Here comes Atanks-3.9!

jesse · Site Admin Joined: 17 Dec 2006 Posts: 537

It's that time again, time for another version of Atomic Tanks! This release, 3.9,
contains some important changes and I'll present them here in no particular order.
But first, I am going to cover some highlights.

The first being that images and sounds have been moved out of the .dat file
Atanks used to use. The images and sounds are now all stored in the Atanks
program folder. (Details on that below.) This means it will be much easier
to customize Atanks to look and sound the way you want it to.

Work has been done to fix the sound system. This was especially important
for Ubuntu Linux users. If sound is not working for you, go to the Options
menu, select Sound and switch the sound driver from "Auto Detect" to "OSS".

Also, a new highlight. If you have custom backgrounds or music tracks you
would like to share with other Atanks users, send me a link to your material.
A new page has been added to our website (http://atanks.sf.net/addons.html)
where links to add-on material will be posted.

Please read the rest of the announcement below, there are a lot of
important changes listed her:

1. All sounds and images have been moved out of the data/zip files and now live
in sub-folders. These folders are usually in "C:\Program Files\Atomic Tanks" in
Windows and "/usr/share/games/atanks" on Linux systems. This means making
changes to the way Atomic Tanks looks and sounds is as easy as changing these
files in your favourite sound/image editor.

By the way, if you think you've made changes other people will like, send me
a copy. You'll get credit if I include your designs in Atanks.

2. Napalm now looks a little more firey.

3. Added a new item called Rocket. This allows the tank to jump up in the air
and move a little to the left or right.

4. Reduced the cost of the Repair Kit item. It wasn't much use for the cost.

5. Fixed a bug where pressing certain keys on the Select Players screen would
cause the game to run without any players.

6. Removed a bug which would cause Atanks to crash if it couldn't access the
sound card.

7. Removed most un-needed exit calls which would cause the game to shut down
if something minor went wrong.

8. Added check to prevent tanks from using unselectable items during battle.

9. Added keybaord support to most menus. Tab moves forward through menus.
Backspae moved up through menus. The Enter key toggels things on/off and
pressing the Spacebar is like hitting OK. The ESC key works like a cancel
button. A note on these keys is included in the README file.

Short version: It's possible to play Atanks now without using the mouse.

10. Removed the computer's ability to cheat by "magically" getting more money
if the AI is losing badly.

11. Made teams divide up money more fairly.

12. Fixed some dependencies in the Makefile.

13. Game should no longer refuse to run if no mouse is connected to the
computer.

14. Players can now select which sound driver they want. This is mostly for
people using Linux. Normally this option should stay on Auto Detect, but
common sound systems are supported. See this option under the Sound menu.

15. The game now uses a settings file with the .txt extension again to make the file
easier to access. The settings file can be changed using Notepad or gedit, for
example.

16. Fixed a bug which would cause the game to hang whle the computer was
buying items.

17. Fixed a bug where the computer would buy only small missiles.
Improved random weapon buying to make the game less predicatable.

18. Code and folder clean-up which reduces the size of the Atanks download by
10%. I'm still looking out for the players on dial-up connections.

19. Fixed a few bugs that would cause the game to crash on Windows if
less than ten players were selected.

20. The game can now play music in the background during rounds. At the
moment, only 16-bit wav files are supported. The game will
play any wav files it finds in the user's .atanks/music folder. On Windows
this is usually found under
C:\Documents and Settings\username\application data\.atanks\music
on Linux systems, the folder is typically
/home/username/.atanks/music

At the moment, Atomic Tanks does not come with any built-in music. If you have
some tracks you'd like to share (and they are licensed in a way that we can
use) let me know about them! Tracks will be offered as an add-on from the
Atomic Tanks website.

21. BillyBuerger provided a patch which will allow AI only play to be skipped
for the current round. If the game is set to not skip any action, the current
round can be fast forwarded by pressing the ESC key and then selecting
"Skip AI" from the menu.

22. Text for Russian translation was added. This is still a work in progress.
I am not sure if the Russian text will display properly, but the README and
Help files are translated. My thanks to MyO for providing these files.

A lot has changed behind the scenes and it all appears to be working properly.
However, if you find a problem, let me know about it, either here on the
forums or at jessefrgsmith AT yahoo DOT ca. I also want to hear about what you
want to see in version 4.0.

As usual, you can find the latest copy of Atomic Tanks at
http://atanks.sourceforge.net

Jesse

Simeon · Joined: 04 Feb 2008 Posts: 58

Thats a nice variety of new stuff!

Cant wait to try the windows version Smile

And you got a nice Article on Sourceforge too!

jesse · Site Admin Joined: 17 Dec 2006 Posts: 537

The Windows version is coming. It's just a matter of time. Sorry for the delay.

Yeah, we made some ink over at the SourceForge community blog. You beat me to the punch linking it here. Thanks. It was really nice to have them do the interview and I hope it attracts more developers.

Keilaron · Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 227

I'm working on the Windows one right now! It seems to be running just fine. Smile

jesse · Site Admin Joined: 17 Dec 2006 Posts: 537

Keilaron,

When you have time, would you please upload the Windows build you have to the SF download site?

Keilaron · Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 227

Still testing it; I'm almost done. I'd been looking for music, too. I found a site with short loops we could use.. thankfully, atanks loops the music.

Keilaron · Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 227

It's up. I don't like the new SF interface. I'm not sure I can edit file releases, but I uploaded the Windows installer and set the appropriate 3.9 files as default downloads. Also, I think you might want to close the bugs in the SF trackers...

Hey, I think you squashed the English help.txt file with the French one.

jesse · Site Admin Joined: 17 Dec 2006 Posts: 537

I agree, I don't much like the new upload system either. It's amazingly slow and buggy.

The Help file got switched to French sometime last year. Not sure when exactly. I think you're the first person to notice it. I may have to hunt down an older version of Atanks and re-include the Help file.