Tank!Game

This is the first version of Tank!Game. It was finished September 9, 2004.

The gameplay is simple. You are a tank, the objective is to seek and destroy other tanks. The last tank to be destroyed will reveal the door to the next level. Rinse, repeat. Here’s what the readme.txt says:

- How to install.

Execute ‘TG_Fullscreen.exe’ for fullscreen mode.
or ‘TG_Windowed.exe’ for windowed mode. If one does not work, try the other.
- How to play.

- Movement [WASD]
- Aim Left and Right Arrows
- Shoot [SPACEBAR]
- Jump [UP ARROW]
- Turbo Hold [SHIFT]
- Energy Mode [CAPSLOCK]
- Pause [PAUSE]

At the title screen, push enter to start the game.

The objective at each level is reach the exit to the next level.
The last enemy tank to die will become an exit.
On some levels, the exit can be found without killing enemies.

The game revolves around two energy bars:
The yellow one is your life. If it runs out, you die.
The blue one is your energy. It is used for the following:
- Shooting, one shot takes half your energy.
- Jumping
- Turbo, doing anything while hold turbo will drain your energy

Your energy bars recharge. There are two modes of charging your energy:
-Life Conserve (CapsLock on)
This mode will recharge your Life bar before charging your Energy Bar
-Energy Recharge (Capslock off)
This mode will recharge your Energy bar quickly while draining your Life.

This game is hard, so here are some tips:
-Use both energy modes. Energy Recharge is best for most situations, however
-Enemy tanks have the same two energy bars that you do
and are always in Energy Recharge mode. Exploit this.
-Enemy tanks can hurt eachother. In later levels, you will have to exploit this.

Some backstory:
This was my first real game. Although I was very happy with it at the time; it is utter crap. It didn’t take long for the self-satisfaction to wear off. I went to back to work on Tank!Game and made improvements based on feedback from friends and helpful coders on the gamedev.net forums. Not long afterwards, I turned an OpenGL app that barely worked and wasn’t fun into something worthy of being called a “game.” I repeated this cycle a few times and Tank!Game has steadily improved. This sort of iterative development cycle is the idea behind Garbage In, Games Out.

Download Tank!Game.zip (1.4 mb)

Add comment March 3rd, 2006

Hello World

Garbage In, Games Out will release on a weekly basis a game prototype or an update to previous prototype. The updates will include improvements based on player feedback. This is an experiment in rapid game development and user wish-fulfillment. The goal is innovative and fun gameplay.

This post is just to explain the site to the few adrift readers that may somehow stumble upon this. I have just started throwing this site together so there nothing here yet. No games, no articles, no content. Give me about a month and then come back.

In the meantime: Check out Tank!Game. It’s a 3D third-person shooter with “Tron” graphics. Right now I’m working on the 3rd iteration. I think the current iteration (2) is pretty good: download Tank!Game.

Add comment January 9th, 2006