Hazke

Trade. Hunt. Survive. An open-universe space sim for the M5Stack Cardputer, inspired by Parkan: Imperial Chronicles and Galaxy on Fire 2. Fly between sixteen procedurally-generated star systems, land on planets, run cargo or hunt pirates for one of four factions, and shape your standing across the galaxy — all on a 240×135 display.

No assets or code are copied from the inspirations; the galaxy, commodity table, ship silhouettes and faction roster are all original.

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Hardware

• Board: M5Stack Cardputer (ESP32-S3, ST7789 240×135 display, 56-key keyboard, PWM beeper).
• Built with the Arduino IDE / Arduino CLI against the M5Cardputer / M5Unified libraries.

Build & flash

1. Open hazke.ino in the Arduino IDE.
2. Install the M5Cardputer library via Library Manager (pulls M5Unified and M5GFX automatically).
3. Board: M5Stack → M5Cardputer. Port: whichever USB-C tty your Cardputer enumerates as.
4. Upload. The first boot drops you on the title screen.

Saving

The game has 5 save slots on each of two storage backends: internal flash (LittleFS on the stock spiffs partition, formatted on first use) and the microSD card. Saving happens while landed on a planet (SAVE GAME on the landing menu); loading (LOAD GAME on the title screen) puts you back docked at that planet. In the slot picker, LEFT/RIGHT switches the storage backend and ENTER on a slot offers LOAD/SAVE, COPY (backup/restore the slot to the other backend), and DELETE.

Save files (/hazke/saves/slotN.sav, ~100 bytes) carry a format version and a CRC. When a future release changes the format, old files are upgraded automatically at load time through chained transformers in SaveFormat.h — a save from any older version keeps working. Files written by a newer firmware show as NEWER VERSION and are left untouched.

Controls

Cardputer keycaps in brackets show the arrow legend printed on the device.

Key	Action
; / . (↑ / ↓)	Pitch up / down
, / / (← / →)	Roll left / right
L / '	Yaw left / right
E	Accelerate
S	Brake
W or Space	Fire laser
R	Cycle missile lock
A	Fire missile at current lock
Q	Fire ECM burst (if installed)
Tab	Cycle target POI
H	Dock with nearby ship (trade / loot)
M	Open local system map
Enter	Confirm in menus
`	Back / pause

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How it plays

You start in your ship at a jump gate with 100 CR and an empty hold. From there you can:

• Trade. Buy commodities cheap in their home market and sell them where they're rare. Agricultural goods are cheap on farm worlds and dear on industrial worlds, and vice versa. Hailing an NPC in flight opens a separate buy/sell dialog with its own spread.
• Run quests. Land on a planet, open its quest board, and accept one of four offered contracts. Quests are local-system-only and return-to-origin: you take a job at planet A, complete it somewhere in the same system, and fly back to A for payment.
• Hunt. Kill pirates for bounties and reputation with lawful factions. Patrol quests force a fixed pirate roster to spawn after launch, so the hunt is winnable even in peaceful systems. NPCs are slower than you at full throttle, so you can always either outrun a fight or close in on a wounded one. Damage thresholds apply to both sides: below 50% hull engines drop to half thrust, below 25% hull weapons go offline. A ship that's been beaten below 25% can no longer shoot back — H then opens a loot dialog where you grab its cargo for free.
• Travel. Pay 10 CR per LY at a jump gate to hyperspace to a neighbouring system. Only direct gate links are reachable; the galaxy is a graph, not a free-distance grid.
• Upgrade. Spend earnings at the EQUIP shop on missiles, an ECM, a larger hold, better lasers, or hull and shield repairs.

Die (hull → 0) and the game-over screen offers a restart.

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Game systems

Galaxy

Sixteen systems generated deterministically from a single LCG seed. Each has a name, government, economy, tech level, population, and productivity. A gate adjacency graph (2–4 neighbours per system, made symmetric) is the only path between systems — the chart screen draws this graph and dims any system without a direct link to your current location.

Coordinates live in a 256×256 map; one map unit is roughly 0.1 LY, so a typical neighbour is 2–5 LY away.

Solar systems

Each system is a 3D volume (about 48 km on a side) containing:

• a star at the origin,
• one to three planets on inclined orbits (some with rings, moonlets, or asteroid belts),
• one or more Coriolis stations,
• a jump gate (the only way out).

Layouts are re-derived on demand from the system seed, so the same system always looks the same.

Free flight

The cockpit shows a starfield, HUD bars (shield, hull, heat, throttle, laser cooldown), a 3D radar of nearby ships and POIs, and a mode banner stack for contextual prompts (H=HAIL, BELT, WARP, ENTER GATE, HEAT!). Landing on a planet and jumping at a gate are automatic — drift into range and the screen hand-off fires itself.

Pressing Tab cycles a target POI.

Combat

• Lasers come in three tiers: Pulse (start), Beam (1000 CR), Military (6000 CR; requires Beam first). Each tier raises damage, range, and cooldown speed.
• Missiles are racked up to four. R cycles a lock onto the nearest target in front; A fires.
• ECM is unlimited but cooldown-throttled, blanketing incoming missiles in a single burst.
• Shields absorb damage first and regenerate slowly (~37 s for a full top-up) while still active — once a shield is depleted to 0 it stays down until you buy REPAIR SHIELD at the EQUIP shop. Hull only goes down — repair it the same way.
• Sun heat builds while skimming the star. Past 1.0 hullHeat forward shields drain, then aft. A HEAT! banner blinks faster as you approach the threshold.

NPCs and factions

Every system spawns 1–4 NPC ships, roles weighted by government (anarchy → mostly pirates; corporate → mostly patrols). Pirates are always Cartel; everyone else inherits the system's faction.

