11/11/2001

Long overdue for a news update! I'll run over the changes in each version of Tanks since 5 was released. Version 10: I'm trying out a slightly different map style this week. It only takes 25% as long to generate, but it's a little more open. Let me know how you like the new map style! In addition, there are a few bug fixes: Tanks can't squish a soldier around corners. Stealing a tank or tower from other teams changes their speech color. Backing into the edge of the map won't reverse your tank. Red soldiers now have black directional arrows, to easily tell them from the red crosshair. Version 9: New graphics, new sounds, a new weapon, and many changes all in a Halloween theme! It's silly, but it's fun! :) Tanks: Halloween Edition is now available for download! Bug fixes and added a few features: You won't hurt yourself walking into your attacks. Spectral disruption won't damage tanks anymore. Webbing disintigrates with time. Webbing will allow teammates to pass. Grey soldiers (ghosts) may pass unhindered through walls and over trenches. Attacks have been modified to hurt tanks and soldiers inside of walls. Soldiers may cut corners while swimming again. Stink bomb launcher is spelled correctly! Version 8: Changes: Flamethrower has been slowed a little. The team verb has been repaired. Towers can't see through smoke anymore. Submerged tanks no longer stay invisible when coming out of the water onto a mine. Trench icons join together. Team leaders may toggle the building of computer tanks on thier team. Turret AI optimized some. Say and other world messages optimized. Version 7: New features: Sound! Now that 306 is public, I've included a number of sounds. All the weapons have sounds effects, but most of the other things don't have sound yet. Be patient while I find some good ones. :) There is a new capture the flag game mode. When capture the flag begins, a flag will appear in each team spawn zone. The first team to collect all 4 flags in thier spawn zone wins. (Rogues can not win, but they can steal flags to keep other players from winning.) To get a flag, a tank must move over a it. Soldiers and decoys can not carry the flag. The flag will appear on the tank and in it's deployments list. Tanks may only carry one flag at a time. Flags can be dropped by deploying or discarding them. A flag carrier will drop the flag whenever they are damaged or go afk. Flag carriers will always be visible, whether they submerge or are cloaked. Stealth devices can't be deployed by a flag carrier. Towers and AI tanks get a bit smarter. They can target people who shoot them from offscreen. When a tank has bonus restart build points, the tank will not automatically switch to building ammo when it completes a weapon. As soon as the bonus points are gone, tanks will autobuild ammo like normal. Players can no longer join AI tanks. Version 6: There was a troublesome bug in v5. Had to fix it and update for everyone who had already downloaded version 5.

09/29/2001

Tanks is still on version 5, since I didn't release a public version last week. There were too many problems to to release it to the public. There are not many new features this week but all the bugs are gone. I've been looking for good sound effects most of the week for the release of BYOND 306. BYOND 306 supports multiple sounds. New features: Auto spam protection: We had a little incident last week that inspired this feature. Computer tanks will stop spawning when their team has a number of tanks equal to the number of players logged in. Computer tanks start with any type of weapon. Computer tanks and spawn zone towers respawn every minute, without waiting for a new tank to join the battle. Computer tanks get individual names and will talk trash on occasion. Glass walls are damaged when a tank drives directly into them Bug fixes: Leaders regain verbs when reconnecting to a game. Fixed the "X has no display object" error. Walls built under respawn towers are destroyed when the tower spawns.

09/22/2001

There are several changes in this version. AI The AI_mode verb will allow a player to specify how a tank with an AI_module will move when the drive AI is on. The default mode is "Never move". A new autodriver verb will switch your tank drive AI on, if it has an AI_module installed. Drive AI will automatically come on if all soldiers abandon the tank. The host may designate computer teams. Whenever a new player tank enters the battle, a new computer tank will join each computer team. Stealth Entering another team's spawn zone will deactivate active stealth devices. Hidden tanks have a firing delay, during which time they are visible. Construction A new mod, the construction rig, is required to build walls (except the quick wall), towers, or the new excavation deployment. Excavation deployment digs behind the tank. Turfs will degrade in the following order: reinforced wall, plain wall, damaged wall, rubble, normal ground, trench, water. Trenches can not be crossed by tanks or soldiers, but my be fired across. You can fill a trench by building a wall over it. Rubble slows movement of any tank, soldier, or decoy passing through it. Scoring will be based on the amount time you have spent building opposed to the ammount of time your victim spent building, modified by starting armor levels. Building ammo does not count for scoring. Scores will range from 1 to 999 and a player will get a score of 500 if they kill an evenly matched opponant. There are 4 difficulty settings: Easy, Moderate, Difficult, and Hardcore. The difficulty rating determines how much build time you get to keep after you are killed. For example, a tank killed in Easy mode can rejoin with 75% of the build time they spent on their last tank. (Time spent building ammo does not add to the total.) Hardcore mode allows no points to carry over to the new tank. Towers will continue to build the item a player sets for them to build after the player exits. The tower will switch to building ammo if it runs out.

09/17/2001

New features: Flamethrower weapon, unusual bounce effect and extremely fast firing rate Glass walls, weak walls that you can see through and shoot lasers through. Team leaders. The game host may change team leaders at will. Team leaders have access to the following commands. Appoint: Grant your leader position to another teammate. There can only be one leader of each team at a time. There is no rogue leader. Invite: Offer a player a position on your team. Lock: Lock your team so that no one may join without an invitation. Remove member: Removes a member from your team, forcing them to become rogue. Resign: Give up leadership of your team without appointing a new leader. Bug fixes: Tower turrets are visible and don't fire on allies. Omega warheads were doing twice the intended damage on a direct hit. This has been fixed.

