8-Brick Tanks

Community Showcases
1

There is now a demo! Find it at the bottom of this post!

Please remember that this game is very early in development, and things could change at any time. I will update this thread when I make changes to the game. Please remember that I’m an independent developer, so the games release could be in a half a year, or 4 years, it depends on when I have time.

From what I have found, this game idea hasn’t been done before. If you have seen anything like it that may make me vulnerable to Copyright Infringement, please let me know.

The idea behind this game is that you play as a tank, that can be damaged, which means pieces of the tank will fall off. You can damage a tank be shooting or ramming it. The turrets of tanks will turn, you can shoot, its a regular tank game, except tanks will be able to fall apart.
The maps in the game will be proceduraly generated, and everything except trees, the ground, and a few other things will fall apart too. When tank parts fall off, they will remain on the map, and still be able to be moved. Only your tracks will not break apart.
In a battle, you have HP (hit points). HP will be a percentage of the number of cubes (pieces) on your tank. This percentage will vary tank by tank. You will lose 1 HP per part that falls off your tank. If your tank is damaged, you can drive near the parts that fell off of an enemy that you damaged, and their parts will be put on your vehicle, and will restore HP. You can only collect parts of a foe that is inoperable, not one that is just damaged. If your tank is destroyed, the rest of your tank will crumble to the ground (slowly, 1-3 pieces at a time to reduce lag for lower end machines). Also, only 1/3rd of the pieces or more that fall off a tank will remain on the battlefield. The other third will be destroyed (to help with network strain and lower end machines).

Here is how I would like the game to be like:

There is a Tech Tree where you research new and better tanks of higher tiers. There will be different game-modes, but I know that there will at least be free for all and team deathmatch. There may be other modes.
Matchmaking will be based on what tier your playing. There will be at most 2 tiers in each battle, but the lower tier in the battle will gain experience quicker. Experience earned will not be affected by if you win or lose. It is based on your personal skill, to prevent bad players from getting high tiers to quickly, and giving them time to learn the game.
Progressing through the tiers will not be extremely slow, but not extremely fast. It will be quicker than a lot of other games that have tiers.

Team damage is disabled (in team gamemodes).

I guess you could describe this as Robocraft combined with World of Tanks.

To make the experience a little more unique, there will be different ammo types that you can load. Ammo types include:
High explosive - has a short damage radius, even if you miss the enemy tank. Slow shell velocity and less range.
Armor piercing - will go in one side and out the other, self explanatory. Quick shell velocity and good range.
Knockback shot - on impacting the tank will knock them back quite a way, without dealing any damage.
Vacuum shot - Will open a small black hole above the ground, sucking tanks towards it. The black hole disappears after a certain period of time. If you are sucked to the middle of the black hole, you will be stuck until the black hole goes away (5-15 seconds).

Now that the game idea is explained, I need your help.
I need feedback on anything I have described, or any new ideas you have. I tried to explain it as best I could.
I also would appreciate if your feedback is specific.

I also would really appreciate feedback in these areas, saying what I could improve on, or just that you like it the way it is:
Game modes (if you want a capture the flag, etc)
Ammo types
Should the tanks be modeled off of real tanks (this is what I wanted, but wasn’t sure about) or should they just look like tanks?
Should the game cost money, and be a quick grind (resulting in less experienced players in the high tiers, but easier to get there for non-competitive players) or should it be free (with some in-game currency that costs real money that can be converted into in-game cash)
Should I have premium tanks (tanks bought with real money)?

If the answer to the premium tanks was yes, what should be special about the premium tanks? Looks, special ammo type, etc.

Thanks for any feedback, as it is really appreciated!

Screenshots:
This is a tank I was working on.

Demo #2 is now released, Click Here!
This is the second demo, and I will be posting a new demo when I need feedback on a new feature. The next demo will be Demo 3, and Demo 4, and so on. In demo 2, it’s the same as demo one except the controls are better, there is work in progress AI, and a work in progress health system in single player (no internet connection required). In Demo 3, I will probably have (and more) limits to the gun pitch, a better health system, and better AI.

Click here for the changelog for all the Demos!

8-Brick Tanks © 2015 Michael Seelig

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Too much text for me to read it all, but I do like these kind of games.

I just saw your question “Should I have premium tanks (tanks bought with real money)?”, this is pretty much pay to win. Buying new skins for your tanks might be okay, but being able to buy the most overpowered tanks right off the bat isn’t a good idea.

Looking forward to seeing more pics, videos and demos. Good luck :slight_smile:

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Thx for the reply! When you have time to read the full thing, tell me what you think and vote in the poll please :slight_smile:

I did say it will not be pay to win. That is something i am heavily against. Premium tanks would have a cool looking ammo, cosmetic things.

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I would say, the poll doesn’t ask a “valid” question.
Free to Play doesn’t make a more popular. The topic and gameplay still has to be good. F2P can help your game to get some traction but it can also ruin the experience.
If the game is cool and successful or not, depends on other things. Art, gameplay, etc. Even loading times can affect it.

