Atomic Tanks 2-4 Release

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

Dear Atomic Tankers,

I am happy to annouce the release of Atomic Tanks
version 2.4. This release is focused on changes
behind the scenes, rather than on game play. However,
it is recommended everyone upgrade to the latest version
to take advantage of various bug fixes. First, I'll
cover changes which will effect everyone, then go into
some minor features which effect various operating systems.

You can get the latest version here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=72358

Common changes
==============

1. Tanks now make comments when they kill themselves.

2. CPU usage should be about 1/3 what it was before,
at least on Help, Credits and Buying screens.

3. During a round, pressing the 0-9 keys will display
a corresponding tank's name and health on the top bar.
The tanks are listed in order based on their position
on the Players menu.

4. A new wall type has been added to the Physic's Options
menu. The type (random) causes the wall type to change
each round.

5. A thin coloured line at the edge of the screen shows what
wall type is currently in use. These are:
Green = Rubber
Blue = Spring
Red = Steel

6. Atomic Tanks now uses a plain-text file to store information.
This should NOT be editted by hand. Rather it is in place to
make compatibility easier to maintain between versions. If
no text file is found, Atomic Tanks still honours the old
config files.

7. Tried to avoid game crash on multi-core 64-bit CPUs.

8. The tank's shield should no longer make the tank's base
look hazy.

9. Missiles no longer live as long to speed game play. The max life
of a missile is down from 60 seconds to 20 seconds.

10. When playing the game for the first time, the default tanks
have high-contast colours. The colour of any tank can be changed
in the Players menu.

11. When Steel walls are being used, the computer tanks avoid
shooting pointlessly at the walls.

12. Changing the mouse cursor and toggling sound on/off no longer
requires a game restart, just a return to the game's main menu.

Now for changes focused on specific operating systems...

Linux (Fedora/Red Hat):
1. Created a .rpm file, which can be re-created using the
atanks-2.4.spec file in the top level directory. See our
download section for the .rpm file.

Windows:
1. When the game window loses focus, the game should no
longer pause.
2. Fixed typo in the Makefile, which should remove the "DOS"
window when launching Atomic Tanks.
3. Atomic Tanks no longer tries to use 100% of the CPU.

DOS:
1. When the constant "DOS" is defined (in main.h or the Makefile)
background caching is turned off to avoid a weird drawing bug.

Note: I wish I could take credit for the DOS fix, but I can't.
Heck, I didn't know Atomic Tanks would run on DOS until last week.
I won't drop names here, but thank you to the DOS dev who pointed this out.

As you can see, a lot of changes have happened and some things
may have been broken along the way. Love it or hate it, please
drop me an e-mail. The next release will try to focus on more
fun items (like teams and cartoony gravity), rather than code fixes.

Thank you to everyone who submitted bug reports, suggestions and
helped test Atomic Tanks during the past few months! You've made this
much easier and helped to make this a better release.

Jesse
Atomic Tanks Developer

hwtan · Joined: 05 Jul 2007 Posts: 2

Will there be a Windows port?

Keilaron · Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 127

Yes. I just sent a copy to Jesse, it should appear in the downloads soon. Sorry for taking so long!

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

There is now a Windows self-extracting file ready for download here:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=72358

hwtan · Joined: 05 Jul 2007 Posts: 2

Thank you very much.