• 1v1

by Zach Starr on 03.02.10

Tank Battle: Iron Warfare is a new game for the iPhone/iPod Touch.  It is an ambitious game; pushing the processing capabilities of Apple’s little powerhouse.  This game is quite a bit of fun and easily worth the time you’ll invest in scrounging up $1.99 to pay for it.  I had an opportunity to ask John Judnich, the 19 year old programmer of Tank Battle a few questions, and here is what he had to say.

I just want to say that I have really enjoyed the game.  The controls are nicely devised and it's pretty ambitious for an iPhone game.  I would really like to know about the process you went through making Tank Battle: Iron Warfare.

First, my understanding is that you were largely self taught when it comes to programming.  What interested you about video games and what kind of resources did you use to build your knowledge?

#666666;">- Other than the obvious appeal of video games to an 8 year old kid (when I started programming), I really enjoy the challenge involved with video game development - particularly in the area of programming. When you get into more advanced areas of 3D rendering techniques, you have to work with (and sometimes invent) really complex algorithms and math to optimize performance and visual quality. As to the resources I've used, I learned from many places all over the internet, and the Game Programming Gems, and GPU Gems series of books.

How long did it take from inception to completion to develop this game?

#666666;">- The total time I spent developing this game was about 6 weeks, but I took a break during my first quarter as a freshmen in college so the actual time was a few months.

#666666;">

What were some of the challenges that you encountered along the way?

#666666;">- Overall it took a lot of optimization work so that the game can run smoothly on the finite computing power of the iPhone. One interesting challenge was the shadows under tanks. Normal techniques used for casting shadow simply weren't efficient enough to give all the tanks in the game shadows, so I had to come up with a non-standard technique. It's simple, but I was really happy with the results because all tanks cast 3D shadows, which normally isn't an easy thing to do on this level of hardware.

Were there any other games that inspired you in the development of Tank Battle?

#666666;">- This game is actually based off an old tank game I made several years ago, which itself was inspired somewhat by one of my favorite (now outdated of course) games: Battlefield 1942.

The control scheme is great, it is very intuitive.  Normally, controls are the biggest challenge for touch screen games.  How did you come up with movement mechanics for the tank?

#666666;">- I realized that without giving the player full control - movement, turret rotation, and shooting - I just wouldn't be happy with the game. Part of the fun in tank games is shooting and moving in independent directions. Considering this, I thought of a few ways to accomplish this on the iPhone, and the Accelerometer seemed the obvious choice for turret control - it was just a matter of figuring out a way to make it work smoothly and fairly intuitively.

#666666;">

It's easy to get over ambitious when you first start designing a game, was there anything that you wanted to include but ended up leaving out?

#666666;">- I would have liked to experiment with power-ups in the gameplay: extra ammo power, armor boosts, calling in air-strikes, etc. Also I wanted to add multiplayer support, but I decided to get single player released without delay and finish multiplayer after.

What games are you currently playing?

#666666;">- Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2

#666666;">

Like I said before, I've enjoyed playing your game and have no doubt that it will be a success, so what's next for you?

#666666;">- I can't be certain what the future holds but I'm looking forward to working on more exciting projects. I enjoy working with cutting edge 3D graphics technology (which I had done for a while some years ago), so I may be looking into making games for more graphically capable platforms.

What advice or words of wisdom would you like to share with other developers just starting out?

#666666;">- Start simple, and keep pushing toward more advanced things. Learn to teach yourself everything you need to know so you'll never get stuck with a problem and not know what to do.

There are lots of apps available, this is one worth picking up.  Thanks to John for his time, here at Nfamous we are all looking forward to seeing more from him in the near future.