Assaulters on the Ignition Exchange

Thank you all for your input, for playing, and I wish you the best on your next Ignition project!