Completely Unofficial Star Wars Scrolling Shooter



The Completely Unofficial Star Wars Scrolling Shooter, CUSWSS, or SWSS is a scrolling shooter game developed on Game Maker that implements the major battles of the Star Wars Trilogies. The game, developed by C3PO the Dragon Slayer, is an experiment to implement the graphics and features potential of a scrolling shooter, and possibly beyond. The game is still under development, and is not likely to be under release due to the fact that it tells the story of a copyrighted fiction. A freely-editable version might appear at some time in the future, featuring scenes from all six Star Wars episodes. The game is modeled after an oversimplified and scrolling-shooter-based version of Star Wars: Star Duels, a concept of a "Super Smash Brothers" with Star Wars ships that summarizes most of the Star Wars saga.

Current status
The game now has four missions: The Battle of Yavin, the Battle of Hoth, the Asteroid Field, and an X-wing versus Star Destroyer level that tests a massive sprite that gives great accurate detail of an Imperial Star Destroyer. The graphics are hardly well-developed, and the sprites appear all but stiff. However, significant progress has been made and the movie recreation, especially for the Hoth levels, are incredible for a free software product.

Battle of Yavin
This is the first mission of the game, playable only in the X-wing. For the first three stages, the X-wing evades fire from turbolasers and TIE fighters until the area is cleared of enemies. Afterwards, the player finds himself navigating through a maze of walls and turrets, the later two sections containing Darth Vader's TIE Advanced x1, which fires rapidly and cannot be shot down. After this, the lone X-wing finds himself in a seemingly long, randomly-generated trench that automatically scrolls along as you are propelled forward, still being chased by TIE fighters and Darth Vader. After about two minutes, a laser shot appears, the two TIE fighters explode, and the TIE Advanced x1 scrolls off the map. Just then, you approach your goal: the exhaust port, in which you may fire a proton torpedo to beat the mission.

Battle of Hoth
The second mission is slightly harder, with gameplay having four major differences from the first mission. One: the player has turrets on his side that can take out some enemy units if defended; two: the enemy units usually fire consistently downward, meaning their fire has to be evaded while shooting them; three: AT-STs and AT-ATs can aim for turrets and playable ships instead of just firing randomly, constantly keeping the player on his toes; and four: the secondary weapon is a towcable instead of a homing proton torpedo that must be in contact with an AT-AT in order to destroy it. Additionally, the AT-STs will almost always take several hits to destroy and an AT-AT will only be shot down if a towcable is attached to it.

The first two stages are a skirmish between the player in a Snowspeeder with an array of blaster turrets and a wing of AT-STs and AT-ATs. The next stage shows the player defending the Echo Base ion cannon, which is the primary target of the enemy units. Since the ion cannon is very hard for the enemy to destroy, the player can take advantage of the diverted fire and worry less about dodging fire than shooting the AT-STs and AT-ATs.

The Asteroid Field
The third mission C3PO the Dragon Slayer created was a recreation of the asteroid field scene in which the Millennium Falcon is chased by a Star Destroyer and three TIE fighters. So far, this is merely a test of wrapping and pursuit. TIE fighters in this level are programmed to chase the Millennium Falcon and aim constantly for it, as opposed to the random shooting TIE fighters commit in the Battle of Yavin level. Three sizes of animated asteroids move across the screen, inflicting damage upon the player whenever the Millennium Falcon collides with an asteroid. Dodging both TIE lasers and asteroids can be tricky.

Unnamed Star Destroyer level
The final mission that is in C3PO the Dragon Slayer's script is a clash between a playable X-wing and a scale Imperial II-class Star Destroyer, along with its complement of sixty TIE fighters and numerous turbolasers. Because these are the models used in the Battle of Yavin, both the turrets and fighters fire randomly, so if the X-wing uses the bug of infinite homing proton torpedoes, defeating every enemy is actually a possible feat. However, in the final version, this will not be possible without extreme skill and non-playable units on the player's side. This level itself will probably not exist in the final version; it is merely a graphics test that constructs the scale of the Star Destroyer and attempts to create sample for the upcoming Battle of Endor level, which has not yet been completed.

Playable ships

 * 1) X-wing
 * 2) Snowspeeder
 * 3) Millennium Falcon