09/09/2001

Tanks is now available for download! Now anyone can host Tanks, whenever they feel the urge to play. Come get it at https://secure.dantom.com/console.cgi?qd=hubIndex;hub=470 Even though Tanks is still in beta, the subscription is still required if you want to use the advanced technology modification or any items that require it. You can still play, and even host, without a subscription. I will continue to run tests of the newest game features every Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT. All mods will be available, even without subscription, at the tests.

09/08/2001

Tanks will be up at 7:00 EDT again this Saturday. If I've managed to squish all the bugs, the beta may be available for download soon. I'll give more details on that when it happens. Changes this week: Electron guns are fully functional. Security systems are available. There are two levels of Security available. Level one prevents other teams from entering your tank. Level two locks the tank against anyone besides the owner who built the security system. You can still recieve gunners, and if you exit with a player gunner in your tank, he or she will gain control of your tank. Soldiers may take over abandoned enemy tanks if they don't have a security system installed. AI modules are available to tanks with advanced technology. Auto gunner will only work if your tank has an AI module. Abandoned tanks with an AI module will drive around under a very basic AI. (It will be improved in time.) Abandoned tanks will not fire unless they have an AI module. After the AI is improved, Tank drivers will be able to modify AI settings. Players will not be able to have multiple "old tanks." A player that joins the game as a tank and already has a tank in play on the same team will be placed in that tank. A self destruct verb is available. A tank set to self destruct will countdown 10 seconds, then explode. Any ammo stored on the tank may magnify the blast. During the countdown, the player may abort the self destruct or escape the tank. The mysterious "Tank in my inventory" and "black screen after joining" bug has been discovered and squished. (Thanks to Alathon for making me see a mistake in my design ;) There are two new wall deployments. Quick walls are easy to make, but they won't hold up long. Reinforced walls are nearly twice as strong as regular walls. Normal wall deployments are slightly cheaper to build. Green soldiers are outfitted with a brighter uniform for easier recognition.

09/01/2001

Tanks will be up at it's usual time tonight Saturday September 1st at 7:00 EDT. I most likely will not be able to stay for the entire thing, but I'll leave a mob in there logging everything. New features since last week: Spuzzum has donated a new tank graphic. I'm testing it out on the rogues. Let me know what you think of it and I may convert all tanks to the new icon style. Tank modifications can not be discarded. Free for all mode keeps players from joining teams, allows missiles to seek and damage other rogues, and makes all unmanned towers and tanks hostile. Towers will not respawn in free for all mode. Submerged tanks can not be hit by tanks that can't see them. If you fire a weapon while submerged, you will become visible and the tank will be slowed for a moment. (It takes time to bring a 40 ton tank to the surface.) Towers are able to build more armor since they do not have to worry about mobility. If you have a satellite link installed, you get access to the gps verb which tells you your current coordinates. The electron gun is in, but it doesn't conduct through water yet. It's still worth playing around with, since it is very different from the other weapons. When using the electron gun, remember that it loses power the farther it travels. The electron gun will go through some tweaks, so don't get used to it as it is. Repair up is cheaper! Bug fixes since last week: Logged out players will not be displayed by the report verb. Soldiers may escape from decoys. Soldiers and decoys leaving a tank in the water have the correct icon now.

08/25/2001

Tons of new features. I really need to put the FAQ together when I get a little time. Build rates will decrease as more tanks and towers draw on team resources. This will likely need many tweaks to find a good exchange rate. Rogues will not lose building power for other rogue tanks, but rogue towers will draw from all rogues. (If you don't like the lower build rate, blow up some rogue towers.) Rogues might always have a slightly lower build rate since they do not really have a team to provide resources for them. New report verb. report - returns a list of the number of tanks and towers each team has. (The number of tanks or towers controlled by players is displayed in parenthesis.) report team - tells how many tanks and towers that team has, and lists all the players on that team. report all - reports all tanks and towers, as well as listing all the players on each team. Soldiers outside of tanks and towers may dodge attacks. The percentage chance to dodge an attack may be set by the game host. Soldiers may no longer piggie back, taking over the gunner functions of another foot soldier. free for all host verb lets the host make everyone a rogue simultaneously!

08/08/2001

I've added several host functions, allowing the game host to customize play in a number of ways. They can select the number of lives players get, set a buffer to allow killing a few team mates, and choose whether rogues are allowed to join teams after the time out period. Of course, boot, ban, and unban had to be added to the list too. The statpanels have a clickable interface now. Click any item in the panels for a description, or double click items to select them. If you are a spectator, click a player on the players tab to watch them. Players may now exit their tanks and enter uninhabited tanks, towers, and even drones. A new energy weapon makes it's appearance. The resonance cannon demolishes walls without effecting tanks or anything else for that matter.

07/31/2001

The Tanks News is long overdue! The first big open alpha test was hosted on the BYOND server last Saturday. I would have warned everyone, but I didn't know we were doing it until it happened. :) Anyway, Tanks is a big hit so far. One of the big concerns during Saturday's test was that you could not change teams after you had died, especially rogue tanks. I've modified it so that after a one minute time out period, spectators can choose any team they like. Tanks will be removed from play 10 seconds after they are completely abondoned. If the driver abandons the tank, the gunner will automatically move into the driver's seat. The game will be moving to a subscription model soon. The price will be low, the game is still playable to non-subscribers, but the advanced technology upgrade will only be available to subscribers. Please post ideas, objections, comments and criticisms on the Tanks Forum.

07/21/2001

Tanks development begins.

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