AlienInvaders

AlienInvaders is a 2D Godot game about Eli Miller, a farm kid who turns scrap, farm hardware, and alien wreckage into weapons while defending his family's land from an invasion.

The current prototype is a top-down Act 1 defense loop built and validated on Godot 4.6.1 with the Compatibility renderer so it stays on a web-safe path.

Premise

Alien scouts start landing over Miller Farm.

Eli holds the line with a homemade gun, coil turrets built from salvage, and his dog Patch. Patch is not just a companion. The player chooses how Patch develops:

• Scrap Hound: better salvage and stronger scrap economy.
• Guard Dog: stun barks and stronger lane control.
• Scout Nose: hidden finds, cheaper builds, and upgrades Eli cannot get otherwise.

Current State

The project currently includes:

• A playable top-down farm defense prototype.
• A start screen that lets the player choose Auto, Desktop, or Touch controls before the first wave.
• A pause/settings menu for in-run resume, restart, control-mode switching, and music/SFX volume.
• A 6-wave Act 1 mission flow with story briefings between waves.
• Patch path selection after the first wave, with follow-up upgrades later in the act.
• Placeable coil turrets, unlockable shock posts and barbed barricades, alien rushes, salvage collection, fail/restart flow, and an Act 1 completion state.
• Workshop unlocks for Eli's scrap blaster, tractor cannon, and other between-wave inventions.
• Drill-rig objectives, signal relays, harrier enemies, shield drones, burrowers, and a visible buried field signal in the north-field waves.
• Defendable farm structures with persistent consequences: the barn, power shed, and silo can all be damaged, destroyed, and repaired.
• A touch HUD for phones and tablets with a movement pad, an aim/fire pad, and on-screen build and weapon buttons.
• Integrated combat music and positional SFX for Eli, Patch, weapons, and alien events.

Controls

At startup, choose Auto, Desktop, or Touch.

• WASD or arrow keys: move Eli
• Mouse or Space: fire
• Q: swap Eli's weapon after the scrap blaster is unlocked
• Esc: open or close the pause/settings menu during a run
• 1: select the coil turret build
• 2: select the shock post build after it is unlocked
• 3: select the barbed barricade build after it is unlocked
• Left click on a build pad: place the selected defense
• R: restart the run after failure or Act 1 completion

Late-wave note:

• Shield drones start appearing in the late Act 1 waves and can block frontal projectile fire.
• Shock posts are the intended hard counter because their electrical discharge strips the shield and stuns the drone.
• Burrowers start appearing in the late Act 1 waves and ignore barricades, so they put more pressure directly on the farm.
• Tractor Cannon is a heavier Eli weapon unlocked from the workshop, with slower but much stronger shots.

Touch mode:

• Left pad: move Eli
• Right pad: aim and auto-fire
• On-screen Coil, Shock, and Fence buttons: select the current build
• On-screen Weapon button: swap between Eli's available guns
• On-screen Pause button: open the same pause/settings menu used on desktop
• Tap a build pad on the map: place the selected defense

Project Layout

• project.godot: Godot project config
• scenes/: main scene and gameplay scenes
• scripts/: gameplay logic

Running Locally

Open the project in Godot 4.6.x or run it directly with the local binary from the parent directory:

../godot.x86_64 --path .

Headless validation:

XDG_DATA_HOME="$(pwd)/.xdg-data" \
XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$(pwd)/.xdg-config" \
../godot.x86_64 --headless --path . --quit

The XDG overrides keep Godot's generated state inside the repo directory instead of writing to a user profile path.

Web Export Notes

This project is intended to export to HTML5 and be hosted from S3 behind CloudFront.

Current design constraints:

• Keep using Godot's Compatibility renderer for the web build path.
• Prefer a non-threaded web export unless we explicitly add cross-origin isolation headers.
• If threaded web export is ever enabled, CloudFront must send Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin and Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: require-corp.
• Serve .wasm files with application/wasm.
• Serve the export as static files, with index.html as the default root object.

Current status:

• export_presets.cfg now includes a non-threaded Web preset.
• The preset is wired to local custom templates under export_templates/4.6.1.stable/.
• A release export succeeds with Godot 4.6.1 and writes the site to build/web/.

Export command:

XDG_DATA_HOME="$(pwd)/.xdg-data" \
XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$(pwd)/.xdg-config" \
../godot.x86_64 --headless --path . --export-release Web build/web/index.html

The export_templates/ directory is ignored by git, so another machine will need the same local web templates or a standard Godot export-template install before exporting.

Next Steps

• Run a browser smoke test against the exported build/web/ files from a local static server.
• Trim what gets packed into the Web export if the .pck grows too quickly.
• Add another defense type or a heavier Eli weapon so the workshop choices keep broadening.
• Add a new enemy role built to challenge structure defense, like a shield drone or burrower.
• Build Act 2 around what the aliens are trying to extract from the north field.