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Tank!
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About the game
Tank! is a classic: two tanks, a hill between them and a shell for each turn. The terrain is generated by the computer every time, so no two battlefields are the same. On your turn you set the angle of the barrel and the power of the shot, fire, and watch the shell arc across the screen and fall under gravity. If it lands on the other tank, you score; if it misses, the turn simply passes to your opponent.
The screen is bare. At the top are two numbers, angle and power, and a small arrow above the tank whose turn it is. There are no menus, nothing to unlock, and no computer opponent: the point is to share a keyboard with a friend, trade shots, shout at the physics, and adjust your numbers until the shell finally drops in the right place. A hit also sounds a short buzz and draws a big explosion.
It was written in Octo by Rectus, and comes with a one-page manual.
Playing it here
Tank! is a CHIP-8 program. CHIP-8 is a simple virtual machine from 1977, created for hobby computers like the COSMAC VIP, and people still write new games for it. It uses the plain CHIP-8 instruction set and a small screen. It runs here in the Octo emulator, with the speed and colours chosen for it in the archive.
Click Play. Player 1 is the tank on the left and player 2 the one on the right; the keys are shared and each player uses them on their own turn. F2 saves the state of the emulator at any moment and F4 brings it back. A gamepad works too.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| W / S | raise / lower the shot power |
| A / D | change the barrel angle |
| F | fire the shell |
| F2 / F4 | save / load the emulator state |
A few things worth knowing
Change one number at a time. After a miss, adjust either the angle or the power, not both, so you can learn what each does.
Watch the hill. The terrain changes every game, and a shell that clears one hill can drop short on another. Look before you fire.
It needs two. There is no computer opponent: one player on each side of the keyboard, taking turns.
Credits and licence
Tank! was made by Rectus, who also wrote a short manual for it. The in-game text is minimal. It runs here in Octo, the CHIP-8 development tool and emulator by John Earnest (MIT licence). The game is kept in the Chip8 Community Archive, which places everything in it in the public domain under CC0 1.0. The licence text is linked from this page.