Source note: Local copy of a Summer Into AI 2026 submission originally published on Substack. Screenshots, video, and audio found in the post body are mirrored locally when publicly accessible; profile and avatar images are intentionally not copied. Read the canonical post.
Week 2 of Summer into AI 2026 hosted by @advisoryhour — theme: Red, White & Boom.
Minuteman is a Doom-style FPS running in a single HTML file — no engine, no library, no server required. You play a Continental soldier on July 4th, 1776, holding the line against Redcoats and Hessians in torch-lit corridors. Your musket takes six manual steps to reload. Yankee Doodle plays on square-wave synth. When the last coat falls, fireworks.
How the AI works
Claude didn't make API calls at runtime — it built the entire game through conversation. Here's what that produced in one sitting:
DDA raycaster — a Doom-style 3D renderer using ImageData and Uint32Array pixel buffers, with perspective-correct floor casting and a per-column torch lighting system that flickers every frame
Procedural textures — 64×64 brick, stone, and cobblestone canvases generated at startup; a 1024×256 sky panorama that scrolls as you turn
Six-phase musket reload — bite cartridge → charge barrel → seat ball → ram → prime pan → ready, each phase with a canvas pivot animation and synchronized reload audio
Enemy state machine — patrol, chase, and fire states per soldier, with 32-step line-of-sight ray marching, ramrod reload animations on the enemies themselves, and a crumple death sequence
Yankee Doodle — the full song encoded as [note, duration] pairs, synthesized live as square-wave melody, harmony, sine bass, and marching drums through the Web Audio API
The game runs completely offline — no API key, no internet connection needed.
How to play
WASD — move, mouse — look (click canvas to capture pointer)
Left click — fire musket
R — reload (six steps, ~1.8 seconds for the musket)
Right click — bayonet charge (close range, instant)
1 / 2 — switch between musket and pistol
E — pick up weapons dropped by fallen enemies
Choose Easy (1 wave) / Normal (2 waves) / Hard (3 waves + boss) on the start screen
Where to play
Demo: minuteman-1776.vercel.app
Code: README on GitHub
Summer into AI 2026 · Theme 2: Red, White & Boom
Original source
Canonical Substack URL: https://jakestrait5.substack.com/p/summer-into-ai-2026-minuteman.