Laser Battle!

Players online: 0

Description
Somewhat like Chess, but with lasers. Based on the game Khet.

Instructions

It's a battle for space dominance between the infamous criminal organization Blue Laser and the equally villainous, but slightly more derivative organization Green Laser. Protect your base at all costs!

Each faction has a laser battery equipped with a trigger-happy gunner that fires at the end of every turn. Blue's is in the southeast shooting north, while Green's is in the northwest shooting south. Each faction also has several tools at its disposal scattered through the 2D battlefield, controlled by remote control.

• Base station (circle) - This is where you are. If you get hit by a laser, you're toast.
• Shield battery (hollowed-out square) - Will still stop a laser blast, but just once. Can be combined with another shield battery to form a reinforced shield battery.
• Reinforced shield battery (square) - Will stop a laser blast, depleting itself but not getting destroyed. Can be split into two shield batteries. It's like two normal shields put together.
• Mirror ships (triangles) - Will deflect laser blasts on its mirrored (slanted) edge. Can be destroyed by a laser blast to its other sides.
• Alien mirrors (long rectangles) - Will deflect laser blasts on all sides. Cannot be destroyed. Due to strange alien technology, can switch places with shield batteries and human mirrors that are right next to it.

All mirrors are at a 45-degree angle to the spaces, so will always reflect the laser 90 degrees. By interplanetary treaty, there are some areas of space only one faction may enter, due to embassies or territory agreements made long ago.

On your turn, you can either move a piece one space in any of the 8 directions, or you can rotate a piece a quarter turn. To move, click and drag the desired piece. To rotate, either use the arrow keys or scroll wheel while holding a piece. (Remember, you cannot both move and rotate.) If you wish to separate a Reinforced Shield Battery, click and drag with the secondary (right) mouse button.

At the end of each turn, your trigger-happy minion fires your laser once. If it hits a non-mirrored side of any piece (except double-shields), that piece is destroyed, and removed from the game.

The game ends when one player's base station has been destroyed.

Note for AI nerds: The AI is a simple alpha-beta search, with strength determining the depth of the game tree it will search. If at any point there are fewer than 15 pieces on the board, the AI will search to one more depth, because it's easier to reason about a board with fewer pieces. Note that it may take a bit of time to process the move if you choose "Extreme"

To Do:

• Show ghost of last piece killed
• Rotate board based on player
• Show where lasers enter board
• Show path of laser
• Animate piece movement
• Animate laser path
• Cause board to resize with window
• Better pieces? background? Not my strong suit.

Credits
Thanks to mdb for the Reversi Tutorial, which I followed fairly closely while making this.

Khet is © Innovation Toys LLC

Created: Nov 11, 2009
Last updated: Nov 20, 2009