Tank Arena [WIP title] Windows, Mac, Linux game

Hello everyone, and thanks for stopping by!

About me

My name is Josip (English variation: Joseph, if it's easier for you), and I've been a game developer for... quite a while, as evidenced by the profile here.

Currently 28 years old. I've recently attained a Master degree in Computing. For the past few years, life wasn't so kind of me - I had to focus on getting degrees and deal with plenty of sicknesses, so my gamedev life wasn't so active; the two projects I have listed here on IndieDB, Orbstinate and Tank City, are effectively frozen indefinitely. However, now that I got my degree, I managed to get back into gamedev while looking for a job, this time with a new project which is larger and more complex than the two mentioned earlier.

About the game

Tank Arena (working name; subject to change) is a 3D shooter game inspired by the old school multiplayer shooters, primarily Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena. Each player takes control of a tank and has to complete the goal set by the game mode, be it destroying certain amount of other tanks, or completing the objective (such as bringing the flag) certain amount of times. To help with that, there will be various powerups and weapons around the map that can be picked up and utilized.

Planned game modes are:

• Deathmatch: Classic, well known mode. Destroy certain amount of enemy tanks, or most tanks in set time limit.
• Team Deathmatch: As Deathmatch, but players are split into two teams.
• Capture the Flag: Team mode. First team that grabs enemy team's flag and brings it to the home base set amount of times wins.
• Double Domination: Team mode. Team has to hold two points on the map for 10 seconds to score a point. First team that obtains a set score wins.
• Bombing Run: Team mode. Map features two goals - one for each team - and a ball. Team scores points by shooting the ball into enemy goal. Ball carrier can't defend himself, but gains increased armor and HP regeneration.
• Target Practice: A single player mode for the purpose of practice.

Even though it's primarily multiplayer mode, there is Instant Action single player mode where other tanks are taken over by AI bots.

Currently implemented features are:

1. Basic driving and shooting
2. Main menu with Instant Action and Exit Game
3. Instant Action: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Target Practice. In DM and TDM, other tanks do not move due to lack of AI to control them, so their only purpose is to show that they can be destroyed and that in team modes there's no friendly fire.
4. HUDs for modes mentioned above

When I put it like this, it really sounds like there's not much, but there's plenty of stuff "under the hood" that I've implemented for the first time due to complexity of the project. For example, input system is completely decoupled from gameplay, so I can easily "plug in" whatever input system I want, keyboard&mouse and gamepad being the obvious choices. To add to that, I'm using MonoGame instead of more popular Unity and Unreal Engine, which means I have to write a lot of things by myself. No fancy stuff such as controllers for me X)

Roadmap

As the game is still heavy work in progress, there are a lot of features - some essential - that have to be implemented. As such, the game right now is actively being worked on one feature at a time to minimize the chance of making the same mistakes I did with my previous projects: scope creep and technical debt, which killed any mood I had for working on Orbstinate and Tank City. That's even more important to avoid here, as this game is way more complex than those two, which means if I don't manage it carefully, development can spiral out of control.

The biggest obstacle and "mood killer", however, is art. I'm painfully aware that the visuals presented on images and videos, both here and on my Twitter, are unappealing at best, but that's my current skill level. I do have in plan something I dubbed "The Great Art Update", as I want the game to have more cartoony look which would match the intended fast-paced gameplay. Sadly, doing that by myself would take a massive amount of time from me, to the point where it would be far more efficient to commission an artist(s)... which is also a locked option due to absolutely no funds. So, until I work something out in regards to art, you'll have to put up with ugly, blocky visuals in all future updates. Sorry :/

In no particular order:

• Choosing a better title (I'm terrible at naming)
• Add multiplayer component
• Add AI
• Make UI and HUD scalable with resolution
• Add Options screen with various settings, including rebinding controls
• The Great Art Update
• Additional input systems, such as gamepad support
• Add Capture the Flag, Double Domination and Bombing Run modes
• Add sound and music
• Add powerup and weapon system
• Maps, maps and more maps
• Possible addition of tank classes
• Various other stuff reserved for Far, Far Future (such as skinnable tanks and story mode)

Closing words

Well, that's it for now. If you want to follow my work more closely, I'm more active on my Twitter, where I'm trying to post at least one game-related update daily, and a place where I usually dump short demo videos. Dropping a like, retweet or comment can do wonders for my motivation :)

And if you like my work enough that you want to support it, I'd be grateful if you did as little as buying me a coffee. Everyone knows that developers are beings that transform soda and coffee into code. ^^ (More seriously, with enough support, I could commission artists to do the work my skill set isn't good enough for)

Thanks for your time, and have a good day!