I planned to work on blocking the player from passing through mushrooms but I decided against doing that. Instead, I added the code to manage the number of lives the player has and detect collisions between the player and a bug. Also, every 12,000 points, an extra life is added. In the video above, I hide the player on the bottom left corner and then “shoot” bugs to get 12,000 points. You will see the extra life added. Then, I crash the player into bugs until all the players are used up and the game ends. Finally, I start a second game. So, the mechanics of the player’s lives is there now.
I did investigate the way the player moves in the real game. It looks like the player moves a max of 4 pixels per frame. In my code today , the player can move up to 63 pixels in a single frame or almost a third of the play width. I am considering dividing the input by 2 and capping it at 8 but I will need to see how that feels. I am concerned about requiring too much motion from the mouse.
Also missing in the above is that when the player crashes into a bug in the real game, the bug explodes but doesn’t increase the score. I need to figure out which bug the player collided with and make it animate an explosion while leaving the other bugs stopped. I will need this code anyway if I want to allow actual shooting which may be where I go next anyway.