Signal Lander (Source Code Included!)

Signal Lander — a procedural precision-landing arcade game, and a Godot codebase to learn from

Balance gravity, thrust, rotation, and fuel while descending toward a narrow signal pad on generated terrain. Touch down too quickly or at the wrong angle and the lander breaks apart across the surface. The first mission is a focused training descent: control thrust and speed first, then handle rotation from mission two onward.

Every successful landing awards a score bonus based on fuel and precision. Choose one of three capped upgrades, then face a fresh terrain profile and stronger gravity on the next mission. Clear crash feedback distinguishes missed pads, bad angles, excess speed, and out-of-range flights.

Play it free in your browser. Buy this listing to get the complete Godot 4.6 project plus a Windows build.

The hook: zero gameplay art, zero audio files

The terrain, landing pads, ship, thruster flame, scan grid, particles, and HUD are drawn at runtime with Godot's _draw() API. Sound effects are synthesized into AudioStreamWAV data at startup.

Systems implemented

• Precision lander controller — gravity, thrust, angular inertia, fuel consumption, and swept three-probe surface collision.
• Progressive onboarding — mission one teaches thrust timing before later missions introduce rotation and angle requirements.
• Procedural terrain — fresh seeded ridgelines with a guaranteed signal pad.
• Touchdown scoring — fuel and precision bonuses reward controlled descent.
• Mission upgrades — capped fuel, thrust, gyro, and landing-gear progression that improves the lander without removing the challenge.
• Procedural presentation — radar-grid visuals, thruster flame, crash sparks, camera shake, and synthesized sound effects.
• Export pipeline — Windows + Web presets, smoke tests, deterministic screenshot capture, and one-command packaging scripts.

Plug-and-play modules you can drop into other projects

• SLLander.gd — a compact thrust-and-rotation controller.
• SLBurst.gd — reusable runtime-drawn landing and crash sparks.
• SLAudio.gd — pooled procedural sound effects with no files.
• Terrain sampling — readable interpolation for generated ridgeline collision.

How the procedural generation works

1. Terrain — each mission generates a ridgeline and inserts one flat landing pad.
2. Art — lines, polygons, and particles create the lander and radar-style world.
3. Audio — math functions are sampled into 16-bit PCM at startup.

What you get (paid)

• The complete Godot 4.6 project.
• A ready-to-run Windows build.
• Export, package, screenshot, and smoke-test scripts.
• A clear license.

Controls

• W / Space / Up — fire the thruster
• A / D or arrows — rotate the lander
• Mouse click or 1–3 — choose an upgrade
• Esc — pause or resume
• Q — quit to menu while paused

Requirements

• Play: any modern desktop browser, or 64-bit Windows for the download.
• Edit the source: Godot 4.6, free from godotengine.org.

Built with

Made with the Godot Engine (MIT). Engine attribution is included in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

License

The original game code is provided under the terms in LICENSE. You may study, modify, and build it for your own use. You may not redistribute or resell the source, or publish a game substantially based on this source, without prior written permission.