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Ultra Tank-chan! - 1.0.1

Ultra Tank-chan! is a GPLv2ed large-scale multiplayer space-combat-sim in the vein of Volition's FreeSpace series, with influences from Bandai-Namco's Ace Combat games.


Neil Tallim
(flan)
Ultra Tank-chan! is a large-scale multiplayer space-combat-sim in the vein of Volition's FreeSpace series, with some influences from Bandai-Namco's Ace Combat games. It is notable for the number of players it supports (96 over 6 teams), its drop-in/drop-out multiplayer design, its low system requirements (it runs extremely well on an Asus eee 900, the baseline target, which is even more impressive when considering that the entire game was written in Python), and its quirky, likely unique, art style, which has been described as "an epic space battle in a lava lamp."

Background

This is my first real game, created to satisfy an in-joke, and the first time I've ever worked with 3D in, well, any programming context, and I forced myself to go from concept to release in exactly two months, so please let me know if I overlooked something basic along the way.

Accessing stuff

The full source, divided into neat client and server archives, as well as guides for setting up, playing, and min/maxing the game, and even gameplay videos for anyone who's just casually curious, are available through the project homepage.

Maturity

This game is fully playable, provided you have friends, slaves, or happen to be capable of using a keyboard or gamepad with your feet (or, if you're really keen on trying it, you can find me on synIRC as flan). It is also very stable, with no known issues at this time.

Supported platforms and interfaces

Works as described on Debian, Ubuntu, Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. Plays best with a gamepad or joystick, but a keyboard is fine, too.

Just make sure you have the pre-requisite packages before attempting to run the client. They're all pretty common, but not often pre-installed with distributions.

Changes

A number of minor tweaks, of the variety that always become apparent right after releasing something:
  • GUIs now auto-size at a primitive level, ensuring that they're always usable, though still not pretty
  • The rare PING-as-int issue has been addressed
  • A deadlock issue in wxWidgets on Windows was fixed
  • The lobby now displays team colours as part of the drop-down list
  • Keyboard speeds now feel "right"
  • Players should now never be target-less when there's a target available
  • Various other 1.1 backports and enhancements that don't break compatibility with the existing 1.0 release

Links

Home Page
http://uguu.ca/uguusoft/ultra-tank-chan/
Source
http://hamsterx.homelinux.org/svn/UTc!/

Releases

Ultra Tank-chan! 1.0.2 — 16 Apr, 2009

Ultra Tank-chan! 1.0 — 14 Apr, 2009

Ultra Tank-chan! 1.0.1 — 15 Apr, 2009

Ultra Tank-chan! 1.1.1 — 22 Jul, 2009

Ultra Tank-chan! 1.1.0 — 4 Jun, 2009

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