My Struggles in Trigonometry Class

During a period of restlessness last night, while lying in bed I recalled a project I completed during 11th grade trigonometry class in high school. Today, I don't remember the minimum scope requirements, but I chose to satisfy them by building a game that simulated artillery. The game environment consisted of a simulated island (a 3D heightfield) and two textured stone bunkers corresponding to each player's location.

In another window with GUI controls, the player submitted elevation, azimuth, and velocity of an artillery shell. Then, they would click FIRE and a shell would launch from their location, arc over the simulated island, and impact somewhere. If it impacted the other player's bunker (or their own), the player who's bunker survived received a point and the game restarted with new random locations. The camera was attached to the shell so the firing player would have a chance to observe the island, reconnoiter their opponents location, and update their trajectory. Differences in elevation between the two players' bunkers and physical obstructions such as the island itself meant each player needed to determine a unique trajectory to the other. I believe there was also simulated wind.

I spent plenty of time working on it and made it finally ready to present the day all projects were due. No one else did anything related to computing, let alone implement a real-time 3D renderer with a game built around it. The morning before class, I installed it on the antiquated classroom PC to test it out. To my horror, the low max-resolution of the video card prevented the GUI controls from appearing; the input window was obscured and not sizable. The controls for entering artillery parameters and firing the shell were out of view. Our teacher was perpetually suspicious of technology and told me I would have to submit it as is; no deadlines would be granted. I think she may have even been slightly pleased that smarty-pants Andykerr would finally be hoist with his own petard (when taken literally, 'sent into the air by one's own powder keg' -- a remarkably delightful metaphor given the context of my game).

I had until sixth period, classtime, to resolve the issue and make the game playable. Unfortunately, I did not have the source code, and even if I did, the machines I had access to with Visual Studio lacked the DirectX software development kit. Recompiling it was impossible.

So I edited the binary instead.

Windows applications store layouts of controls as resource files embedded in the executable. These are binary also, but I knew enough to expect the X and Y coordinates of the critical controls to be stored as 16-bit unsigned integers. Using MSPaint, I took a screenshot of the application to determine what the locations of the buttons and textboxes actually were. I visited the electronics lab where computers with Visual Studio were installed, and I used Visual Studio's hex editor to search and edit the executable. Fortunately for me, the coordinates made unique binary sequences for that particular application, so finding them was straightforward. I made up new values, overwrote the old ones, and hoped.

I brought it Trigonometry during sixth period, installed it on the classroom PC, and was met with pleased astonishment. The controls were in new positions, visible, and the game could be played as designed. The textures were crappy, and the slow video card made gameplay uninteresting, but it ran and I received full credit.

3D games rely heavily on trigonometric relationships to transform and project mathematical representations of a virtual world onto a raster display, but the math was by *far* not the most difficult part of that project. I don't think anyone else appreciated what I went through for that damn grade...