this repo holds sam's attempts to dive into game design.
This remake of TANKS! has been a real challenge for me. I learned a lot. And really enjoyed exploring the references people put on the github.
Here is what I changed since the full prototypes to complete the released version:
- Add a menu to gather all the prototypes together.
- Add the relation between the scene and the menu: when the scene is done or escape to go back to the menu.
Camera and Lights
- Adjust the timing between the scenes: I realized I was using Time.framecount for the timing instead of Time.fixedTime, so faster computer then mine.. pretty much all of them.. would run my game too fast!
- Modify the ending of the god: when you hit a dark wall, you see your own spotlight (like a light at the end of the tunnel) and you suddenly go back to the menu.
- Position the cactus in the inside properly instead of randomly.
Sound
- Add few violin part in the opera.
- Shorten the prelude, so the player doesn't rage on the mouse.
3D object
- Remove the last scene (the market) and replaced it by images taken from the news that represent better where the player is going once s/he falls in the hole.
- Change a little bit the appearance of it using post-processing.
In the opera part of the sound prototype, I added some violin so the player who practice during the prelude can show off her/his new skills to the world. I think is a coherent follow up to the first part of this prototype. Maybe I will come up with something better. Will see.
I am very happy with the end of that prototype. I think it is interesting to have one tank (the one attached to the camera) being blocked by a box collider. This ending makes me want to explore further how basic elements of the game engine can support narrative and get out of their solely functional role.
Sound From Pippin's comments
- Improving globally the sense of agency for the player
- Too much click in the prelude, it becomes annoying
- Not clear what is the player agency in the opera
Ok. That's another hard one.. How can the game be interactive. Through the mouse clicking or moving. Through the keyboard pressing. Through the camera or the microphone. So how should I use these physical/mechanical elements to trigger a compelling interactive experience for the player?
brainstroming for the Opera:
- The player could trigger the pattern.
- The player could make the blocs appear.
- The player could add something new to the piece. The game could start by: "you did great in the prelude. you are in charge of the violin." So I could add tanks in the air that can be dropped and their sound can be added to the final piece.
- The player is the maestro and must count the beat out loud. Or move the arms in front of the camera.
- I could remove some of clic in the first part, so it is not as annoying.
3D Objects From Pippin's comments
- Better sense of ending.
- Pimp the level.
- Create a sense of where the creatures are coming from.
- Increase the length of the fall.
My effort will be put on the falling part of the game. I definitely want it to last longer. This exit is the death of your character but also the return into reality for the player. The sound will become louder as the player falls.
I am thinking of adding some floating objects surrounding the fall like in Alice in Wonderland. Alice is falling into her imaginary world, I want the player to ask her/himself what is the difference between her/his world and the one s/he is leaving.
The ending. I want to improve my sense of ending.. In my previous prototypes I tended to let the game live as long as the player wanted to. Maybe because of laziness or lack of idea. Here is what I consider to conclude every prototypes.
- Light and Camera: The final scene is "the god" scene. It ends with the player playing the god for this bunch of tanks that are following her/his movements. There could be a literal end to the space (colliders) and when you cross them you go back to the menu.
- Sound: ...
- 3D Objects: The link between the "market" world and the "human tanks" world is weak. Also, the hole could be a good opportunity to finish the game on a high note. The music could change (I imagine an elevator music), but even the elevator music could become weaker and weaker as the player falls. Until, the player knows that it is the end and "escape" from it.
Okay, so what now?
Now I will go over each prototype and confront Pippin's and other's comments. The play testing periods were eye-opening, as they helped me realize some problems while analyzing the behavior of the play testers.
Lights and Camera From Pippin's comments
- slow down the rapid cuts in the scene before 'god'
- add more time to traffic feels like it could be sustained longer and the other scenes that doesn't seem long enough to grasp what is happening.
- clarifying the ending in 'god'. --> maybe the sound could get louder and louder after a certain time..??
- pre-programmed the 'random' nature of the growth
In light of Pippin's comment, I find the major problem being the ending (same problem happens in prototype II). I first thought that leaving the players decide when they want to quit the game was the way to go with. Maybe certain doubts about the value of my games made me think the former. I ended the last prototype in a collision with a emissive wall at the end of a corridor. This biblical way to end the 'game' fits well the strange world that I put in place along the prototypes. Therefore, referring to my earlier tanks game on 3D objects, I want something similar here.
In the process of building a menu for the game. I thought about creating stand alone games for the three prototypes first, but I feel all these experimentations I made along the semester will get lost if I don't reunite them. Also this compilation will reduce the amount of download one has to do to play the games, which fits my minimalistic view of computer usage.