There are four factions: Imperium, Federation, Cartel, Free Traders. Your standing with each runs from -100 to +100 and shifts on kills, trades, and quest payouts. Patrols turn hostile to you once their faction's standing drops past -30, and market prices flex up to ±20% with standing.

Market

Seventeen commodities, from Food and Textiles up through Gold, Platinum, and Aliens. Three are illegal (Slaves, Narcotics, Firearms) and shrink under stable governments. Prices and stock are deterministic per (system, commodity, market epoch); each hyperspace jump bumps the epoch so prices shift slightly on a return visit.

Quests

One active quest at a time. Accept at a planet, complete the objective, and return to that same planet for the payout. Five quest types are implemented (see Quest.h):

Type	Objective	Return required?
Patrol	Kill N pirates in this system.	Yes
Delivery	Drop N tons of a commodity at another planet POI.	Yes
VisitPlanet	Touch down at a specified planet POI.	Yes
Courier	One-way drop of a passenger / packet at a planet POI.	No — paid on arrival
Scavenge	Bring N tons of a commodity not stocked locally.	Yes

Each quest carries a difficulty (EASY / MED / HARD / ELITE) derived from distance from system 0, which scales both the size of the objective and the payout. Patrol contracts also arm a one-shot pirate spawn on the first launch after acceptance — killed pirates do not respawn for that contract.

The pause menu always shows the single next step (e.g. GO TO TRIX II, KILL 2/4 PIRATES, RETURN TO TRIX). The board itself renders the narrative title (COURIER PACKET TO TRIX II, BOUNTY: 3 PIRATES, etc.). Completion fires a modal popup on landing — press Enter to dismiss before the docked menu becomes usable again.

Equipment shop

Reached from the docked menu (EQUIP). All purchases debit game.credits in tenths of a credit.

Item	Price	Effect
REPAIR HULL	10 CR per +10%	Patches hull damage (full repair = ~100 CR).
REPAIR SHIELD	100 CR	One-shot full recharge — required after depletion.
MISSILE	30 CR each, cap 4	Adds one homing missile.
ECM SYSTEM	600 CR	Enables the ECM burst (one-time install).
LARGE HOLD	400 CR	Cargo capacity 20 t → 35 t.
BEAM LASER	1000 CR	Mid-tier laser.
MIL LASER	6000 CR	Top-tier laser (requires Beam).

Rank

The kill counter feeds a seven-tier rank ladder (Harmless → Mostly Harmless → Poor → Average → Competent → Dangerous → Deadly). Crossing a tier surfaces a PROMOTED: <RANK> banner in flight; the status card shows your current tier and kills-to-next.

Audio

A PWM beeper drives small SFX through the M5Unified speaker class: laser zap (pitched per tier), shield hit, missile launch, ECM burst, dock chime, witchspace whoosh, hostility alarm, quest accept / complete chimes, and a denied-action buzz. Volume is fixed at 80/255; the engine has no mute toggle yet.

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Code structure

Most code lives in single-header .h files included from hazke.ino, the top-level state machine. Each module owns its own state and exposes inline functions — there's no build system beyond the Arduino IDE.

hazke.ino           top-level state machine + frame loop
Config.h            screen, frame, viewport constants
Input.h             keyboard polling + edge detection
GameMode.h          enum of screen states
GameState.h         mutable player state (credits, cargo, ship, faction)

Galaxy.h            16-system procgen + gate adjacency graph
SolarSystem.h       per-system POI table
Faction.h           faction map + standing nudges
Market.h            commodity table + deterministic pricing
Hyperspace.h        jump cost + neighbour gating
Rank.h              kill-tier ladder + promotion banner
Quest.h             quest data model + onDock / onPirateKill hooks
NPCShip.h           in-flight roster + AI (trader / pirate / patrol)
Combat.h            laser + missile damage resolution
Missile.h           homing missile motion + ECM
Particles.h         tiny pixel explosion / debris system
Audio.h             PWM SFX wrappers
SDCard.h            shared lazy microSD bring-up (screenshots + saves)
SaveFormat.h        versioned save payloads + CRC + upgrade transformers
SaveStore.h         save-slot IO on LittleFS/SD + game<->payload marshalling
Ship3D.h            wireframe ship renderer (6 hull silhouettes)
Starfield.h         parallax stars
Cockpit.h           HUD overlay (bars, banners, rank toast)
SystemFlight.h      the actual 3D flight loop + landing-range checks

TitleScreen.h       title menu
InfoScreen.h        controls help
AboutScreen.h       about / credits
ChartScreen.h       galactic gate-graph map
SystemDataScreen.h  per-system info panel
MapScreen.h         in-system top-down map
MarketScreen.h      commodity buy/sell UI
NPCTradeScreen.h    hail-in-flight buy/sell dialog
EquipScreen.h       equipment shop (includes REPAIR HULL)
StatusScreen.h      commander card
LandingScreen.h     planet surface menu
QuestScreen.h       planet quest board
PauseMenu.h         in-flight pause overlay (shows active quest step)
WitchspaceScreen.h  hyperspace transit cinematic
GameOverScreen.h    death + restart prompt
SaveMenuScreen.h    save/load slot picker (backend tabs, copy, delete)
MenuUI.h            shared menu chrome (headers, footers, toasts)

Design constraints

• ~320 KB usable RAM on the ESP32-S3. POI tables stay small (≤ 16 POIs per system, ≤ 4 active NPCs).
• 240×135 @ 16 bpp via an M5Canvas double-buffer. Target ~30 FPS in flight; menus may drop to 15.
• Game state lives in RAM during play; landed-only saves keep the save format tiny (~100 B) and free of transient flight state.

License

Original work. No code or art from the inspirations.