Cannons 2000
Cannons 2000 is a turn-based artillery game for DOS. It was based off of code that was behind Cannons for Windows in Visual Basic, which was ported to QuickBASIC and ran in DOS. Running in DOS had its advantages. For example, graphical improvements could be made (graphics in Windows is much more complicated than DOS), such as using a particle system to make explosions, implementing ground collision detection using pixels on the screen, etc. The game ran in 640x480 resolution with a 16 color palette.
The game physics is based on simple projectile motion (covered in trigonometry-based high school physics class) along with using a simplistic air resistance model.
Highlights of the game were the weapons and the graphical effects. Tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) could be used to blast mountains or evaporate your opponent. (The nice big hole in the mountain near the middle of the screen was made by a TNW.) By using some techniques like directly manipulating the graphics card’s color palette, the game made effects such as the blinding light of a detonating nuclear weapon to changing the darkness of the screen to simulate different times of day.
The video of the game was produced using DOSBox. When running the game under Windows XP, due to the emulation that is performed by the operating system, the game runs too fast. DOSBox has been able to do a better job at running Cannons 2000 than attempting to run it directly from Windows XP.
- Language/Environment: Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.5
- Date: 1999 to 2000
- Platform: DOS
Other information
A blog post has been made in the Coobird’s Devblog on some thoughts after taking a serious look at the source code of Cannons 2000 for the first time in few years.