The menu is simple. It reuses the "TankRotate" (as named in my prefabs folder), a white tank rotating endlessly in circle. Like if life was that simple.. This tank comes from "the void" chapter of my first game on lights and camera and gives the tone of all the other games in which the player could engage with.
I separated renamed the three prototypes as introspection for the game on light and camera, instruction for the game on sound and discussion for the game on 3D objects.
The final prototype is now built. This one is closer to what I aim as a potential game/interactive experience developer than the two previous ones. I feel that the sound is particularly interesting in this work. I produced a simple ambient soundtrack in Ableton Live for the first scene using principles of dark techno music and I found a free sample of audio recorded in a grocery store for the second scene. The contrast between both tracks reveal something uncanny about the whole. Like if one was in a dream.
Description This prototype exhibits a first-person perspective of a discussion between four creatures composed of different tanks' parts. One of them leads the conversation, talking about identity, real and virtual. Here the 3D objects speak up about their situation. This game is for them to express themselves, not for the player. The player is part of the discussion, certainly, but does s/he really have autonomy in this world praising freedom?
- Press SPACE when you are done reading a bit of dialogue.
The navmesh is working finally in sync with the animator. The first scene is almost done. I just need to add the "beauty" component (aesthetic coherence) and the sounds.
This prototype became a bit weird. But I feel that after listening the distorted tanks discussing about humanity, it makes sense to end up in the alley of a super market. It acts as a balm of oblivion. The music in this scene will be oddly soft and gentle. In contrast to the first scene, in which dark techno is playing.
This kind of conversation game, this is really, what I would like to do in the future. I feel good doing it with TANKS! now.
I added the colored outline shader in order to understand who is speaking. I will manage to turn it on and off in sync with the respective dialogue. So it’s even clearer.
I created the rabbit hole, in which the user jump at the end of the game. I am still wondering if it would be too cheesy to finish the game when the character jump or if it would be appropriate with the concept of reality versus virtual.
Also I found one of the rough prototype I did a week ago on the the player in a market place, shopping for miniature tanks. And I think that could be a good ending for the game. The user falls into the hole, which rotates to an horizontal perspective, and ends up in a supermarket.
Now the NavMesh are not moving in the right direction.. I still need to fix that.
I decided to push the generative prototype forward. Though after some research, I realized that implementing a genetic algorithm using Karl Sims' documentation would take to much time. So I will fake it. I downloaded therefore the Character files from the Standard Assets and added elements of the TANKS! game to Ethan, Unity basic character model. Once the tank pieces are animated through the humanoid movement, it is rather compelling.
I just don’t no yet, where I am going for with it. I think that transforming the tank game into a philosophical discussion around 3D objects in a virtual world, still appeals to me.
I wonder if having an interactive discussion with the new characters made of tanks could be interesting. The rabbit hole (Alice in wonderland style) appears as a potential end to the game.
yes let’s try this. back soon.
Dialogue test:
- I think therefore I am.
- Yeah definitely!
- Yeah, sounds so good!
- 1.Who said that? 2. I think Godot said that!
- It’s Descartes.
- (Yeah, get your shit right..)
- So.. what was I saying.
- You were talking about representation in 3D space.
- Oh yeah, right…
- So here we are, tree, I mean four iterations of a tank.
- Yeah, we are a f***ing metonymy. 2. Yeah we are dismantled tank, but still a tank.
- So right.
- So true.
- Everytime a player loads the game we look similar, but we are always unique. Stored in a very specific place in the memory of this machine. Some specific series of numbers.
- I mean, we are almost human.
- Yeah, I think we are.
- Virtual doesn’t mean anything anymore.
- Yeah, virtual is the new real.
- And virtual is so much better!
- 1.Sky is the limit. 2. Virtual is so fresh. 3. You can say whatever you want in here! No constraints, no rules, no nothing.
- Yeah.
- Yeah..
- Ok gang, I’m gonna show you something edgy. Are you down?
- Cool!
- Sounds like a plan.
- Sure. 2. Definitely joining!
- Okay, follow me.
Then they walk for a bit on the map.
- So here, we are.
- Oooooh.
- Shit!
- This is a hole. A hole to where? I don’t. But I think we should look at it.
- Oooouh, spooky.
- That’s what I thought first, but then I realized that if there was something bad in this hole, there would have been a security cordon.
- True.
- Smart.
