Legacy:Mod Ideas/UnrealTanks

Mod ideas for UT 2003 – Unreal Tanks

Description

I must confess, I loved the original Atari Tanks game. It was ace. Decidedly cheesy, very silly, but ace all the same. Essentially, this is a tank game. Tanks drive around an arena at a reasonable rate of knots firing their guns at each other scoring points by making other tanks go boom. The unusual thing about this is that the tank requires a driver and a gunner - indeed - two players per tank. Here's the details bullet point style.

• Each tank requires a driver and a gunner. The number of players in the game != number of tanks (should it be?)
• When the player joins the game they are asked whether they wish to be the driver or the gunner.
• The driver has the ability to accelerate, brake, turn left and turn right. There is a slow firing forward facing energy gun available to the driver - which takes time to recharge after each shot. The driver also has a turbo available to him, which will make the tank move faster for a short period of time. This also charges over time.
• The gunner controls the main tank gun (suprise suprise). The main gun fires shells that behave according the laws of physics so elevation IS important. As well as the main gun the driver can "laser target" and track another tank. This has the effect of calculating the elevation and lead of the main gun, and sounds an alarm in the target tank. Three guided missiles are also available which can be flown redeemer style. The missiles travel faster, have a much smaller range, and will be harder to steer.
• Both the gunner and the driver will have a "free look" mode where they can look around fully without being constrained by their normal views (not sure this is a good idea - the driver might need it all the time though.).
• A bot will supply any missing people within the tank.
• There will be separate HUDs for the gunner and driver, but I haven't decided what they should be yet.

I'm thinking about having recharging shields as well. This would also add potential for an option to give the driver the ability to decide where to use his energy - recharging the shields, powering the engines, or recharging the front cannon (or a bit of all three) - an X-wing style thingy.

Recharge stations are also an option but I'd rather keep the gameplay as simple as possible. It's a lot less tactical and a lot more gung-ho then.

Interested Scripters

If you are interested in developing this mod for UT2003 then add your name to the list. Once you start development you should indicate that below (and hopefully include a link to a journal page). Before you start development you should also check this section to see if anyone else has started.

Discussion

Nice idea, but good luck on the net code for this one, imagine having a driver on the server and a gunner a few hundred milliseconds away... could get ugly... possible fix is to have projectiles with lots of splash damage so firing timing isn't so critical – Zedsquared

Good point, I must confess to not having considered the network implications in any great depth. I'm hoping that the client side prediction algorythms will come to my rescue. Tanks are not the fastest things in the world so having the gunner and driver in seperate time spaces may not be that much of an issue. And tank shells are not renowned for having small explosions :).

One of the things I was considering was making the tank shells invisible and have the server create a "time bomb" at the point on the ground where the shell would have landed set to go off when it would have landed. That way shells always explode on the ground. I've got a feeling that the code to do it this way would be pretty tricky and waste as much processing time as it would save. Need to think on that one a little more.

Anozireth: This might be a good gametype mod for UT2004, there's already a tank built in and Epic has obviously solved any net problems with 2 players in one vehicle. Some changes to what it specified here would be required, and it would probably require it's own maps (maybe could use ONS maps). Anyone have thoughts?

Foxpaw: I haven't played the UT2004 demo online, but from what I've heard, the problems with multiple people in one vehicle are far from solved, and multiple people in one vehicle is only workable on fast connections. But that's just what I heard.

EntropicLqd: Don't know tbh. I've not ever had any problems with it at all but then I normally play on servers where I get < 80 ping. I guess that's a reasonably fast connection. Maybe I'll stop by the INA feedback forum and do a search through the ONS thread and see what I can dig up. I must confess I did think about this idea after I'd played ONS so it might resurect itself. At least I like UT2004 as a game. That should help some.