DEV LOG: HEALTH, AMMO AND SHIELD PICKUPS
NOW SPREAD ACROSS THE ISLAND

Yesterday was a big day for Super Soldier Battle, and most of it went into one thing you'll feel in every firefight: pickups. Health packs, ammo crates and shield packs are now spread out across the whole island instead of bunching up, your gun tops itself up from the ammo you've collected, and shield packs are hidden in the forest so finding one is worth the trip. It's live right now and free to play in your browser at supersoldierbattle.com. There's nothing to download or install.

If you haven't played yet, Super Soldier Battle is my multiplayer, open-world, blue-vs-red shooter built with Three.js and JavaScript and running on AWS. You pick a team, drop in, and fight across a big island of hills, ruins, beaches and pine forest.

Three Kinds of Packs, Three Jobs

There are three pickups on the island, and each one now has its own job:

• Health packs restore your health automatically. Run over one when you're hurt and you're back in the fight.
• Ammo packs top up your gun automatically as it runs low. Extra packs go into your inventory and get used when you need them.
• Shield packs are stored, not used right away. Press B when you need one and it blocks all damage for a few seconds.

Any extra packs you're carrying show up in your inventory in the bottom-left of the screen. The slots used to show number keys and icons. Now they're labeled MED, AMMO and SHIELD, so you can see at a glance what you're holding. When you grab a pack, its slot flashes, and a message in the middle of the HUD tells you what you picked up, like MED PACK PICKED UP or SHIELD PACK PICKED UP. If your shield slot is already full, you'll see SHIELDS FULL instead.

I also added a short Pickups section to the in-game instructions, and Use Shield: B is now listed in the controls. New players shouldn't have to guess what the glowing boxes do.

Why I Spread the Packs Out

Before this update, packs were dropped at purely random spots on the island, and random isn't the same as fair. Nothing stopped several from landing right next to each other while whole parts of the map had nothing.

Now every pack type follows a spacing rule. When the game picks a spot for a new pack, it checks the packs of the same type that are already out there and rejects the spot if it's too close to one. Health packs and ammo crates each keep their distance from packs of their own kind, so they end up spread across the whole map. Wherever you are, there should be something worth running to.

The game still makes sure every pack lands somewhere you can actually reach. It looks straight down at the ground to find solid terrain, skips water, and keeps packs from spawning inside tree trunks. If the spacing rule ever gets too strict to place a pack, it relaxes the rule rather than leaving the map empty.

Shields Are Now Rare, and Hidden in the Trees

A shield that blocks all damage is a big deal in a firefight, so it shouldn't be lying around everywhere. I cut the number of shield packs on the island from 25 to 8, and spread them much farther apart than the other packs.

They're also tucked into the forest now. A shield pack spawns near a pine tree, so it sits among the trees instead of out in an open field. You'll have to go looking for them, and you'll have to decide whether a shield is worth leaving the fight. If you know where the forest is thick, you've got an edge.

Your Gun Tops Itself Up

This is the change I like most. Your gun holds 1,000 rounds. Picking up an ammo pack used to refill it all the way to the max, and banked packs only kicked in once you'd completely run dry, so you could be fighting on a nearly empty gun while packs sat unused in your inventory.

Now each ammo pack adds +250 rounds (up to the 1,000 max). As soon as your gun has drained by a full pack's worth, down to 750 or below, the game automatically pulls a pack from your inventory and tops you up. If you've drained a lot, it uses as many packs as it takes. As long as you're carrying ammo packs, you keep fighting with a nearly full gun instead of hitting zero in the middle of a fight. The ammo count also can never drop below zero.

If you do run completely dry with no packs left, clicking to fire shows a red warning: OUT OF AMMO - RETURN TO BASE OR FIND AMMO PACK. It's throttled, so spamming the trigger doesn't spam the message. Low health gets a red warning too, so you know it's time to find a med pack.

Small Details That Make It Feel Right

• Red for warnings, white for good news. Pickups show in the normal style, and warnings like low health and out of ammo show in red, so you can tell them apart without reading.
• Packs come back. When you grab a world health pack, a new one spawns somewhere else on the map, and ammo crates respawn after pickup too. The island doesn't run dry over a long match.
• All the ammo crates are one draw call. Every ammo crate on the map renders as a single instanced mesh, and crates far away from you aren't drawn, so 25 crates don't cost you frame rate.

If you want to see the code behind the spacing rule, the forest-only shields and the automatic ammo top-up, I wrote it up as a short tutorial: Scatter Pickups Across a Three.js Terrain.

How to Use Pickups Like a Pro

1. Carry spare ammo. Every banked ammo pack is another +250 rounds waiting. Run over crates between fights and your gun stays topped up on its own.
2. Learn the forest. Shield packs spawn near trees. Check the tree lines on the way to a fight.
3. Save your shield for the push. Shields are stored. Press B when you're about to take a hit, not when the coast is clear.
4. Watch for red. A red message means low health or an empty gun. Back off, find a pack, or head back to base.

Built With Three.js and AI Agents

Super Soldier Battle runs entirely in the browser with Three.js, JavaScript and AWS, and I build a lot of it working alongside AI coding agents. If you're curious how a browser game like this comes together, check out my Three.js tutorials and articles, including yesterday's dev log on burning ruins and gunship wrecks. 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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