TankX (Amiga)

TankX is a tank combat game where your aim is to shoot the other tanks and be the last tank standing. The bullets bounce from the walls and there's a limited amount of bullets that can be shot at a time.  The game is played in rounds which follow each other in quick succession. How many rounds can you win?

You can play with up to 10 human players or against CPU driven tanks. You can also set up a team against team game. Any of the ten tanks can be set to be controlled by joystick, keyboard, or the CPU.

The game can use two parallel port joystick adapters:

• Parallel port adapter for two joysticks
• Alinea Computer multi-joy adapter for eight joysticks. Note that this device may not yet be available for purchase.

Main screen 

This contains the various options to set up the game. Access these with mouse or with the keyboard shortcuts (indicated with underscore). You can select which field to play on or have the field randomized. You can also have in-game music or just sound effects.

Tank activation 

On the right there are two button columns. The 1st one selects whether a tank is in the game, or in one of the teams. The 2nd column buttons select the control method, either human using a joystick or keyboard or the CPU.

There are three different CPU drivers to choose from. Scary is the most challenging one.

For more than 7 human players you need to activate the multi-joy adapter from the menu.

Tank settings

On the bottom you can configure various game and tank related settings. The default settings selection will restore these to default values. Some of them described below.

The current settings are saved on exit. You can also store three setting presets by using the preset menu.

Victory limit

This sets the number of rounds per session, 0 means no limit.

Bullet type

Type 0 is the bouncing bullet, type 1 bullet does not bounce.

Wall damage

This defines how many hits to a wall causes one point of lost energy. Can be used to discourage careless driving. Set to 0 to disable.

Right button menu

Having a start countdown for each round could be helpful, it can enabled here. You can also select which fields to include or exclude in the field random shuffle. There's also an option to enable CPU tanks to dodge incoming bullets, this is not enabled by default since it will slow down the game on slower Amigas.

Game controls

• Tank 1: Joystick port 2
• Tank 2: Joystick port 1
• Tank 3 keys: X, <, A, left Amiga, left shift
• Tank 4 keys: arrow left, arrow right, arrow up, arrow down, right shift
• Tank 5 keys: U, T, 6, Y, F
• Tank 6: Parallel port joystick adapter port 1
• Tank 7: Parallel port joystick adapter port 2

...or if using the multi-joy adapter, available to be selected in the menu:

• Tanks 1-8: Multi-joy adapter
• Tank 9: Joystick port 2
• Tank 10: Joystick port 1

The keys can also be redefined.

Game screen

Drive around, shoot and avoid bullets!

Each tank has a distinctive color. In team mode the team 2 has an additional red indicator to make out which tank belongs to which team.

There's a scoreboard at the edge of the screen. It displays the round win count and the current energy for each tank.

Some pieces of wall destroy tanks on impact, these walls flash (usually).

If there's not enough mayhem happening in 40 seconds the field inner walls become destructible and you cannot hide behind them any longer.

In-game keys

• P or Help: Pause
• F5: Restart round
• F6: skip round
• ESC: Stop session and return to main screen

Requirements

TankX works on Amiga 500 with a 0.5M memory expansion, and any classic Amiga above this.

Please note that the CPU driven tanks are computationally expensive. The A500 can usually handle two CPU driven tanks at a time without slowing down. For more CPU tanks a faster Amiga is recommended.