PaperTankDS

PaperTankDS was the first half of my mid-program project. I wanted to become familiar with coding for a console and was intrigued by the unique arm9 + arm7 architecture that the Nintendo DS has. So for my first project I presented Paper Tank as an idea for our team to create. It was selected by my team, so I took over as the team leader.

PaperTankDS replicates the paper and pen game that I often played in school. You divide a paper in half and each person draws a set number of tanks on his side. The players then take turns drawing a shot on his or her side and folding the paper over to see if the mark translates to a hit on the opponent's side. You continue taking turns until one player has no more tanks.
We replicated this experience on the DS, even down to the detail of folding the paper to take a shot. In PaperTankDS, you can mark your shot on your side, then fold the DS in half and open it to reveal the shot on your enemy's side. Testing showed that players didn't want to always use this mechanic, so we allowed the up key to also take a shot. My nephews really enjoyed the folding aspect of the game.

We implemented an AI for the player to compete with. The AI will take shots, trying not to make them too close to each other in order to reveal areas that haven't been revealed yet. On easy, the AI has the same size of view around each shot that the player has, so if a shot is close to a tank, the AI will attempt to kill that tank. Sometimes the AI will overcorrect, and miss again, and sometimes the AI will hit the tank.

I also worked on implementing the menu system and stat tracking system. Players can see how many games they have played, how many tanks they have hit, and their win and loss record. This game is currently reviewed at http://fromthegutter.org/?p=611 if you would like to see initial reaction to our beta version.

Writing this game helped me learn how to convert graphics files to be used as sprites and how to map these to the different video banks of the Nintendo DS. I also learned how to manage the limited 128kb of memory that the DS has for 2D sprites to avoid running out of space as the user placed over one hundred different shots on their screen.