DEV LOG: WALK-IN BUNKERS AND BEACHES
LAND IN SUPER SOLDIER BATTLE

The last couple of days on Super Soldier Battle have been all about the battlefield itself. The biggest change is the new bunkers and beaches kit: walk-in bunkers you enter through a tunnel, with sniper slots to shoot from, and walls that really block shots now. It's live, and it's free to play right in your browser at supersoldierbattle.com. No download, no install.

If you've never played it, Super Soldier Battle is my multiplayer, open-world, blue-vs-red shooter built with Three.js and JavaScript and running on AWS. Pick a team, spawn at your base, and fight across the island.

Walk-In Bunkers With Sniper Slots

The new bunkers aren't just props you hide behind. You walk in through a tunnel, and once you're inside, the sniper slots let you watch and shoot at the field while staying protected. I also fixed walking up the bunker ramps so you don't snag on the way in, and grass inside bunkers is culled again, so you aren't looking through a lawn growing on the floor.

This changes how matches play. Holding a bunker is now a real position: you can defend your side of the island from a sniper slot, and the other team has to work out how to flush you out.

Walls That Stop Bullets

Cover only counts if it actually stops shots. In this update the bunker and wall colliders take part in bullet hit-testing, and shots that hit a wall now trigger impact effects. Before this fix, shooting some base and perimeter walls registered no hit and showed no impact at all.

The fix sounds technical, but it's simple to feel: if you're behind a wall, you're safe from shots coming at it. If you want the code side of how this works in Three.js, I wrote it up as a short tutorial: Walls That Stop Bullets: Invisible Box Colliders and BVH Raycasts in Three.js.

Beaches, Ground Textures and Terrain Detail

The beaches got real attention too. Today's ground texture update added photo-based grass, dirt and rock textures to the bases, plus burnt craters, without increasing the draw call count. A follow-up fix gave bases, craters and beaches their own surface detail instead of the tiled hillside bump, and the inlet beaches now have river-rock relief.

Over the past couple of days I also lowered the water plane so shallow inland craters stop showing the ocean through them, and calmed the water down.

Performance and Multiplayer Fixes

A good-looking map doesn't matter if it stutters, so a lot of today went into performance:

• Invisible colliders (trees, boulders, walls) were still being rendered, which caused a draw-call spike. They're hidden now.
• Wreck smoke went from 156 planes to 24, and firing debris from 44 pieces to 6 per blast.
• Per-frame full-scene traversals and debug logging were removed.

On the multiplayer side, players who go idle, press ESC or switch tabs no longer get dropped as quickly. The stale-player timeout went from 45 seconds to 180. Remote players also stopped spinning in place when they look around: they stay planted and only turn when they move or look far enough.

The Gunship Got Fairer

The enemy gunship got some tuning too. Its attack range was cut in half, it now takes 10 hits to kill a player, and it only strafes an enemy base when it's actually in range, so no more attacks on your base from across the island. Bunkers and walls now block the gunship's line of sight, and the floating sky platforms are gone. I also fixed a respawn bug, so you return to your own base after you die.

Built With Three.js and AI Agents

All of this is built in the browser with Three.js, JavaScript and AWS, and I build a lot of it working alongside AI coding agents. If you're interested in how a browser game like this is put together, check out my Three.js tutorials and articles. If you want something like this built for your own project, I'm available for freelance and contract work in Three.js and 3D, full-stack development, AWS, and SEO/AEO. Contact me.

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