Scorched Earth - HTML5 / TypeScript Port

A browser reimplementation of Scorched Earth v1.5 (1995, DOS) by Wendell Hicken - "The Mother of All Games" - running natively on TypeScript + Canvas2D + Web Audio. No plugins, no WASM, no Python or DOS runtime: open it and play.

Play it now: https://digitalcybersoft.github.io/scorchedearth-html5/

Nothing to install - it is a static HTML5 page that runs in the browser.

It reproduces the original's turn-based tank artillery - destructible terrain, the weapon shop, the computer players, the physics and wind, the economy and scoring - reconstructed function-for-function and verified against the original's behavior.

Screenshots

Captured from this TypeScript / Canvas port running in the browser:

Title screen	Player and tank setup	A turn in progress
A shell detonates	A direct hit	The weapon shop
In-game control panel	Round rankings	Final scoring

Credit: Wendell Hicken

Scorched Earth, subtitled "The Mother of All Games," was created by Wendell Hicken and distributed as shareware for DOS. The original is Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Wendell Hicken. All rights to Scorched Earth - its name, design, artwork, sound, terrain data, and original code - belong to him. His site is whicken.com.

This project is an independent, non-commercial tribute. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Wendell Hicken. The game design is entirely his; this port only re-expresses its mechanics in TypeScript so the game can run in a browser today. If you want the genuine article, seek out Wendell Hicken's original.

How it was built, and how faithful it is

This is not a fresh interpretation - it is a verified reimplementation:

1. The original DOS binary was reverse-engineered statically (it is never executed) into a function-for-function Python/pygame port (scorchedearth-python), itself differential-tested against the recovered machine code.
2. This HTML5 build is a TypeScript rewrite of that Python port, with the Python port as the oracle: every module is proven to reproduce its Python counterpart.

The verification:

• 15,705 differential tests (npm test, vitest) assert the TypeScript reproduces the Python port's output exactly (integers, pixels, bytes) or within a tight epsilon (transcendental math only). The RNG reproduces CPython's Mersenne Twister bit-for-bit; the game engine is checked by 29,814 turn/round state snapshots; the sprites by ~8M pixel assertions.
• A visual regression gate (visual/, bash visual/run_gate.sh) renders identical seeded game states through both the TypeScript Canvas renderer and the Python pygame renderer and pixel-diffs them. The game world - sky, terrain, tanks - comes out byte-identical (zero channel delta). Only on-screen text differs, because a browser's font rasterizer is not pygame's; that is expected and reported separately.

The original binary is never run by anything in this repository.

Play

Open https://digitalcybersoft.github.io/scorchedearth-html5/ in any modern browser. There is nothing to install - it is a static HTML5 page (Canvas2D + Web Audio + JavaScript). A short loading bar fetches the assets, then the menu appears.

Controls: Left/Right aim the turret, Up/Down adjust power, Tab cycles weapons, Space or Enter fires, number keys select a tank, F11 toggles fullscreen, Esc backs out. The menus, the weapon shop, and the in-game control panel (battery, parachute, shield) are mouse-driven.

Building from source (developers only)

The game is written in TypeScript and compiled once to the browser JavaScript that ships above; players never run any of this. It is only for modifying the code.

npm install
npm run dev          # dev server at http://localhost:5173
npm run build        # static bundle into dist/ (what GitHub Pages serves)
npm test             # the 15,705 differential tests against the Python oracle

The original assets

This repository includes Wendell Hicken's original v1.5 data files under public/assets/ - the 10 .MTN digitized mountains, TALK1.CFG / TALK2.CFG tank taunts, and SCORCH.ICO - so the game plays with the genuine landscapes and taunts out of the box. These files are Wendell Hicken's property, included only to keep this tribute faithful and immediately playable; they are not the authors' to license. The engine also runs without them (procedural terrain, gradient title, no taunts).

How the code is organized

Module	Reverses
rng.ts	CPython Mersenne Twister, bit-exact (the determinism linchpin)
constants.ts	byte-verified physics / damage / scoring / color-band constants
terrain.ts	the pixel framebuffer, terrain generation, carve / deposit / settle
physics.ts	the projectile integrator (gravity, wind, viscosity, speed clamp)
weapons.ts, weapon_behaviors.ts	the 48-item table; rollers, diggers, MIRV, laser, riot
damage.ts, death.ts, hazard.ts	radial damage, shields, fall damage, death throes, sky hazards
ai.ts, guidance.ts	the seven computer types and the aiming oracle
economy.ts, scoring.ts	the free-market shop, interest, scoring and rankings
game.ts	the round / turn loop, fire / impact pipeline, win test
pygame.ts	a faithful pygame API over Canvas2D (Surface, draw, surfarray, font)
render.ts, ui.ts, widgets.ts, screens.ts, ingame.ts	rendering, HUD, menus, shop, dialogs
sprites.ts, palette.ts, sound.ts	the recovered art + .MTN decoder, color tables, Web Audio
mtn.ts	the .MTN terrain-photo decoder
main.ts	the requestAnimationFrame loop, input, state machine, asset boot, IndexedDB saves

oracle/ holds the Python vector dumpers; test/ the differential suite; visual/ the rendering gate.

License and use

The TypeScript, HTML, and CSS authored in this repository are the authors' own work and grant no rights to Scorched Earth itself. Game mechanics and rules, as distinct from a specific implementation, are generally understood not to be protected by copyright in the US; this port reimplements only the mechanics. Scorched Earth, its name, and all of its assets remain the property of Wendell Hicken. Please treat this as a personal, non-commercial tribute for play and study.