Game Of Bases

Goba is a remake of a classic game Flash Attack.

Game idea

There are (at most) 4 players. Each player has a base and four tanks. The tanks may move, lay mines and fire at other tanks. Annihilate the enemies!

Screenshots

Goba in action

ver 399

ver 432

ver 475

Download

Binaries are available for Linux (Compiled in Ubuntu 6.10). Source is available, too. The software is written in Objective Caml, and has successfully been compiled with these dependencies:

Ocaml 3.09.2 (earlier versions probably work too). Available in Ubuntu as package ocaml-nox .
Findlib 1.1.2pl1 (earlier versions probably work too). Available as ocaml-findlib in both Ubuntu and Debian.
Ocamldsort 0.14.3. Available in Ubuntu and Debian as package ocamldsort .
SDL 1.2. Available in Ubuntu as packages libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl1.2-dev .
OcamlSDL 0.7.2. Available in Ubuntu as package libsdl-ocaml-dev .
Sexplib 2.8.2 (earlier versions probably work too). Not available in Ubuntu or Debian.

I haven't tried Godi out, but it may be worth the trouble using it for those Ocaml-based packages, in case your distribution doesn't support any of the packages out-of-the-box. Atleast findlib, sdl-bindings and sexplib are available with it.

Change log

Version 485 (2007-03-19)

Fixed bug regarding turning tank too much counterclockwise

Version 475 (2007-03-19)

Better tile graphics (added lousy mountains, added softer edges around grass patches, added grass that covers tanks)
Internally better (server uses object classes for maintaining object state).
Tank orientation is now passed to server (looks better)
Tanks are now controlled by turning and adjusting motor speed, not by pointing to the direction you want them to do. Similarly firing is now relative to tank orientation.
Some performance improvements (created bitmaps are cached already in the map structure, not only via their construction pattern which requires doing a hash table lookup)

Version 437

Fixed not being able to shoot enemy base (or rather, destroy it)
Tank view flashes red on damage

Version 431

Fixed network jerkiness-effect
Added (some) tile graphics
Better internals (bitmap composition, uniform object identification for map elements and objects, better extracting and feeding back of state for objects, dropped redundant protocol messages..)
Flashing mines (randomly)
Bigger tank views, smaller base view

Version 397

Better graphics
Fixed bug that caused the game to increase cpu usage continuously
Fixed some write error cases in server
Apparently introduced some jerkiness to network play..
Maps are now generated on server startup, instead of being loaded from map.txt (map.txt-support is gone at the moment)

Playing

First you start the server. It starts to listen in port 61753. The option 'Start server' in the game actually does nothing :).

Second you start the game. If your host doesn't match the ones hardcoded in the game (localhost and jolt.modeemi.cs.tut.fi) you'll need to enter the host name in the command line, as the first argument.

Now you're set to go! F1 provides keyboard help. The game doesn't yet say who's won or died, so you'll need to figure that out yourself..

Notes

Enemy units cannot be destroyed if the enemy client is not connected.
If you build from the source, you want to build and run the optimized version (goba.opt) of the game binary.

Erkki Seppälä