Project Möbius

A dark and mysterious entity from another dimension has gained access to our world through a portal deep inside an ancient temple. Only a true fighter pilot like you can stop it before it rips apart the very fabric of space and time. But beware: many dangers lie ahead!

Project Möbius is a fast-paced 3D game inspired in part by 2D Shoot 'em up games such as Battle Squadron for the Amiga.

Your goal is to reach the end of each level without crashing your aircraft and without being shot down by alien ships or turrets. Your aircraft will crash if it hits obstacles or flies outside the screen area. During the first mission, you also die if you fly too high above the ground. Score points and gain power ups by destroying enemy units.

Certain levels can only be completed once you defeat a boss.

Choose between 1 Player mode and 2 Player cooperative mode.

Controls

Controlling your aircraft may be quite challenging at first since you can only change its roll and pitch:

For instance, to fly to the left or right, you need to roll your aircraft 90 degrees and then change the pitch.

From level 2 and onwards, you destroy enemy units by firing your plasma weapon and by launching a limited supply of Möbius bombs.

Keyboard and some game controllers are supported (there might be issues with certain game controllers and analog sticks are not yet supported). Use the Controls menu to specify which keys to use.

Default keys for Player 1 are arrow keys for movement, N for Fire and M for Möbius bombs. Default keys for Player 2 are W, A, S, D for movement, Z for Fire and X for Möbius bombs.

To pause the game at any point, press P.

Press Esc during the game to go back to the main menu. Pressing Esc on the main menu quits the game.

Difficulty Level

You can choose between five difficulty levels which mainly affect the speed of the game. Once you master the controls, it is recommended that you pick the hardest difficulty level that you can handle as the increased speed makes the game more fun to play. Medium or even Hard is probably a good choice for more experienced players. There is an Extreme level above Hard which is only for the most hardcore players or for those who love speed and won't mind losing a lot.

Power Ups

Once a sufficient number of enemies have been destroyed, a power up object will spawn which can be picked up as it passes by your aircraft. Special transporter ships will always spawn a power up but requires several shots to kill.

There are five types of power ups:

More powerful forward shots. Can be upgraded twice and is reduced by one level if the player loses a life.

Spread shots. Can also be upgraded twice and is reduced by one level if the player loses a life.

Extra Möbius bomb. The number of bombs currently available can be seen at the bottom of the screen. The maximum is 9.

Fully recharges your shield and gives you invulnerability to alien shots and certain obstacles for a limited amount of time (your aircraft will flash while you are invulnerable and this also occurs after you lose a life). A bar at the bottom of the screen indicates your current shield strength. Your shield is recharged after each level.

Extra life. The current number of lives can be seen at the bottom of the screen. The maximum is 9.

Picking up a useless power up (such as forward shots when its maximum level has already been reached) will increase your score.

Passwords

Before each level (except the first), a password is shown near the top of the mission briefing screen. Typing this password in on the main menu will allow you to start the game from that level (with the same number of lives and power ups and the same difficulty level) so that you do not have to start the game from scratch each time.

Pressing S during the mission briefing will save the password so that you do not have to type it in on the main menu. Note however that only one password can be saved; pressing S will thus overwrite any previously saved password. If you want to keep multiple passwords, you can of course always write them down on a piece of paper.

High Score

If you score enough points, you may enter your initials in a high score table. Points are gained by getting far on a level and by killing enemies. Each difficulty level has its own high score table.

Problems Running the Game?

If the game fails to start, it is likely because your GPU is not powerful enough. I did my best to make the game run on fairly standard PC's such as my own laptop which is quite old and not made specifically for gaming, so the game should run on most PC's.

For Windows users: your PC might have a secondary and much less powerful GPU that Windows chooses as the default one for the game. If the game is slow or fails to run at all, you can tell Windows to use the primary GPU as follows: go to Windows Settings, then System. Under Display, click on Graphics settings at the bottom. Browse for the project_mobius.exe file and choose Add. Under Options, choose High performance. The game should now run on the primary (fast) GPU. This description is for Windows 10 but hopefully there is a similar procedure for other Windows versions. You might also need to give Windows permission to run project_mobius.exe if there is a pop-up about this when you try to start the game.

The game will try to obtain a screen resolution where the pixel width divided by the pixel height is either 1.77.. (such as 1920 x 1080) or 1.6 (such as 3072 x 1920). If your computer does not have such a resolution or only has very low resolutions, you may experience issues such as wrong font sizes. In that case, feel free to contact me and let me know what screen resolutions your computer has, and I will see what I can do.

At some point, I might make a version of the game with simpler graphics that can run on older PC's. However, this will require quite a lot of work so I will only do it if there is sufficient interest.

If you experience issues with the game that you cannot resolve with the above procedures, feel free to contact me by e-mail with a detailed description of the problem and I will do my best to help: cwulnil@gmail.com

Technical Details

For those who are interested, the game was programmed in Rust on a Linux machine using my own 3D engine and the wgpu API. Winit was used for window handling and SDL mixer for sound. 3D objects and some of the textures were created in Blender and Gimp was used for 2D graphics. Audio editing was done in Audacity.