🚀 Alien Invasion Game

This is a fully functional implementation of the classic game "Alien Invasion" using Python and pygame. The game features a player-controlled ship that can move left, right, and shoot at 👾 aliens that appear from the top of the screen.

This was made as part of my learning journey from the Python Crash course by Eric Matthews Book. Sound effects and gameplay have been polished and is now complete I have made the updates I wanted to do within this build, I am now finished, Feel free to clone and use the code as you please.

Images of Star-ship and Alien-ship were generated using Google Gemini to give the game a modern feel and the background is just a Google image of stars.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's a bug fix, a new feature, or a docs improvement, I'd love your help. Please check out the CONTRIBUTING.md guide for details on getting started, code style, and how to submit a pull request.

To report a security vulnerability, please follow the process in SECURITY.md.

📂 Project Structure

• alien_invasion.py: Main game file. Contains the AlienInvasion class which manages the game loop, events, and rendering.
• ship.py: Contains the Ship class which manages the player's spaceship movement and rendering.
• alien.py: Contains the Alien class which manages individual alien movement, edge checking, and rendering.
• bullet.py: Contains the Bullet class which manages bullet movement and rendering.
• settings.py: Contains all settings for the game, such as screen dimensions, colors, and speeds.
• game_stats.py: Contains the GameStats class which tracks game statistics like ships_left, score, and level.
• scoreboard.py: Contains the Scoreboard class which displays the score, level, high score, and remaining ships.
• button.py: Contains the Button class used for the "Play" button on the start screen.
• dropdown.py: Contains the Dropdown class used to pick a saved username on the name entry screen.
• high_score_manager.py: Handles reading and writing per-user high scores to high_score.json.

Screenshot of Game start

🏃 How to Run

1. Ensure you have Python installed on your system.

2. Ensure you have uv installed. In the project path, run:

   uv sync 

3. Run the game by executing:

   uv run alien_invasion.py

✨ Features

• 🚢 Ship Movement: The player can move the ship left and right using the Left and Right arrow keys.
• 🔫 Shooting: The player can shoot bullets at aliens using the Space-bar.
• 👾 Alien Fleet: Aliens spawn in a grid, move horizontally, drop down, and reverse direction when they hit the screen edges.
• 💥 Collision Detection:
  • Bullets destroy aliens.
  • Aliens destroy the ship upon collision.
  • Aliens destroy the ship if they reach the bottom of the screen.
• 📊 Game Statistics: The game tracks the number of remaining ships (ships_left), current score, and level.
• 💀 Game Over: When all ships are lost, the game stops and displays the final score.
• 🏆 Scoreboard: Displays the current score, high score, level, and remaining ships.
• ❤️ Lives: The game starts with 3 lives, represented by ship icons on the scoreboard.
• 📈 Progression: As you clear waves of aliens, the game speed increases, and the point value for each alien increases.
• 🔊 Sound Effects: Shooting and explosion sound effects with configurable volume.
• 🖼️ Background: Custom background image scaled to screen.
• 📐 Zigzag Formation: Aliens spawn in a staggered grid pattern for a more dynamic look.
• 👤 User Profiles: Players are prompted to create or select a username before the game starts.
• 📋 Profile Dropdown: Returning players can select their saved username from a dropdown instead of retyping it (click to open, arrow keys to navigate, Enter to select).
• 💾 Per-User High Scores: High scores are saved and loaded per username. The menu shows the global top score, and during play it shows the current player's personal best.
• 🏆 Top Scores Leaderboard: Dedicated leaderboard screen showing the top 5 high scores across all users, accessible via the dark blue "Top Scores" button on the main menu.

🎮 Controls

• ⬅️/➡️ Left/Right Arrow Keys: Move the ship.
• ⎵ Space-bar: Fire a bullet.
• 🖱️ Menu Navigation: Click "Play" to start a game or "Top Scores" to view the top 5 leaderboard (press ESC or click to return to the menu).
• ✍️ Name Entry Screen: Type a username (Backspace to edit, up to 15 characters) or select one from the dropdown. Press Enter to start, ESC to return to the menu.
• ❌ Q: Quit the game.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Happy Coding! ⌨️