Ultra Tank-chan! - 1.1.0

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.

This will probably be the last version of UTc! that I will release, unless there's a sudden surge in interest. I want to try something 2D using pure pygame or pgreloaded, focusing more on emergent patterns and management than on fast-paced 3D combat. (Plus, I have other projects that need my free time) This update enhances UTc! by providing the following features that satisfy all remaining project goals:

• More balancing tweaks
• Sound effects
• Better GUI sizing/positioning/rendering
• Keyboard-friendliness for GUIs
• A more FPS-like standard keyboard map
• Some minor optimizations