HAZARD
Main menu
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Options menu
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Help screen #1
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Help screen #2
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Shell explosions
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Close-up of objects
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Cluster bomb explosion
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Artillery strike #1
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Artillery strike #2
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Aftermath
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EMP triggered
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Game over
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About the Game
The Premise: HAZARD is an adaptation of the popular game Minesweeper, with a number of twists and improvements. The player will maneuever a tank on a virtual terrain organized into squares, each of which may contain a landmine. If the player steps on a square that contains a mine, the mine detonates and the player loses some health; if the square is mine-free, it is ``cleared'' and displays the number of mines in the eight adjacent squares. In essence, Minesweeper is a puzzle game.
The Twist: HAZARD introduces an array of tools to help you explore the treacherous terrain and fight off the bad guys. Each tool comes with a specific use and often great visual and sound effects.
- Flag: This is your standard helper tool for solving the minesweeper puzzle. Place the flag on a suspected square so that you may avoid driving over it.
- Shell: This essential enemy-fighting weapon has an adjustable range and packs quite a punch. This will also detonate any mines nearby the zone of effect. Use it to clear a path or to destory enemy units.
- Artillery Strike: Request an artillery strike on a coordinate to bring in death and destruction. It works just like a regular shell, but the impact is devastating.
- Cluster Bomb: Request an airstrike on a coordinate to spray the terrain with small bomblets. They are not powerful enough to detonate subterranean mines, but will clear an area of enemy units like a charm.
- Sensor: Deploy this quadpole resonance (QR) sensor to detect presence of explosives in the chosen area. This will automatically clear a wide area, revealing all ``safe'' squares.
- EMP: Fire this modern weaponry just like a regular shell, but watch the shockwave consume enemies and immobilize them temporarily, making them a ripe target for your subsequent strikes.
Note that some weapons have a long cooldown period. All items can be picked up by your tank, in addition to health bonus.
The Game: HAZARD operates in two modes. In the regular mode, the goal is to clear the whole terrain, meaning that you need to traverse over all safe squares. In the racing mode, the goal is to get from one corner of the terrain to the other as soon as possible.
The Interface: HAZARD offers a detailed Head-Up Display (HUD), explained below.
- Player panel: displays the current health, score, time elapsed. On the right side, the current weapon selected and ammo status are shown.
- Short-range minimap: displays the squares around the player and the numbers associated with them.
- Radar: displays items (in white), enemy units (in red) and enemy projectiles (in black) within the radar range.
- Long-range minimap: displays the location of the player with respect to the entire field, and all squares that have so far been cleared. Use this to orient yourself.
The screenshot also shows the player and the trajectory of his current weapon, and some items strewn about the map. You can see a cluster bomb explosion afar.
Summary of Features
- View frustum culling / collision detection: Objects and terrain in the world are stored in a dynamically allocated quadtree of bounding volumes, enabling view frustum culling and rapid collision detection.
- Image-based rendering: The mountain in the background are generated dynamically for each execution of the game, rendered as a billboard. Other prominent image-based rendering techniques include particle systems and multi-pass rendering (to desaturate and to simulate waves.) Shaders are used moderately.
- Detailed On-screen Panels: HAZARD features a very extensive set of overhead items, representing the state of the player, the world, and more.
- Level of Detail: The terrain is rendered with the appropriate level of detail, based on the viewing distance.
- Miscellaneous: basic physics, basic mine-avoidance navigation AI for the enemy units, randomly generated and deformable terrain.
- Other goodies: Check out the Starcraft-inspired sound effects, and the cool-looking menu interface.
Download: The following binaries are available. If you would like a binary to be compiled for your system, let me know. **** The FTGL build on Linux does not seem to function properly. If you get segmentation faults for FTGL, try running the binary with suffix "_no_ftgl".
All these binaries run at 1440x900. If the binary does not work, check to see if you have the necessary libraries. Most Linux systems will have OpenGL, ImageMagick and Freetype already, but not FTGL, GLEW and FMOD.
Notes: HAZARD has been developed with or using the following tools, libraries and sources, most of which are open-source. Consider this to be an implicit endorsement to varying degrees:
