✦ Matthias Ewald DE

Games · AI · Browser game / personal project

Space Pirates

A 90-second shooting gallery in the browser: goofy pirate birds fly across a scrolling alien desert at three depths, and the farther a bird, the more it is worth. It follows the rules of the 1999 classic Moorhuhnjagd, with every name, picture, sound and joke original.

x4 combo multiplier
TypeScript Canvas Tauri PHP
Play in the browser
Title screen: the Space Pirates banner over the key art, with Start, Scores, Install app and Download for Windows buttons and a short how-to-play box Gameplay: a jetpack bird explodes under the crosshair for +10 at a x2 combo, with more pirate birds and a tourist saucer over the desert Gameplay: armoured birds with metal chest plates fly past a spinning rotor tower and a pirate camp Results screen: total of 4540 points with an A rank, hits, shots and accuracy, bonus feats, and the online top-ten board
Role
Author, developer & owner
Status
Playable prototype
Workflow
AI-assisted, agent-driven

What makes a round

  • Targets with personality: armoured birds that take two hits, jetpack birds that explode as they fall, a rare golden bird announced by a radio squawk, a salvage rotor dropping loot canisters, a hidden treasure chest and a critter peeking from its burrow
  • Eight shots per magazine: right click or R reloads at any time, with no penalty
  • Things you should not shoot: tourist saucers, the mail blimp and the signpost cost points
  • Combos: every hit in a row raises the multiplier up to x4, with a close-call dodge when a shot only just misses
  • The supply crate parachutes in once a round; burst it open for ten seconds of a spraying pump shotgun
  • Ranks from D to SSS, a score count-up with drum roll and feats, and local and online best-score boards

Everywhere it can run

  • Desktop with mouse and keyboard, pausing when you switch tabs
  • Phones and tablets with touch controls: tap to shoot, hold an edge to look around, tap the ammo row to reload
  • Installable app that works offline
  • Windows program, a portable build made with Tauri around the web version, with no browser to ship
  • One shared 16:9 play field on every device, so scores compare fairly

Under the hood

The sound is synthesised. Sprites come from packed, content-hashed texture atlases sized to the largest scale the game ever draws them at. The online top-ten board runs on a small PHP program on the same webspace, with no database.

Every rule works end to end; the scenery and effects are still being finished.

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