Tanks - Some multitasking fun

 by Geoff Scott


The aim of Tanks is simple. You occupy a tank in the bottom-left corner of the game area, and you have an opponent in a building at the top of a hill to the right.

By setting the angle of the turret and the power with which to fire you can launch a projectile, hopefully hitting and destroying the building. However, wind will often act on your projectile and air resistance will always act to slow the ball. Gravity may also change from its default.

HISTORY
The original version of this game was written one incredibly boring lunchtime at college.  It was written on a Casio 7700GB calculator...

GAME FEATURES
  * Variable wind.
  * Air resistance.
  * Variable gravity.
  * Comprehensive scoring system.
  * Multitasking gameplay.
  * Variable target size.
  * Saving of preferences.
  * Just as in real life, if you keep firing at the hill
     you can dig through it.
  * Posh 3D icons etc. (even has its own pinboard icon).
  * Supports the RISC OS 3 boot-file mechanism.

THE GAME WINDOW
The current wind and gravity conditions are shown above the fire button. The small red blob at the right of the landscape is the target. Control the angle of the shot and its force using the two sets of up/down arrows by the displays. Alternativly, click in the numeric readout and enter a value using the keyboard. Values are range-checked by the program.

THE PREFERENCES WINDOW
Setting the wind to be constant will ensure it never changes. The strength used in this case will be the value in the icon directly below. Minus values are allowed. Feel free to use extreme values.

If the wind can vary, the bounds will be the minimum and maximum wind values. If the both directions option is ticked the random wind can form a minus. Gravity is very similar to wind, but obviously can only act downwards.

The target size can be changed, with 99 the largest possible value. Finally, the gameplay can be made to multi-task, but this will slow the game considerably on ARM 2 machines.

The options set in the preferences window will not take effect until a new game is started. Also, by changing the preferences you will start a new game.

THE SCORE CHART WINDOW
This shows the full set of conditions used for each shot, and a score based on the distance from the target that your shot landed. The last shot is displayed in red. A blank line is displayed after each game, and two when the preferences are changed. The Heap manager is used to maintain the score chart, meaning that you can have as many shots as your memory will allow - no limit built in by using Basic's arrays.

MISCELLANEOUS
If you really want to use extreme values for gravity etc. try editing the preferences file by hand (but take a backup first!). This is possible because the preferences file is not range-checked on loading.

Please don't try to run this application with an ARM 2 while in a high resolution screen mode and generally overloading the poor processor, otherwise you may be waiting all day for each shot.

If you do not have an ARM 3, it may be a good idea to leave the score chart window quite small while playing.

Copyright  RISC User 1993
