I like how the Tanky demo plays, and I’m glad other people liked it too.  I’ve been trying to think of some simple way to wrap it up into a finished game, without much success.

As a combat sim it doesn’t lend itself easily to an open sandbox game.  The terrain couldn’t be made big enough, and given it’s a war game, there would have to be enemy forces with persistence and strategic AI, unlike a game like Minecraft where monsters spawn randomly as you wander around. 

As a defense game it could work.  Protect an asset against pre-determined waves of enemies, or even enemies that adapt to your force disposition.  Survive to the end of the level to win, and to the next stage.  Buying units during the level, maybe even place fortifications.  There’d be some kind of strategy game map where you assign squads and order guys to move around and change their stance.  Cool, but complicated; practically 2 games.

It could be a straight-up squad combat game with vanilla levels.  Tank Starfox or Mechwarrior.  Then the game would rely on content; maps, vehicles, characters, bosses, a story. 

Multiplayer could work, like Battlefield with fewer arcade concessions.  But I’ve hardly even begun looking into netcode.

I have to admit that none of these are really practical.  Probably never was, but it was a pleasant idea, to skip making sidescrollers and flash games and go right to a 3D sim. It was a good learning experience, but the code is a horrible mess from that experience.

Tanky will be shelved until I can buy time to work on it full time.  I still like the idea of a semi-realistic and accessible multi-vehicle sim game, but it will have to wait.