- Though, I think I am not the right person to go inside. I am subject to heart attack.
- Oh shit, I didn’t know.
- Yeah, doesn’t make much sense to send you.
- Yeah, you shouldn’t. 2. We should send somebody else.
- We should send the send the bravest one..
- Yeah!
- Good idea!
- I think our friend, here, could do it. Don’t you?
-
- Sure, I don’t have much to lose anyway. 2. Last time I went to the doctor, my heart was still doing well. 3. As far as I know, heart attack is not in my genotype.
- Good, I guess, you should jump then. Let us know what you see once you are down there.
- Got it! See yaaaaaa! 2. Yeah, crystal clear. 3. Yes Sir!
And then you jump..
Ideas becoming clearer
- On copying and reproduction. Like Pippin said in class, the idea of reproducing perfectly an object in game is futile since it requires only the act of copy-pasting. But at the same time, “copy-pasting” is part of many art practice in a way. Pop art, for instance, would reuse the exact same imagery of pop culture to constate the consumerist society. Blur the boundaries between commodity and art. Between factory workers and artists. Here, I could redo tank game from scratch. And exhibit this world in construction.
- On absence and presence of objects. Objects, can be there or not there. In video game, this presence and absence depend on a boolean relationship. It is true or false. It is dead or not dead. It makes me think of Schrodinger cat. Also similar to Pippin’s cube museum with objects inside.
- When we play a game, the aesthetic of the game is always done and clean. Everything try to be coherent, in order to give the player a full and immersive experience. What if the player enters a game that is still under construction. The game could resemble the scene mode. And would allow the player to create little version of tanks. In a zen garden manner. -- v
- Digital version of dry landscape / zen garden. There will be rain and wind, that will move the garden around, so you have to redo it, over and over again. Meditating Tank game.
- Arbitrary rules/physics of game. Same tank game, but then it stops and it talks to you. the UI begin to talk and exhibit the arbitrary aspect of game.
- hi this is the UI. Sorry to interrupt the game but we have been receiving complaints on the state of the loosing tank after it loose. We want to reassure you to no tanks are hurt in the process. It’s only a game. Sorry again. Prefab are the idea in Plato and the clones are the instances of this perfect idea. Let me bring you to the test lab. It looks a bit like Einstein
- gravity test on tanks.
- collision test on tanks.
- schrodinger test ← perfect randomness
- interaction render versus collider
- randomness is what human cannot understand..
- Generative Prototype. to be continued..
Description of two rough prototypes
-
This is a digital version of a dry landscape / zen garden using the destructive assets from the previous TANKS! game. There is rain and wind destructing your garden, so you have to redo it, over and over again. This is a meditating TANKS! game.
-
The rules and the physics in games feel arbitrary since it depends only on the developer’s will. The TANKS! game follows the conventional laws of the world in which it was built in. This one we are in right now. In this version of TANKS!, the UI is taking care of you and bring you to an experimental lab showing you how physics can be broken inside a game engine.
Random ideas that could be exploited in the 3D objects prototype (ideas from last week that I forgot to push in my repo)
- repetition in game
- deconstruction of the 3d objects
- missing element, that make the game odd.
- time and space / spacetime
- alice in wonderland hole, following the rabbit tank.
- UI versus 3D object
- shooting game that transform itself into a philosophical game. about representation and reproduction in art
- game that looks 3d
- materiality vs virtual object
- presence and absence of the object
- explore the propriety of object: transform, collider, rigibody. and add the gizmo to the game!!
- redoing a sketch up version of tank. why is it relevant? the reproduction, blender, drawings… how does the game feel?
- thinking about shaders and what this feels like.
- texture of something on weird shapes
- museum of war / 3d objects
- game if to move object around to find your way out. Bit like the museum of digital technology
Ideas on 3D objects
Space is the propriety of an object to occupy a certain volume. Lack of object is also space. Therefore, space is the content as well as the container, limited from one another by chemical bonds that creates explicit materiality. Space exists because you can overlay objects, each of them occupying a definite space. But in video game, this is not the case any more. Script, collider, rigidbody can try to copy the real but this state depends only on arbitrary laws put in place by game developer within a game engine. At the basis of each primitive, there is only a transform and a renderer.
The game is divided in a prelude and an opera.
In the prelude, the player creates AIs by pressing the left button mouse. Inspired by Brian Eno "Music for Airport", a violin note is attached on each of them, creating harmony and disharmony according to the player intensity in spawning new AIs. In this part of the piece, tanks become sound recorders (like their shape already suggests: the two wheels connected by a thread), playing back in loop the note they hold. The prelude ends when the maximum number of tanks has been created, following a predetermined law of this virtual world. Note: A lot of clicks are needed.
