I grew up playing scorched Earth on Windows 3 just over a thousand years ago, and have always enjoyed that game. here is my implementation using a circular world with basic orbital dynamics added. in theory it works on mobile as well, but is best intended to be a PC browser game.
in the interest of transparency, this was generated on qwen 3.8: 27b, so you should consider the "my implementation" loose at best.
I'd love feedback on what works and what doesn't.
some weapons, such as the laser satellite and the peacock feather have additional actions that can be commanded after the initial launch. for instance the laser satellite will shoot a laser in whatever the current orientation is, and the peacock feather will split up into multiple feathers when pressing the space button or the fire button again.
Loved that game...and there is definite potential here. It seems like a player can just move right next to opponent and fire? That doesn't seem right?
Original Scorched Earth (which I also loved!) let you choose whether movement was allowed in the ruleset, and it was quite slow so you'd be up against the turn timer. Similar for Worms. I think it's a viable part of the game if nerfed or made riskier (mines?)
It's possible but it took me a while to find the butten as well. It's to the left of the "increase power" button, with quite a low opacity.
I think it might be better to use the empty areas in the corners for the controls.
I think the moon gravity is a bit much. It would be cool to use the gravity of the moon in your attack, but I think that would require it moving slower and perhaps some prediction logic where you can see where the moon will be if you fire now?
I've built an iOS game (<a href="https://eveofimpact.com" rel="nofollow">https://eveofimpact.com) years ago (an earth vs asteroids kind of thing) and I ran into similar problems where gravity was too strong, and trying to use gravity to your advantage was very tricky and unpredictable making it less fun. I eventually decided to just make it play a more "decorative" role.
yeah, a friend of mine and I were kind of laughing about how difficult the moon made things. on the opposite side of the pendulum, without the moon gravity, it would only take two or three terms to defeat the opponent, but I agree, toning down the moon a bit and coming up with future artillery path prediction might be more fun
* Moon is moving too fast, has too much influence.
* Movement breaks the game as you can just move up to the opponent.
* The timeout is frustrating. I can line up a shot that actually looks like it is going to be a direct hit just to have the game remove it as it starts descending towards the target.
The shot timeout is the biggest issue for me. There's nothing worse than lining up the most crazy indirect shot and have it just disappear as it comes in.
The math on whether a shot is in escape velocity should be trivial for an AI to add. The only other degenerate cases would be some sort of orbit. My recommendation would be if the shot hasn't landed in 5 seconds, see if it's making progress, and if unclear, accelerate time until it is clearly making porgress (by 10x) and timeout at 60s world time.
I love the idea, but the moon has too much gravity and moves too fast, and the missiles too slow, which makes it impossible to aim. There's a fine line between complexity and chaos and this is on the wrong side of it right now.
jimbooonooo · · focus · HN ↗
in the interest of transparency, this was generated on qwen 3.8: 27b, so you should consider the "my implementation" loose at best.
I'd love feedback on what works and what doesn't.
some weapons, such as the laser satellite and the peacock feather have additional actions that can be commanded after the initial launch. for instance the laser satellite will shoot a laser in whatever the current orientation is, and the peacock feather will split up into multiple feathers when pressing the space button or the fire button again.
enjoy!
SubiculumCode · · focus · HN ↗
jimbooonooo · · focus · HN ↗
pjc50 · · focus · HN ↗
skewbone · · focus · HN ↗
WhiteNoiz3 · · focus · HN ↗
datadrivenangel · · focus · HN ↗
jimbooonooo · · focus · HN ↗
stevage · · focus · HN ↗
lebuin · · focus · HN ↗
I think it might be better to use the empty areas in the corners for the controls.
rikschennink · · focus · HN ↗
I've built an iOS game (<a href="https://eveofimpact.com" rel="nofollow">https://eveofimpact.com) years ago (an earth vs asteroids kind of thing) and I ran into similar problems where gravity was too strong, and trying to use gravity to your advantage was very tricky and unpredictable making it less fun. I eventually decided to just make it play a more "decorative" role.
edit: Forgot to say awesome job :)
jimbooonooo · · focus · HN ↗
ulrikrasmussen · · focus · HN ↗
* Moon is moving too fast, has too much influence.
* Movement breaks the game as you can just move up to the opponent.
* The timeout is frustrating. I can line up a shot that actually looks like it is going to be a direct hit just to have the game remove it as it starts descending towards the target.
zug_zug · · focus · HN ↗
The math on whether a shot is in escape velocity should be trivial for an AI to add. The only other degenerate cases would be some sort of orbit. My recommendation would be if the shot hasn't landed in 5 seconds, see if it's making progress, and if unclear, accelerate time until it is clearly making porgress (by 10x) and timeout at 60s world time.
kbelder · · focus · HN ↗
jimbooonooo · · focus · HN ↗
empath75 · · focus · HN ↗
alexpotato · · focus · HN ↗
I remember taking a computer science class in high school and, IIRC, we didn't even have Windows, it was just DOS.
This would have been the mid 1990s.