B.V.R

Screenshot

Inspiration

This project was inspired by the video on modern naval air defense by Binkov's Battlegrounds: Attack on Aegis

However, my game does not depict anti-air warfare realistically. Instead I took an arcade-y approach and centred the core gameplay loop around manually guiding and maneuvering missiles.

Civilian aircraft were added for added complexity so that players can't easily block attacks by spamming missiles.

Some visual and audio styles are also inspired by Command: Modern Operations, a detailed and realistic modern air and naval warfare simulation game.

What it does

B.V.R (beyond visual range) is a simple browser-based 2D game where you play as an air defense officer onboard a navy ship. The enemy has a vast inventory of anti-ship missiles and will attack you relentlessly. You must launch and guide your own surface-to-air missiles to stop the onslaught. Be cautious, however, the airspace is also open to civilian air traffic. Therefore, you must carefully maneuver your missiles to avoid civilian airliners while keeping your ship safe.

How we built it

I built the game using Konva.js, a 2D rendering and animation library for browser. The frontend tooling is handled by Vite, a modern web development toolchain that offers many must-have development features.

Challenges we ran into

I had to learn Konva.js as I developed the game, as I had no previous experience with any 2D/3D rendering and animation techniques.

I came up with the game idea only the day before the hackathon, so I didn't have time to prototype or refine the game design. Designing was basically done as I wrote the code, which is obviously a frowned-upon practice.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is the first ever game conceptualized, designed, and developed all by myself. And it surprisingly turned out to be somewhat playable. Does this game idea have some real potential, or is it as boring as company-wide meetings? You be the judge!

What we learned

A good chunk of time was spent debugging issues that would never have happened if I used typescript. - - This is a good lesson to learn about the trade-offs of typecheck systems.

As an aspiring hobby game developer, I still have a very long way to go.

What's next for B.V.R

Some concepts and plans were dropped due to lack of time, such as:

Radar contacts should only move on the scope when they are being actively scanned by the radar beam.
To create a fog-of-war mechanic, radar contacts should remain unidentified until specific conditions are met.
Better visual quality, like a CRT monitor style radar screen.