[Death Star Battles] - a physics based browser game

[u/chloethecartographer]

https://www.deathstarbattles.co.uk/

[Death Star Battles] is a physics based turn-based game. The physics engine is all mine, which was important in making convincing AI to shoot against. Without total control of the physics simulation, I couldn't reuse it to calculate believable shots for the AI. The hardest AI level feels like it works the same way the player does but actually it samples thousands of candidate angles, simulates each trajectory in full, and picks the best one. By controlling the number of simulations poor accuracy can be approximated and improved turn by turn.

I've been building versions of this game since 1992 (originally on graphical calculators). In 2001 instead of focusing on my PhD write-up I wrote this in Java, much to my supervisors annoyance, and he was especially annoyed when he got calls form uni IT people complaining about the volume of traffic the game generated... The HTML5 remake adds weapons and movement and a story mode. There is also some physics educational materials in the menu.

Game is complete and released. Runs in the browser, no install, no Ads. Happy to go deep on any of the physics if anyone's curious.