The opera begins the same way, the player spawning two AIs in the video game void. This part of the game is a homage to Steve Reich "Clapping Music" and to Philip Glass first knee play of "Einstein on the Beach". A beat emerges from the collision of the tanks and other game objects in its surroundings, which contain audio from the old TANKS! game, like a twisted memory of how it was before. The two tanks stay synchronized but evolve in a desynchronised way. The rhythm pattern of one tank shifting of one beat every two bars. Collisions also trigger new voices, which describe part of the environment that used to be TANKS!. Until a virtual law strikes again, forcing the game to end. Note: Only few clicks are needed. Don't waste your energy, it's precious.
In Steve Reich’s “Pendulum Music”, the interpreters are only there to trigger the piece. They bring a microphone at a certain angle over a speaker and let it go. The mic then oscillate over the speaker creating feedback noise. That’s it, their part is done and gravity takes care of the rest.
Pendulum Music : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU6qDeJPT-w
A similar logic can be applied to this game. The player is the maestro and decide when the game begins but never when it is gonna end. The player is there to instantiate the tanks by clicking the left mouse button. It might be the easy way to go though..
Updates:
- the people counting is synchronize with the shift in the beat.
- i decided to implement two little games. The first implies AIs falling from a platform that act as "The prelude" of the game. The second one is the two tanks riding side by side, which acts as "The opera".
- the player becomes the maestro of these games.
Still few hours to go..
What’s missing:
- visualization of the shift in beat
- transition between the AI little game
- adding wheel rotation to see that tanks are moving forward
I implemented the "Clapping Music" concept on the tank game itself. Maybe a visualization would be helpful because it's not obvious what it's happening.
I still think that this prototype is lacking something. I wonder if the increase of sound intensity that I am thinking of will be enough, if it creates a sense of tension. The first knee in "Einstein on the beach" is thrilling as it succeeds in creating a feeling of unison. One building bloc at a time, the piece becomes more complex. At the beginning, two voices seem to tell random sentences to the public, but as the piece goes by, new voices appear and the whole becomes stronger.
I guess I should just go for it. For real. Adding progressively new duo of tanks. In term of artificial voice, I already have Alice, George, Jenna. I'm going to add John and Daisy (from http://www.fromtexttospeech.com). Until it is cacophonous. And then! I could take advantage of a mistake I made recently. The objects in the way of the tanks are triggered when tanks pass through them. But if I keep one, the last one, as a solid object (impenetrable) in front of the camera attached to one of the central tanks, the movement of everything else will continue without it. The sound will then vanish as it follows a 3D spatial blend.
The game becomes this great tanks opera that you did not attend because you got stock on a cube.
I am also struggling with the absence of interactivity. The only act a player can have on this game is to start it.. More thoughts on that later.
Process music: same rhythm but one is offset of one beat every four bars. This could be done with the tank, by maybe reusing the tank sound (fire shooting / fire charging/ shell explosion)? The set up that I currently have would be good for such experimentation since it shows two tanks driving forward on a path that resembles a score. Steve Reich's "Clapping Music" is a good example of that concept. And here, a good visualization of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu-tRXgOrdg
Ehhh boooy...
I don't know where I am going with that prototype... I'm floating in a world of confusion... Hoping the TANKS! could talk like cats do.
Enumerating the pieces that I find the most compelling within the field of minimalist music and then trying to reuse certain concepts in my TANKS! remake appears as the good way to begin with.
Experiments on minimalist music: and what it explores “It’s gonna rain” Steve Reich: plays with the offset between left and right channels “4:33” John Cage: plays with the sound created in the surrounding “I’m sitting in a room” Alvin Lucier: studies the resonance of a room and how his stutter disappears as noise amplifies. Track two of “Music for Airport” Brian Eno: plays with the offset of six magnetic tapes (similar to Steve Reich "It's gonna rain"). “Pendulum Music” Steve Reich: experiments with feedback between mics and speakers. "Two Pages" Philip Glass: plays with rhythm and variation in the length of the musical sentences "Einstein on the beach" Philip Glass: IDEM in the "knees" of the piece.
New attempt:
Mix between offset in stereo and work on rhythm...
Inspired by "Einstein on the Beach", it could be a race between the left and the right stereo output in the Philip Glass way of compositing, using simple rules to create musical sentences evolving in length. Inspired by the Knee Plays in "Einstein by the Beach". The player would hit the element along the way and we would have a glimpse of description.
