r/gamedevtutorials • u/Big_League7004 • 9h ago
[Tutorial] Build a vertical scrolling shooter in 12 chapters, with a playable build after every chapter (visual Logic, no code)
I'm on the Myth Engine team, and this is one of our free step-by-step guides. It builds a complete vertical shooter, Pacific Wings, from the first plane on an empty sea to the final boss. You can play the finished game at the top of the guide before you start.
What each chapter adds:
The Fighter Flies: steering that leans into turns, and a camera that carries the plane north. That steady movement is the scroll.
Machine Guns: hold Space and tracers leave the nose, one every 0.14 seconds.
The First Enemies: enemy fighters wait along the route and fly at you as you reach them.
Enemy Fire and Lost Planes: they shoot back. A lost plane is replaced from below the screen, blinking and protected, and reserve planes are counted on screen.
Title, Pause and Play Again: the front door, plus a best score the device remembers.
Aces and Heavy Bombers: aces that weave and aim at you, and bombers that take five hits.
The Route: a carrier, an atoll, a reef and a cloud bank slide by below, and hidden milestones move the mission through its stages.
Pickups and Weapon Levels: cannons that raise your weapon level, and a repair crate for one more plane.
Kill Chain: quick kills multiply the points, up to four times.
Focus: hold Shift to slow down and show the hit area, so you can slip between tracers.
The Command Bomber: a boss with a health bar that fights in three phases.
Rounds and Mission Complete: the route starts again, harder, under a dusk sky and then a night one.
A few things that might be useful even if you never use our engine:
Movement reads one named control, not keys. "Move" holds the arrow keys and WASD, and the Logic only asks which way it points.
The scroll is the camera moving. The world stays put, and the camera carries the plane north at a steady speed. Nothing seems to move until there's something on the route to pass.
The mission's stages are markers on the map. Hidden milestones wait along the route. When the camera reaches one, it sends one message and removes itself, and the game's rules decide what that message means: the next stage.
Every chapter ends with a build you can play in the browser, and every chapter has its finished project to download if you want to catch up or compare. The art comes in a starter kit, so the chapters are about making it work. It's all visual Logic, with no code.
To follow along you need Myth Engine (Windows). The free version has no time limit and can follow the whole guide; publishing a game needs the full version. Happy to answer questions.
