Hero

Hero is a remake of the classic Commodore 64 Raid Over Moscow minigame in 3d. This game was developed for a University of Washington project in C#, utilizing managed DirectX 9.0 for graphics and Windows Forms for UI design. This game features multiple dynamic camera modes, hardware lighting, particle effects, procedural animation, crappy 3d models, and a murderous nuclear reactor maintenance drone.

The prologue (sorry):

You are an elite spy on a mission to sabotage a central nuclear power plant of the Enemy. After bravely fighting your way into the reactor chamber you are faced with your final obstacle: to make the nuclear reactor go critical, leading to a core meltdown. The fission reaction inside the reactor is regulated by a fortified maintenance robot through the insertion of special carbon moderation rods. Destroy the robot and you complete your mission.

The maintenance robot is heavily fortified from frontal assault, and you are separated from the core by a pit filled with radioactive sludge. Your only chance for success is to hit the robot from the rear, where its sensitive circuits lie relatively exposed (although it may still take multiple shots).

You have been provided with special disc grenades which can be bounced off the rear wall of the reactor room to accomplish this task. Beware however, once the maintenance robot senses it is under attack, it is capable of defending itself by shooting you with highly radioactive uranium slugs (which also happen to be heat seeking).

Even though the models are pretty lame (the robot and the scenery were constructed by applying hierarchical modeling and transformation to geometric primitives, and the hero is the "Tiny" model from the DirectX SDK) the game is fun to play and employs several interesting DirectX/3d concepts. For instance, sparks fly when the disc bounces off the wall, point/direct/spot lighting is used throughout the game and there are several different camera modes. Try the game for yourself, it's awesome - select Game Keys from the Help menu to view the controls used by the game; the View menu provides access to the different camera modes.

Downloads

• Hero (final version)

Images

The player bounces a disc grenade off the rear wall of the reactor room.

An overhead camera angle makes lateral aiming a little easier.

The drone has been hit by a ricocheting disc grenade, showering the area with sparks.