Maybe I'm going toward a TANKS! opera.. TANKS! in a choir singing to the god of Unity.
Prototype 1: Sound recorder --> Inspired by Steve Reich and Brian Eno pieces experimenting with synchronicity and asynchronicity of multiple sound recorder playing back at slightly different speed, this prototypes explores the visual resemblance of a tank tread tracks and a magnetic tape. Each AI in the game has a specific violon note that plays at different speed than the others. The AIs are on a platform from which they can fall. If they fall, they disappear, and the sound does too.
Prototype 2: Audio guide --> This prototype appears as an audio guide to explore the world of Tanks!. Each element from the game is replaced by a white prism and when the tank (in a FPS format) collide with the object, Daisy, the audio guide, gives the player a description of the object.
Ideas
SOUND
- commentator of the game: commentator(s) describe everything around you without you knowing what it is. → a bit boring, probably already made, not much to learn about video game making, but potentially funny
- alvin lucier "I am sitting in a room" : how and what to record? there is no real space in video game, lucier what studying the resonance/acoustic of the room he was sitting into. But if the room is virtual, is there such thing as acoustic, except the one that can be created artificially by the maker?
- modular synth: cool stuff.
- machine learning, like little Albert experiment: teaching fear to a tank through sounds.
- multiple sound sources that make sense only when you positioned yourself perfectly in the middle between the sources.
- sick AI, sneezing AI, atchooo.. addition of common sounds until very loud and messy, filling the cage
- dance to music otherwise your tank will die. dance to the death!! The beat is accelerating! Tank tank revolution: very good training.
- sound journey: not really original.
- creating a bunch of rooms with different acoustic qualities and the "proutprout" + background music are modified according to that. Again, is there something as acoustic in game?
- AI creating music. additive synth using AI? or substrative synth.
- synaesthesia..
- stereo inversion: inverting the panning of the sound
- music when shooting for a note
- dancing tanks, partyyyyy! you attend a tank pary.
- tank as the instrument, the system, the wheels look just like a recorder!!!!
- sound inside the tank head, “Ommmmmmmm...”
- every time you hit something it tells you what it is. audio guide style: might be funny. the voice would be an online free voice such as text to speech
- experimenting moving the audio listener in weird place: humm the result is not as convincing as I imagined. But I think that the idea is worth pushing forward.
The final built has been completed. I decided to include a title before each chapter. And to make WASD the only controls along the game. The audio is not destroyed with every new scene which gives a sense of continuity in this "spiritual" quest.
Also I feel confident about my choice of locating "the mother" prototype in the middle of the game since it is the only one that doesn't require player input to move forward. Now that it is built, it appears as a nostalgic interlude revealing the origin of the tanks through the vision of their childhood.
I selected a sample of the original Tanks! music soundtrack and processed it through Ableton Live and with some audio effects available on Unity (reverb and LPF). We still hear a bit of the previous melody but it is a lot more airy due to the delays.
Here is the order of the games.
- The infinite
- The void
- The mother
- The traffic
- The god
I want to begin with this cool hack of the infinite zoom to set the table to what is coming next. This series of games will let the player discover the spiritual life of a tanks, starting off with its inner side. Then the player steps into the tanks everyday life, where exists only sex and loneliness. In a play of perspective, the middle chapter reveals the origin of every tanks, its mother. Following, another glimpse at inner world of tanks, this time, stuck in traffic. And finally the series ends with the player being both, the camera and God. They are now God, therefore they can stop playing whenever they want.
I'm still hesitating in showing up the title of each little game. It might be too obvious what the game is about then or very confusing without the titles.
Prototype 1: High highway --> I removed the second highway to simplify the visual.
Prototype 4: Infinite zoom --> As you zoom in, the inner tank is surrounded by more and more cacti.
Prototype 5: Enter the void --> In this world of tanks, tanks are either alone in their house turning around in circle or having sex. This is a pretty binary world but tanks know nothing else.
Prototype 6: Mother --> No significant change.
Prototype 7: God --> I increased the amount of tanks, so that God gets more followers.
Now I must add an ambient sound to replace the horrible music that is starting to get me crazy, I might reuse it but distort it a lot. I also need some sounds for specific moments: when the tanks turn toward their god, for the vibrating tank, and for the baby tanks drinking milk from their mother tank.
Other ideas came up while I was biking the other day. Moving my legs in circle activates my brain in a strange but recurrent way.
