Atomic Tanks, version 3.7!

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

It's time once again for a new release of Atomic Tanks! We are proud to present to
you, Atomic Tanks, version 3.7.

Before we get down to all the fun new features, I want to share something else. Yama and
I (along with a few other hard-working souls) have been coding changes into Atanks for
some time now. And, I think, we've done pretty well at it.

That being said, Yama and I have different styles when it comes to working on a project
like this. I like to slowly build on the eisting code, adding new features and fixing
problems as I find them. Yama tends to re-build from the ground up, making sure the
code is up to standards. Both styles have their benefits and draw-backs.

In an effort to give you, the player, the best of both worlds, we're going to try
an experiment. Atomic Tanks is going to be offered in two flavors, or branches. I
will maintain the "stable" branch. The code will remain largely the same and new
features will slowly get added in over time. Yama will be in charge of the new
"experimental" branch. This is where things will rapidly get re-written and new
ideas will get tried. This may seem confusing at first, but I'm certain that it
will help in the long run as we find out what works for you and what does not. Rest
assured, we will be sharing code back and forth. This isn't a breaking up of the
project, it's an experiment with the aim of improving Atomic Tanks.

I will let Yama explain the new and exciting features in the Experimental branch as
he sees fit. For now, allow me to share with you the changes which have happened to
the stable branch since 3.6. They are:

1. Added a new Mass Teleport item. This item causes all tanks on the screen
to be teleported to a random location.

2. You can have custom backgrounds! On the Graphic menu under Options, turn on
Custom Background. Then save a bitmap of your choice in the Atanks config folder.
The config folder is where you can find the "atanks-config" file. The folder is
usually called ".atanks".
The image should be in bitmap (.bmp) format and it'll help if the bitmap is
the same size of your Atanks reolution. By default this is 800x600.

3. The default colour theme is now Crispy. You can change this in the Graphics menu.

4. There is now a Reset All button on the Options screen. Clicking this button will
set all options back to their defaults. The players are left untouched.

5. At the end of each game, a quote about war will be displayed under the players'
scores. This is to make the game more in line with the classic Scorched Earth(tm)
game from the 1990s.

6. The teleport effect has been upgraded. Yama has greatly improved the look.

7. Fixed some minor bugs which would make older compilers not handle some function
calls.

8. The satellite should move a bit smoother now. Thanks to Yama for fixing this.

9. Atanks will now try to use the same colour depth as the rest of your desktop. You
can over-ride this by using the "-d" option on the command line.

10. Fixed a crash when checking a tank's status.

11. Added an option in the Money screen to prevent team mates from sharing money.
As of 3.5 team mates have divided up their cash.

12. Fixed the icon for the Fan item on the buying screen. This looked bad under
some colour depths.

13. Cleaned up the code for the fog effect.

14. Atanks will now check for new version of the game from our website, if you
are running under Linux. (Or is you have a system that was compiled with the LINUX
flag.) The code for this feature is all in the file update.cpp if some Windows coder
would like to make this feature work under Windows too.

As usual, you can get a copy of Atomic Tanks from http://atanks.sf.net . Please
post comments, questions or ideas here on the forums. If you posted an idea or
a bug a while back and it wasn't addressed, please re-post it or e-mail me.

Yamakuzure · Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 109

This is the first release on the new experimental branch of atomic tanks, starting with version 3.7

Note: Live mercurial sources can be pulled out of:
http://atanksaiupgrade.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/atanksaiupgrade

The changes from 3.6 (experimental) are:
1) Added flame corona effect to napalm

2) Added two new weapons, "Chain Gun" and "Jack Hammer"

3) Added sorted score with text effects

4) War quotes are fading in

And the major updates why this is the experimental branch:

A) The Game Loop has been rewritten from scratch!
B) Most parts of the physics and graphic system have been rewritten!
C) Nearly all parts of the sources underwent heavy refactoring!

=====================================================

Thanks for testing the experimental stuff! If you experience crashes, weird stuff or anything that looks like a bug, please write to us via:

a) Forums:
http://atanks.forumwise.com or

b) Mantis Bug Tracker:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/atanksaiupgrade/bug_report_page.php

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

With many thanks to BillyBuerger, there is now a Windows build of Atanks-3.7 (stable) ready for download. Please visit http://atanks.sourceforge.net and check out our download page to get this new Windows package.

Note: This package is a little bigger than usual, around 2MB. This is because I've included the Allegro library you need to run Atanks in the ZIP file.

sylikc · Joined: 25 Aug 2008 Posts: 81

wow... I disappear for a year and look how far ATanks is moving along... hmm, 5 versions to catch up on the changes Yammy's made...

nice work so far guys!