Slick Forums

As you probably have seen on the "show what you have" post, I'm working on Tankz; a simple videogame where you control a Tank that has to fight and destroy various enemies in order to complete multiple levels.

About me

I've been studing Computer Eng. for two years. Right now I'm familiar with simple and object oriented programming and I have a good basis on the theoretical aspects on how to build good software. Even though I'm not really a great programmer, since I still have to learn a lot about every language "secrets" that come to you when you work with them over time.

I'm making this game to learn and improve my skills on java, slick and creating videogames in general, trying to keep everything as simple as possible since it's my first complete game. That's why I'm doing a lot of things "my way". I thinf if i look what is the best option to solve the problems I had during the development after making my own solution, even if it wan't the best, will make me improve as a programmer and make me understand the better solution.

About the Game

Last year I made a simple Pong with SDL and it was a great experience, but I wanted to try something new to create a more completed game. Then I found this great library and started to look at some tutorials, after some days I decided to go with it, so I started developing the basic components for any game.

Tankz development started nearly a month ago, working on it pretty much half of my free time. After just a mont I'm happy with the current status of the game, I still have to create some more enemies, fix bugs, change and create graphics, put animations, etc. But i think the game basis is solid right now, so it will be easy to finish the game witjout major problems.

The goal is to complete a request by your commander depending on the level, there are three options:
- Destroy all the enemies
- Go to a point of the map (and maybe resist an horde attack or something)
- Transport an object from A to B

The last two are still WIP (in fact I'm working on them right now). After finishing them I would add some more enemies, bosses to the game and fix some bugs /bad quality code to reach Alpha State.Then continue to worknig on improve the gamplay, design a limited number of levels and change graphics for Beta. After that i would just test, balance and add levels leading to the complete game. I'd like to add some sort of cooperative gameplay, but I'm not sure I would do on the first version of the game, maybe in the future...

Here are some screenshoots (PreAlpha):

http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/2613 ... 585074.jpg
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/8069/j ... 585373.jpg
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/3548 ... 010113.jpg

And the game on it's current status (should work on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X):



Thanks for reading, any kind of feedback would be really appreciated

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Sorry for my English, trying to improve!

That's a really cool (albeit hard) little game! nice 8 bit music, fog of war, and the turrets predict your movements. Also, the menu art is really nice.

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"Artificial intelligence will never be a match for human stupidity" - "Jamos Kennedynos"

Thanks! I want it to be challenging but not impossible, otherwise the player will get too frustrate since there is no "prize", only passing the level right now.

Now you mention it, I didn't say at the post I still have to implement fog of war on the minimap. At first stages you were able to see all the screnn, but I found that not being able to see everything makes the game more interesting, as you can never know when an xploder is going to run at you (btw, they need a new IA to avoid blocking elements). The turrets are actually quite good right now aiming to the player position, but they need som tweaks specially at medium distances.

For the music and menu art, i didn't make them, i did just the buttons on PS, in fact I'm terrible with drawing xD Authors info will be available at the game credits, as their license use states.

Thanks again, glad you like ¡t!

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Sorry for my English, trying to improve!

nice little game... enjoyed testing it...

it's still under development? hope to see some new features. statistics of hits, time.. ne levels, perhaps with houses and other stuff. multiplayer?! more different types of opponents and weapon types...

greetz ben

That title screen looks frigging amazing!

Nice game!

Can you please post source code somewhere, there's some neat stuff in this that I would like to learn...

That was truly a good game. Makes me wish I had time to make games right now.

If I had to change 2 things about the game (that you haven't already said you're going to do), they would be:
1) Don't clear the fog of war on the other side of walls (although this may make the game feel claustrophobic, so you'd have to test this)
2) Add a level creator and a way to upload/download levels.

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My indie games: http://cmagames.webs.com

Very nice! My only complaint is that for Mac OS, the height of the game screen is a little bit too high, so basically, a small part of the bottom of the screen is cut of/blocked by the dock. This doesn't really affect performance or gameplay, but it just can be distracting from the visuals of the game. Otherwise, and awesome game.
P.S. Is any of the stuff you made in that game covered on your tutorials? Just wondering, because there is some stuff I'd like to learn to do that you have in your game.