Extended remake of Williams Electronics Stargate 1981 arcade game using Unreal Engine
"Defcon" is the internal project name.
Stargate was also known as Defender II in some locales.
Example Videos
Version 1.0: https://youtu.be/WTqya41q9xM
August 27/2023 update (some graphic fixes): https://youtu.be/R1Yolp0zzRE
September 4 update (bullet time demo): https://youtu.be/vfbQqxPOeWY
October 10 update (pod intersection, powerups, etc.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARkXh5LaiEU
The game differs from Stargate in these ways:
- Each level is its own campaign mission and not a repeat wave
- After destroying all mission-critical targets, the stargate must be entered to jump to the next mission
- Entering the stargate while carrying humans does not warp ahead any levels
- Game can be made to start at any level
- Sprite textures remastered for 4K displays
- Player ship is shielded; shields slowly auto-regen after taking damage
- Player ship has invincibility mode, appears brighter when mode toggled on
- Player ship has togglable dual cannon mode
- Landers leave orbit after successfully abducting humans instead of becoming mutants
- No score tracking/display; acquired points are used internally as XP
- Extra enemy types: hunters, ghosts, bouncers, reformers, and weak firebombers
- Enemy population tends to be greater
- Smartbombs show explosion fireball, destroys enemies as shockwave reaches them
- Planet is wider
- Terrain is not as irregular
- Display aspect ratio is wider
- Powerups for shields, dual cannon, and invincibility
- Messages/alerts show using Descent-style scrolling message log
The game was ported from my older Windows GDI version written in 2004. It differs from that game in several ways as well -- there's no settings screen, and settings are currently not read from disk. The intro story and music are also left out. The mission "Swarm" was removed (although its source code is included). Options like double lasers and blur/interlace filters also are gone, but may be included back later.
The DaylonGraphicsLibrary plugin provides generic types and functions that can be used in other similar games, along with some widgets. It's included directly instead of using a git submodule, so that if you clone or pull this repo, you'll have it without any fuss ready to go. It should be the same as the DaylonGraphicsLibrary plugin in the Stellar Mayhem (SpaceRox) repo.
Unreal Engine 5.1 or higher required.
Keyboard input supported at present.
A 1920 x 1080 (HD) viewport is used. Monitors of different sizes and/or display scales will scale. Textures are deliberately oversized to avoid blurring when upscaled.
Game sounds may be loud. Until a volume setting is added, it's recommended to manually lower the volume in your OS speaker/headphone settings.
All graphics are done in UMG/Slate, to push those subsystems even harder than in Stellar Mayhem.
Some game development topics covered:
- Switching among different UMG screens
- Using animated textures
- Implementing object behavior with state machines
- Mixing Slate with UMG
- Simulating particle effects with widgets
- Overriding UUserWidget::NativePaint to render 2D effects directly
- Using mediators and delegates to promote loose coupling
- Simplifying things that must happen later by using scheduled tasks
- Using metadata to customize object creation
- Centralizing constant values in a preferences table
If you prefer to just download a Windows binary to play the game, one is available at https://www.daylongraphics.com/download/defcon/Defcon.zip
Version: 1.0
Size: 187,864,272 bytes (179 MiB)
CRC32: 216746BF
CRC64: E84AD87D311F78B7
SHA256: B16EF70A8902DF094CD28F4EFE2594A8C9023509008320CCBCAC0AD04C817AAB
SHA1: 31AD0ED069D9863BCA8C43A0CD909664E2A791FB