Sandbox Tank Game

LAST REVISED: 2022/03/31

Overview

This project aims to create a sandbox tank game, where the player controls a toy tank within a map with the goal to defeat all tanks in the same map. The concept is "A tank game reminiscent of childhood".

What will the application do?

The application currently consists of a tank game with a single map and multiple enemy tanks to beat. The player will control its own player tank and have to defeat all enemy tanks to win.

Who will use it?

Anyone who wants to play a simple tank game could enjoy this project!

Why of interest to me?

There was a very similar video game in my childhood that I really enjoyed, and I wanted to extend it by adding more tank and ammunition types. I am also hoping to possibly use the end product to train an AI, to extend my understanding on game AIs and AI in general.

User stories

Below are the user stories I at least covered in Phase 1

The project (user side or game side) would like to:

• add an arbitrary number of "Bullet" objects in the "TankGame" object (in TankGame class)
• rotate the tank gun to the right (in TankGame class)
• rotate the tank gun to the left (in TankGame class)
• stop the game from running (in PlayTankGame class)

Below are the user stories I at least covered in Phase 2

• The project would like to:
• save a game's current state including bullets, tanks and walls
• load a game given a specific state of bullets, tanks and walls

Below are the content I at least covered in Phase 3

• "Add multiple Xs to a Y": the GamePanel object in PlayTankGame displays all bullet objects added newly to the TankGame object via Tank objects.
• "Add two events related to Xs and Y":

1. The player can press the "space" key to "fire a bullet" in the game, which adds a Bullet object to the TankGame via the Tank object.
2. The player can press the "RESET THE GAME" button in the Menu Panel to reset the list of Xs in Y to the state saved in the "tankGameInitialGameFile.json" file in the data directory

• "Load and save the state of the application": the MenuPanel object in PlayTankGame holds two buttons each for loading/saving data to/from the file "tankGameSaveFile.json" in the "data" directory.

• "Graphic component" : Each time a new game is started, the GamePanel will show a countdown realized using images.

Phase 4: Task 2 Event Log example

Tue Mar 29 09:32:16 PDT 2022
Game initialized from source ./data/tankGameInitialGameFile.json
Tue Mar 29 09:32:19 PDT 2022
Player tank fired a new bullet.
Tue Mar 29 09:32:19 PDT 2022
Player tank fired a new bullet.
Tue Mar 29 09:32:23 PDT 2022
Player tank fired a new bullet.
Tue Mar 29 09:32:25 PDT 2022
Player tank fired a new bullet.
Tue Mar 29 09:32:30 PDT 2022
Game initialized from source ./data/tankGameInitialGameFile.json
Tue Mar 29 09:32:34 PDT 2022
Player tank fired a new bullet.
Tue Mar 29 09:32:35 PDT 2022
Game initialized from source ./data/tankGameInitialGameFile.json \

Phase 4: Task 3

Possible refactoring:

• CollisionHandler, TankGame and MovementHandler all depend on Wall, EnemyTank, PlayerTank and Bullet which are meant to be exactly the same objects, since MovementHandler and CollisionHandler work as part of the TankGame. This could be refactored so that only one of the classes (probably TankGame) contain the objects as fields, and the other parts could always fetch the objects as needed from that class.
• TankGameControlThroughKeyBindings and PlayTankGame both rely on the same TankGame to function properly, but this is only implicitly set by each of the classes holding the same TankGame as their field, and thus having to reset the field everytime the TankGame is updated. This could be avoided by making one of the class reliant on the specific TankGame object, and the other class always obtaining the game from the other class.
• GamePanel and MenuPanel are meant to work as parts of the PlayTankGame object, however the relationship is not a unidirectional association which would be more suitable in this case, but a bidirectional one which may be unnecessarily increasing coupling. This could be avoided by refactoring the code in a way that only PlayTankGame rely on the other two Panels and not the other way, which would decrease coupling.

Below are the user stories I want to ultimately all cover

As part of the app play, one would want to:

• move the tank around.
• fire an arbitrary number of new bullets with a set maximum number, adding them to the game
• change the direction of the tank gun The app itself needs to:
• add new enemy tank to the game map
• fire new enemy bullets with a set maximum number, adding them to the map
• move the enemy tanks
• remove bullets that have hit a wall more than n times from the game
• bounce the bullets around in a specific way
• check for collision between walls and tanks
• remove bullets that hit each other
• remove tanks that were hit by a bullet
• check for collision between tanks and tanks
• save the current high score and number of game played and many more.

Acknowledgement

• Although I directly did not use any code, I used the B02-SpaceInvadersBase project (private as part of CPSC210 course contents) extensively as model for my GamePanel and PlayTankGame class. The code can be found below:
  https://github.students.cs.ubc.ca/CPSC210/B02-SpaceInvadersBase

• The Teller App code provided as an example was also extensively used as model to create my PlayTankGameConsole class. The code can be found below: https://github.students.cs.ubc.ca/CPSC210/TellerApp

• The classes "JsonReader", "JsonWriter" and "Writable" were based extensively, and codes were taken from the classes with the respective name in: https://github.students.cs.ubc.ca/CPSC210/JsonSerializationDemo

• The classes "EventLog" and "Event" were entirely taken from the corresponding classes in the AlarmSystem project, which can be found below: https://github.students.cs.ubc.ca/CPSC210/AlarmSystem

• The class "TankGameControlThroughKeyBindings" was extensively based on the "MotionWithKeyBindings" class originally created by Rob Camick. The code can be found as of 2022/03/31 at the bottom of the following page: https://tips4java.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/motion-using-the-keyboard/

• The "RotatableJLabel" inner class within the GamePanel class was extensively based on the "Rotated Icon" class provided by Rob Camick. The code can be obtained as of 2022/03/31 from a link in the web page below, or directly from the link below. Webpage: https://tips4java.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/rotated-icon/ Direct link: http://www.camick.com/java/source/RotatedIcon.java

I truly appreciate all the wisdom I gained from those codes!