Best: Do your best and create a game you want to play. One that’s entertaining. Then release F2P. My favorite F2P mode is: Buy ingame to drop ads. All other microtransactions must be cosmetic.

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Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I hate pay to win games. That is something that ruins the game experience for me, so I will always try my best not to do it, and not do it at all wherever I can. The reason I say “try my best not to do it” is because for example in the game I’m making right now, the game needs to be well balanced. With some tanks that have certain disadvantages over others, but also have advantages over them. For example: I may make a premium in the game have the biggest gun in the game, to make more people want to buy it, but if I do that, I would definitely give it other disadvantages such as slow track traverse, a tank without a turret, slow speed overall, etc. Some people would still call this pay to win, just because it has the biggest gun, but those people will also forget that it has disadvantages.

The closest thing that I would EVER come to advertisements in my games would be that I would have ads on billboards in-game. Since battles in-game may have city maps, I might put billboards in the game with different ads. Or if there is a highway in the game going through a city, I may put ads on those billboards. In my opinion, that would not be annoying, and may even be interesting to look at. Maybe, for example, people could use their mouse to click on the billboard and after the game a window would appear in their browser that would be where the ad would lead. The billboards would be one of the few indestructible elements of the maps. Like the ground, or a highway.

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First on the demo!
Thanks for sending me the demo man! Definitely enjoyed bouncing off the ground and landing on the enemy! I truly think that the game has a lot of potential. You got this man! :3

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No problem.

The demo is up for everyone else right now! The the original post!

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There is now a demo for you to try :slight_smile:

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Hey man,

Had a go at the demo and got a few notes.

Aiming is extremely difficult, it’s super sensitive, moves in big increments and I have no idea where the projectile is going to hit - I suggest decreasing the sensitivity, reducing the increment size and adding in a crosshair.

Another thing I noticed is that if you drive over a tiny fragment it will send your tank out of control. I suggest the fragments have a very low mass or their own physics that doesn’t interfere with the tanks.

The destruction seemed pretty good but I was hoping to see the tank collapse or explode once it reached a certain level of destruction. (Maybe I just didn’t shoot it enough?)

I understand a lot of this is in the works, just thought I’d give my 2 cents :slight_smile:

Keep it up! Looks like it could be a lot of fun if you get the controls and feel right!

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Thanks for the reply! Later on, there will be a crosshair and the camera will move freely from the turret, and the turret will track the camera. I have absolutely no experience raycasting, so if you do know how to make the gun and turret look at whatever is in the center of the camera view? If you do, a script example would be appreciated, or a video. I typically when reading how to do something get lost very quickly, which is why I would prefer a video.

Regarding cube weight, I hadn’t actually tested driving over the cubes. My friend notified me of that. I will fix that very soon, probably in Demo #2.

The tank collapsing will come with the demo with the HP. HP will come by demo #3, and probably will be demo #2. I didn’t explain HP very well. I’ll update that now. HP will be a percentage of the number of cubes on your tank. This percentage will vary tank by tank. You will lose 1 HP per part that falls off your tank. If your tank is damaged, you can drive near the parts that fell off of an enemy that you damaged, and their parts will be put on your vehicle, and will restore HP. You can only collect parts of a foe that is inoperable, not one that is just damaged. If your tank is destroyed, the rest of your tank will crumble to the ground (slowly, 1-3 pieces at a time to reduce lag for lower end machines).

What did you think of the shooting sound?

I’m glad you had fun in the demo :slight_smile:

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I summon you to feed me knowledge about PUN!!! All hail the mighty tobiass!!!

Tobiass, I was thinking about the networking in this game. What would be the maximum number of objects synced (rotation and location) in a single match? I was thinking about my game, made up of cubes. All these cubes when knocked off of someone would need to be at least somewhat-synced over the network for my idea to work. So what would you say is about the maximum number of synced objects on the network? What about if I only synced the position, then how many?

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Hehe. This is the first time I got summoned! Feels funny.

There is no way to tell you how many objects you can sync in your game.
The oracle has spoken.

Why? Because when I test things, I don’t do it the way your game does.
Tests don’t use the same platforms and code and logic, so there is no way to say “you get 100 objects in there just fine”.
Actually, you should try it yourself. You will learn a lot about what’s possible and how things could fail. You get a good feeling for your game and know more about networking.

Sorry.

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The summoning is a long story, but I still do it to this day whenever I’m trying to get someone like a moderator on a forum. Or somebody who is amazing at networking :smile:

When I last did PUN, I found that bigger game objects (larger in size) didn’t sync very well on the network. Is there a way to force PUN to sync stuff over the network? What I was doing at the time was calling an RPC for the movement. But as I said, it wasn’t keeping it in sync with larger objects. They would be here on one computer, and there on another. This was after moving them around. They spawned in the right place on all computers.

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I updated the original post with Demo 2. Demo 2 is the same as Demo 1 but the controls are better, there is a work in progress AI, and a work in progress health system.

15

Never mind, ignore this post.

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I have stopped the development on this project, and started Charity Game Developers. If you are interested in helping to create games, read this post for more details.