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it is a very simple game. we play it on paper. to play all u need is 2-6 players, a paper, and a pencil we call it TANKS . First all players draw a fort looking thing 3 tanks (or however many u want) then you start playing. Each tank can move ~1 inch. you then shoot your enemy tanks with the pencil. to do this you balance the pencil up straight and then have the pencil at an angle like this \ and push forward \____ so it then makes a line. the line is the shot and if your in the shot your tank explodes. could i make that into a computer game?


TANKS copyright.

DYLAN ARANA, and JESSE LUKE

Yeah, sounds very doable in DBPro or even DBClassic.

Besides some basic 2D commands, image pasting, sprites maybe or even 3D objects, it could work in 3D too, like top down with a terrain and little tanks that crawl over the terrain.

So that part of it can get as complex as you like - I think it'd be sensible to use PASTE IMAGE, rather than sprites or 3D for now, this is something that you could develop as your skills do. The other aspect would be some trigonometry, like working out angles and distances.

Perhaps you could make the pencil fall a more skilled thing, like have a target spin round fast, depending on the distance to the enemy, like if the enemy is really close, spin the target reasonably slowly, if it's far away spin it real fast. Then you instantly adopt a more strategic game, stay away and risk the difficult targetting, or get close to make things easier, but also easier for your enemy. DB has a atanfull command, pass the position differences to this, and it returns the angle between them - that would make it very easy to add AI and stuff.

I can imagine simply aiming at the enemy tank with the mouse with this indicator spinning round, the further away from the target, the faster the spinning gets - then when the target is lined up you press the mouse button to fire. This could develop into a really strategic game, maybe using several tanks each and letting each one move a small amount before firing - when you come to program the game, the actual difference in coding 2 or 20 tanks is very small, in fact it might be good practice to allow for lots of tanks at the outset - using arrays to store each tanks properties.

Even if you have no programming experience, you should still give it a try - there's a wealth of tutorials to get you started, really I think you'll find a lot of help for this type of project if you need it, straightforward turn-based gameplay is very easy in DB.

I used to play that game when I was a kid! That was probably twenty years ago. That is so cool.

I think you could really make this into an awesome game.

wow thanks thats really good advice. i think when i get a pay pal account i buy the program. To EgoAnt: suriously u used to play it thats awesome.

how long would it take to actually learn the basics needed to do what i want to do?

It took me about 1 month to learn the real basics + 2D I think

how many hours a day did u put in?

It's not something you can sit down and say "I'll take me 4 hours a day for two weeks to learn all the sprite commands." It's all relative to how much you retain and how long it takes you to learn a new command. The time it takes is different for everybody. Even for those of us that have been programming for many years don't know it all.

The best way to see if programming is for you is to download the trial version and play with it for 30 days. Be sure to get Darkbasic Pro:

http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/?f=trial

And don't start your dream program first. All you'll do is get frustrated and quit programming. Start small programs just to experiment with the commands.

yah i understand... well i downloaded it im goin to mess around abit. if u know where i can find some good tuts. post links please and thank you.

Check out the forum stickies. I think there is a new one by TDK in the
Newcomers Forum. You can always do thread searches as well. There is a lot
of material out there in the way of tutorials.