Atanks 2.8 released!

jesse · Site Admin Joined: 17 Dec 2006 Posts: 221

I am very happy to annouce the release of Atomic Tanks 2.8. After
2.7 came out, I had intended to slap together a handful of bug fixes
and put out 2.8 after just a few weeks. That idea quickly disappeared.
Instead, Atanks 2.8 contains some of the largest changes to hit
Atomic Tanks since I came aboard the project.

I say this with both excitement and as a word of caution. Things may be
broken in new and unusual ways. But, so far, I haven't run into
any new bugs. So here's hoping.

One of the reasons for the long change list is that the Atomic Tanks
community is growing. Just over a year ago we had a small, loyal
following. Now there are thousands of players, several bug reporters
and a large handful of people contributing code, data and ideas. We
wouldn't be seeing all of these changes if it wasn't for the spirit of
so many people out there.

What's new in 2.8? Well, there were three main points of focus for
this release. There were...

1. Fix bugs that were found or introduced in 2.7
A) Fan item now displays fan, not fuel.
B) Fixed mkdir() call on Windows. Thanks to Keilaron for reporting this.
C) Firing a chain missile no longer causes other weapons to fire.
D) Dirt balls that explode above the playing field no longer
result in an endless waterfall of dirt.
E) The game should no longer crash when creating a new player.
F) Fixed lightning sound. Had been mixed up with lasers.
G) Removed "liquid.cc", "list.cc" and "list.h" from the
source tree. They were not used.

2. Add new features, items
A) Created a laser-armed satellite option that randomly shoots
at the battle field.
B) Introduced campaign mode, which causes the AI to
gradually get smarter as the game progresses.
C) Introduced new targeting and weapon selection. The AI
will now randomly use weapons, rather than use one weapon
until it runs out.
AI used to try all weapon/target combinations. This should
be faster and introduce more variety.
D) AI will now use random items sometimes, if no fun weapons are
in inventory.
E) Created a new item called a MIRV. This weapon acts a lot like
a cluster bomb, but the bomblets launch while the missile is
still in the air.
F) There is a new terrian type called "None" which causes the game
to be played without land. Selecting Random land types will
not result in this lack of land.

3. Make weapons customizable
A) Moved weapons into a text file (weapons.txt), rather than have
them hard-coded in a header file.
B) Commented out weapons.h file.
C) Replaced named constants in weapons file with index numbers.
D) Weapon variables are now declared in globals.h

Pleae visit our download page to get this release:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=72358

As usual, the best part of this project is hearing your feedback. Please
submit comments, praise and bug reports here on the forums.

-- Jesse

Keilaron · Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 127

The Windows version has been uploaded today. Sorry about the delay!
I've only just recently got my Internet connection back up.

XRaiderV1 · Joined: 22 Sep 2007 Posts: 61

customizable weapons? how?
please explain.
_________________
Universal Law #001: anything and everything that could possibly go wrong can and probably will, and, most likely, at the least opportune time.

jesse · Site Admin Joined: 17 Dec 2006 Posts: 221

All information regarding weapons is now stored in the file weapons.txt
This file is (on Windows) found in the program's folder.
C:\program files\atomic tanks (I think)

Each weapon takes up three lines. The first line is the weapon name, the
second is the description and the third line is a series of numbers. Changing
the nubmers changes the item in some way.

Now, I don't want to go into a lot of details here, since I'm running a bit late,
but the first five numbers are:

cost - amount of money needed to buy the item
amount - how many of the weapon you get at one time
mass - how heavy the item is
drag - wind resistance
radius - size of the explosion
You can skip the next two as they're boring and then you hit
damage - damage done to targets hit

These are for the weapons and there are similar values for items further
down the file. At some point I plan to document what each number
does, but those are the most interesting ones.

Changing these valus and restarting the game lets you experiment.
And it's a good idea to keep a backup.