Alien Invasion - Battle Images

It's unlikely you'd see much more brutal carnage
than this unfortunate space scene.
(I'm kidding, this happens all the time)

A well-drawn, undamaged Shuriken at top left damages blue's
Star on the left side. I honestly can't tell what ship is at the
bottom of the clip - it's too badly damaged to be recognizable.

A destroyed Bristleblaster next to an allied Firefly
that didn't even get a chance to fire.

A very well-planned space battle on green's part - the lasers from the Swingwing (left) destroyed the shields of red's Shuriken (center) and the Swingwing's got a chance to do some major damage.

This image depicts a Phoenix (center) under heavy fire from
multiple enemies. Regretfully, you can't see whether the
Phoenix actually destroyed anything from this one small pic.

 I will admit it... It's entirely my fault that there's such a mess of pictures in this post. But, in my defense, there's a reason for it... sort of... Yes, these are pictures from the game I'm working on - Alien Invasion. They're the choicest snips of the choicest screenshots - only the best. However, I averaged about 1.5 of these per battle, so images like these are nothing rare. Let me explain a bit about how all this works. (Scroll down to next part, please.)

A Ribcage concentrates half its fire on blue's Phoenix, while
blue retaliates with a few poorly-aimed shots from the
Stealth Fighter at top-l 

A Dented Rectangle (my brother named it) fires
on the enemy ship that knocked out all
but a few of its guns, while an allied Firefly struggles
to survive.

An excellent example of guided missiles. They're
curving first to destroy the Battle Ball (top center)
and then to attack the Sixstar Mace.

A Glidebomber mercilessly attacks blue's Longbow.
Longbows are expensive ships - it's likely that it's the
only one that the blue player has.

A red Swingwing and yellow Pufferfish attack green's
Cruiser. The Pufferfish was lucky to survive - they have
no shields and hardly any armor.

A Shuriken and Checkerboard duking it out.
Note that the Shuriken has support from ships
off the right side of the screen.

An Arachnea firing what
 weapons it has left.

The dotted lines are cannon fire, and the thin, brightly colored ones are lasers. Darker, curving lines are guided missiles, and the thicker darker lines are regular missiles. You can see very clearly in the screenshots that lasers do a lot more  

Two Skyhawks and a badly damaged Squiggly.

damage to shields than cannon fire does, for example. Explosions that occur off in the middle of nowhere are where weapons self-destruct to keep from damaging allied ships (it's the future, why not?). (Scroll down again, please.)

A Skyhawk (a favorite of the AI for
some reason) is madly attacking green's
TIE Fighter, and knocked out one of the wings.

A Frost Star and Cruiser locked in battle, taking
on enemy fire from all sides.

A horribly damaged, unfired Piranha waits it's turn to
fire - if it can survive long enough. (top left)

A Carrier.

A Nova under heavy fire. This ship is one of my
personal favorites. The ringing lasers are excellent
for weakening enemy shields at the start of a battle.

I suppose you might be wondering why I'm posting even more worthless images up here... As anybody who knows me well at all could tell you, I'm a hardcore fan of AI (artificial intelligence). You've likely guessed it by now. (Scroll down again)

A Gorgon under attack.

An Intelliblock (left) throws a few shots at the Tuna Can at
top right, which is already badly damaged. Intelliblocks are
loaded with guided missiles - whatever it's firing at off the
bottom side of this  pic really has its attention.

This is the Star Plane, if I remember
correctly. You can see how the
cannon fire has destroyed
some of the guns and set them
smoking.

I decided to add AI players to Alien Invasion. They're actually pretty good... at the moment I have the game running in a loop (four AI players against themselves) so that it can perfect its AI. I've lost a number of games against the AI already, testing it out. But, as the AI still had a few bugs, I decided to let it fight itself for a number of hours. These are screenshots from that. It's learning from its mistakes, honing itself into a perfect opponent for any unwitting player. But, despite how much I'd love to rub it in the player's face, I'm going to add something so the player can control how smart the AI is. At any rate, Alien Invasion is almost done. I just need to get to work on those ships...

An expensive Heavy Cruiser falls out of combat and into the
blackness of the void of space at bottom left, victim of fire from
a Longbow (offscreen, top left).

A Shotguard ship eliminated from combat by a fusillade
of red lasers an cannons - judging by the pattern, I'd
say it was fired from a Cosmic Banana. (Also, at bottom
left you can see a Cherry Bomb.)