Many years ago, I wrote a tank game called Howitzer. It had all sorts of features - animated mushroom clouds, dozens of types of ammo, computer-controlled tanks, etc. To run well on the computers of the day, some of which lacked math coprocessors, I wrote my own graphics, sound, memory management, and fixed point math libraries in a mix of hand-tuned C and assembly. The entire program rang in at around 35,000 lines of code.
I released Howitzer as shareware - $10, $5 for students, and just a postcard if you lived outside the USA. I still have a binder filled with all the postcards, from over 30 countries.
A few months ago, I started encouraging my older son Gavin to learn programming. He asked if it was possible to write a game, so I dug out Howitzer to show him that yes, it's possible. I was thrilled to discover that Howitzer runs nicely in DosBox, with the exception of the digital sound effects.
Howitzer's still a bunch of fun to play. If you'd like to give it a try, I've made a free version available for download here.
