Tanken (version 8.0)

I wrote this in 1995 when I was in Grade 9 at school, with obviously too much spare time on my hands. This started life as a clone of famous games like Scorched Earth and Bomb32. With input from classmates it quickly developed its own cache of unique weapons and I actually developed it to the point where you could play it.

As well as being able to play your friends, there were three intelligence levels:

Brainless - this dude picks a random power and angle and shoots. Sometimes, they'll even manage to hit themselves.

Laserdude - Laserdude is quite a bit more intelligent than the Brainless. In the early rounds, before they earn enough money, they will aim at any tank higher than they are with maximum power. In later rounds when they get some cash, they'll buy lasers and that's when you're really screwed. If the round places you above them, better pray that they pick someone else to shoot at, cause they'll nail you every time.

Zorkman - This guy is the guy to watch. Whoever they aim at, they'll nail 99 times out of 100, even allowing for strong winds. And once they get nukes, there tends to be a fair amount of collateral damage as well!

Here you can find a short video and several screenshots from the game, as well as (soon) the game software package to install and play on your own computer!

This is a low quality one and a half minute video of one round from the game, total video size is about 1 megabyte.

The menu that you see upon entering the game.

At the start of a round, you find yourself and up to 9 other tanks on nice, untouched landscape. But not for long...

I tried to have a large variety of background types, as many as I could get without actually using images and limited by 320x200 256 colour resolutions. Once again some of these are inspired by Scorched Earth or Bomb32.

Yet another background. The weapons are coming soon...

Last background only image. I swear!

What game like this is complete without everyone's favourite utility weapon - a nuke. Landing it in the right place could really ruin someone's day.

Nukes tend to leave large holes in the landscape, as evident here.

Nukes aren't the only ways of clearing out dirt. Digger style weapons eroded the dirt from under hapless tanks and doomed them to a long fall, unless they were equipped with a levitating device you could purchase which slowed your fall.

More digging. Notice the inspirational taunts that the computer players hurl at you.

Tanks in midair, just before they fall to meet their maker.

To try and compensate for the dirt loss, I introduced dirt creation weapons as well (once again inspired by other games of the era).

Of course that dirt has to eventually obey the laws of gravity like everything else.

One of my personal favourites, the laser cuts through everything. The Laserdude was a fairly easy intelligence to code, since as long as the computer tank was below you, all it had to do was aim straight at you with this weapon.

After every round, both the human and computer players have a chance to buy weapons and protection. Weapons range from standard explosive rounds to orbital laser cannon systems. Defence systems include weapon deactivating shields, levitators to stop you from falling and dirt creation weapons which can bury you below a protective layer of dirt.

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