Let’s get the important thing out of the way. If you want to play it, click on the images.
Wow, seems like ages Ive been on here. Nice to be back. Anyway.
Been working on a little sideproject for a couple of days now and I’d like to get some first feedback.
Say hello to T N X (working title)
I have a softspot for tank games. One of the first games I’ve ever played was good old Trax for the original gameboy by HAL Laboratory (Yes, those guys that made kirby!).
Trax was a ridiculous, over the top shooter with clever level design and cool weapons and enemies.
My game tries to capture the same spirit. No realism, just fast-paced-robot-tank-destroying fun.
Gameplay:
Collect the crates to get new weapons and destroy the 2 enemy tanks. There is no game over screen yet so once you win or die you’ll have to reload the web page to play again.
Most Weapons have an aim system. Hold down the fire button(Mouse 0) to see where to bullet is gonna land.
Oh, and its fairly difficult, so don’t worry if you loose the first couple of times.
Critic:
I’d love to get some feedback on controlls and feel of the tank and its weapons. I’d also be interested how much threat the enemies are and how clear the gameplay mechanics are.
This is pretty legit! The enemy dies a little too easily but as far its prototypical setting is concerned it’s pretty solid. I like the weapon controls. The automatic gun is really cool!
Oh look, a wilde introduction video appeared! It has me in it! And funny accents, tanks, explosions, gameplay, flashy colors and good music! You should watch it! Go ahead!
Hey! First off, thanks for the comment! Great to see people actually play the damn thing!
Most projectiles in tanks arch quite heavily even the mg bullets have some serious drop off so in the end the projectiles wouldn’t land anywhere near the crosshair anyway. I added the aim curve system for the sole reason to work around that problem.
But I totally get what you mean. Getting used to it is quite rough and it doesn’t help that the map is so small and the enemies right in your face. In general I think the pacing is a little off since the aiming fits more to a slower paced game while the driving around is pretty fast. I definitley have to look into that.
All that beeing said, nothing is set in stone just yet. I do want to try out a couple of things first, stuff like some actual level design and a little more weapon tweaking. Should all that not help I’ll reconsider the whole crosshair topic once more.
Oh, and what you said about the aiming beeing hard: This is very much meant to be a tank game so aiming is half the game. I did not intend to make a point&hit kind of shooter as there are plenty of them already out there. I guess that is more personel preference then anything but I quite like the challange of predicting enemy movement and using my shots carefully.
I like the idea of the aiming system but agree that it is too fast paced for it… I think that system has a lot of potential but ideally a bit slower paced and longer ranged. Even if the pace was kept high, I think it would be more enjoyable with longer range engagements (as opposed to tanks circling close around each other firing)
The other issue I had was the controls - It took me some time to work out that the WASD was based off the camera direction as opposed to the tank orientation. It may be just me but I think it would work better if W was forward based on the tank facing; I think that is easier to manipulate the turret independently that way. (I found it too hard to control tank orientation while moving the turret)
Great potential though! Love it… Could get crazy with large numbers in MP too!
@MickM
Don’t worry about bigger levels, thats definitley the plan. The current map is actually just my gameplay and assets test map. I like my maps with some legroom
And I feel kinda stupid for forgetting to put a tank controlls option in a tank game. Thing is, I hate tank controlls with a pasion so I didn’t want them as the default control scheme, but I don’t see a reason not to have them as an option. So consider it implemented.
@Tee
Gonna upload v03 tomorrow which is finally gonna have a pause and respawn option, along with some other stuff. Multiplayer is gonna have to wait a little longer but it sure is on it’s way.
About long or short range fights, I’m honestly not sure yet. Over the last week I’ve tried out dosends of different lvl mechanics and did a lot of research on different styles of level design. So far I haven’t really come up with something that feels quite right though. I’d like it to be a good mix of both. Lots of hills, rocks cliffs and other small noise for cover and close range battles, but also dales and canyons that give the maps more structure and create good spots for sniping.
I’ve been playing a ridiculous amount of World of Tanks in the last few days, and while T N X is not gonna by anything like this I do really think Wargaming nailed the level design for a tank game so darn well. But again, I’m still testing around with different ideas, so all of this might change.
I don’t want to talk about SP/MP or COOP stuff too much right now as I’m not really at that point in development yet where I really worry about that all that much. I want to get the core mechanics to work properly first. I’d like to have all 3 of them, but I think it’s too early to make big promisses.
I hope I get v0.3 done today. There is still a lot of stuff missing and I don’t have as much time to work on it today as I’d like to. We’ll see.
I haven’t gotten nearly as much done as I wanted but I want to get this update since the version is fairly stable. Let’s go through the changes real quick:
There are a couple of backend changes that will make it easier to add netcode and propper ai in the near future, but thats not really all that interesting, is it?
I also added a whole bunch of smaller props, destruction models, particle effects and sounds for all sorts of things.
Added a new gun, the Scatter Blaster.
Added a whole bunch of new camera perspectives. Use mousewheel to cycle between them, use shift to look behind you.
Added a basic raycheck to prevent enemies from killing themselfs by shooting in a wall in front of them. Ugly fix, propper ai is comming soon-ish.
Added a pause system that freezes time when the webplayer is unfocused, and a respawn system.
Added a little test shop. Later you’ll be able to buy new tank parts for ingame currancy. Currently you can do that at any time by pressing T and then clicking on the buttons that appear in the top left of the screen. Very WIP so don’t expect too much.
Probably a bunch of other things too that I forgot to mention. Anyway, have fun!
[EDIT: Oooh, btw, the game is quite a bit more difficult this version because all spawned tanks have the same ammount of health. Just so you know]
aaaawesome. I like those cartoon themed tank games in general…
And in addition to that you are also doing such an exceptional good job at it !
technically and visually pretty smooth.
The only things bothering me are some aspects of the controls.
I’d prefer the tank to just drive backwards when pressing “s”, rather then this turning thing which currently occurs.
Also, did you thought about controlling the body and turret seperatly ?
Right now, I guess its a mix of the keyboard controls and the current turret direction.
I would love trying it when they are completly seperated from each other (body on keyboard, turret on mouse look)…
But then it would be also pretty difficult to get it working smoothly when the turret is facing backwards cause of inversed steering, eh ?
Well you are the tank master, you’ll find a way !