Prototype 6: You are the camera attached to the eyes of each tank in the scene (8). You jump from one perspective to the other but you remain confused by what you see since the framing doesn't tell much about your surrounding. When you finally look at the scene from the main camera's perspective, you realized that you are attending a scene where tank babies are drinking their tank mother milk. The camera's perspective becomes the only way to fully understand what is going on.
Prototype 7: You are the camera and you look at dozens of tanks. The tanks keep facing you because you are their god, their leader, and they need you. In this prototype de camera becomes the main points of attention. The passive and active roles are inverted.
A question remains, how to connect the prototypes together in a comprehensive/coherent way?? One option is to present the game as a series of spiritual quests for the tanks.
I ended up pushing further Prototype 1 (Traffic) and Prototype 4 (Volte-Face).
Prototype 1: You are a camera located on a tanks highway but you are stuck in traffic. Your ability to pierce the most solid carcass with your sight lets you see inside the tanks that are moving slowly towards an end. This prototype strives to discover the humanity within the metal frame of the destroying machine. It could be pushed further by adding conversation between the pilots of the tanks.
Prototype 2: You play a casual shooting game, but when you die your tank soul leaves your tank body and starts moving around.
Prototype 3: You are a tank and you try to find tank buddies to play with you, but every tank is busy.
Prototype 4: You are the camera and you zoom inside the tank’s barrel. You discover the inner side of the tank, with all its vulnerability. There is a close relationship between the camera and the gun since they have shared similar features in their early developments. This affiliation explains the use of the expression “shooting” to describe the operation of both tools. So what happens if the camera is shooting the tank’s turret? Is it history revolving? This prototype is an infinite zoom through the tank past, present and future.
Prototype 5: You are a camera and you move through walls in order to see the tank intimacy, what are they doing when human are not playing the TANKS! game?
Ideas
CAMERA
- photo montage like La Jetee.
- small variations between cuts, in the position of objects
- no background erasing
- people inside the tanks and camera inside
- camera filming the front of the tanks
- low angle shot from the trunk of the tanks
- play with zoom in or zooming out
- camera rotates along z-axis and gravity changes with it. (inception style)
- going from one room to the other with the camera (enter the void).. maybe the players is just entering the intimacy of the tanks, where they live, in their apartments, while getting a shower, etc.. and the camera is always moving horizontally and vertically.
- limitless zoom, or zooming out (from pixel to infinity) (limitless)
- vertigo effect (vertigo)
- transparencies, layers on top of each other
LIGHT
- shadows moving if light moves in branches for example
- silhouette of the tanks from afar
- stage lighting
- black and white
OTHER
- answering questions
- simplification of the game (cube for tank)
- long corridors in space
- tank is alone in the world, in a world but there are highways full of tanks going in one direction that don’t want to play with you. traffic of tanks.
- instructions to the tanks
- dancing tanks
I just submit a first intervention for TANKS!, in which instead of shooting at each other, the tanks are thanking each other. Starting with a casual "thank you!", they start arguing about who is thanking whom. In the end, the tanks are fighting again, with words this time.
It reminds me of Jean-Paul Sartre's scenario "L'Engrenage" or Albert Camus's play "Les Justes", which both discuss an authoritarian political climate that revolutionaries try to change by force. But once in power, they end up reproducing the same patterns that they were fighting against not long ago.
I developed it quickly thinking, first, that I would replace the shells, because i have no interest in war/shooting games and, second, that the pun on "tanks" and "thanks" was funny enough to exploit.
- the yellow color of the desert is now flooding my screen. everything is working except the dust trails that resemble more to a grandpa coughing than anything else.
- i suck at driving a tank. i can figure out why i never got my license.
- i am a videogame looser. i prefer wandering around.
On TANKS!
General comments on current state
- the map feels too big for me, i wish it was more intimate. it feels dry, not because of the desert context.
- the only light is a directional light acting as a sun.
- the camera is orthographic and it changes size and zoom according to the tanks relative position.
- why do tanks want to kill each other?
- why can you get more than one life?
General comments on future states
What if..
- the map consisted in little platforms separated from each other. movements would be irrelevant.
- the lights were stroboscopic like in a night club.
- the tanks would exchange words instead of shell (sooo diplomatic).
- the tanks would film each other in a voyeuristic way.
- the tanks would shoot seeds and create a garden.
- the tanks would get their period once a month, and that would suck so much.
- the game was called THANKS!.
- their would be plenty of false tanks (false as simulation), so you would win if you kill the right one.
- maybe there won't be a right one.