Tank Game AI and UI - Programming Challenge

The Tank battle game is a popular Nintendo game in 90s and early 2000s.The tank game is also known as Tank 90. It is a game where you have a treasure to secure while destroying enemy tanks. The treasure is surrounded by a brick wall; the treasure is symbolized by an eagle sign. The enemy tanks try to destroy our treasure; each state is having fixed number of enemy tanks. All the tanks have different level, those levels state the armor and the speed of the each tanks, higher the level higher the armor. The level is reduced when a tank is hit by a bullet. The level of our tanks can be increased by accruing suddenly appearing power symbols. There are various power symbols. Some are to increase our level, some are to lock all the enemy tanks for a period of time, some are to blast all the remaining enemy tanks.

There are types of blocks, they are bricks, stones, trees and water.

We can also play the game in the battle mood, where two players are given separate two treasures to secure. In order to with the game each player must either destroy opponent’s tank or the treasure.

Our Task

Our task was to deign the game client, which is mainly having two components

• Artificial Intelligence Component (AI)
• Graphical User Interface Component (GUI)

Artificial Intelligence Component

The game client should understand the game map and act accordingly. The AI part should first identify the
game map. Then it must be able to decide its path. Since the goal of this game is to collect as much as coins the AI component should mostly concentrate on gathering as much as coin. AI should identify nearby coin piles, and also it must take into account the lifetime of the coin pile. It should select the coin piles which are reachable before it disappears.

Since other tanks can shoot the tank, AI must avoid getting shot and need to restore health by acquiring life packs. AI should shoot other tanks, in order to be safe and steal the coins collected by those tanks.

Graphical User Interface Component

There should be a component to see the game from the client computer by decoding the server messages.