TankDestruction Alpha Launch!

Hi, Everyone!

TankDestruction is finally ready for it's alpha launch, and is now released for alpha testing!

When I first uploaded TankDestruction to itch.io, it wasn't really ready for release. The launcher still had bugs to be ironed out, the setup still had problems, and the game wasn't easy to use.

But what if I told you these are all problems of the past? That's right, TankDestruction is now completely ready! I've been working hard for the past three days on making the game stable, improving the ease of use, and ensuring that users have the smoothest experience possible! In addition to the game now being free of the bugs that had troubled it, I've made several ease of use improvements:

Not allowing users to play the game if it hasn't finished downloading.
It should be obvious to not click the "play" button while the game is downloading, right? Well, for the sake of idiot-proofing, the play button now doesn't exist until the game is downloaded. I mean, if it prevents me from even losing 1 player, it's a worthwhile change. 

Better looking UIs
The user interface of the game was, originally an afterthought. This was definitely a mistake on my part, as the user interface is the first thing you're going to see when entering the game! I've always been a 3D designer (ever since I was 12 years old), but never really a 2D one, and UIs have been a steep learning curve for me.
Old:
New:

While it may seem a small change, and still isn't perfect, I have come to realize that a proper UI is important for making a game stand out (just think of Persona 5, a game known for it's beautiful looking UIs). I also added a quit button because, otherwise you had to exit the game and close it from the taskbar.... Not very elegant.

Loading screen
Most people mistake the importance of a loading screen. It isn't to inform players about loading progress, it's to hide ugly transitions. In this case, Unity (the game engine) loads a scene, and then switches to the new scene and camera. This is an ugly transition, however, it is now a thing of the past for TankDestruction.
The solution is that, when the battle button is pressed, a loading screen is displayed in front of other UI elements, and when the next scene is displayed, it also displays the same loading screen, which it can then fade out to create a smooth transition into the next scene, rather than a laggy, jarring one.

That's what it looks like, but well, if you want to see it in action, you'll have to try it out in the game. ;)

One final thing, and that is exiting and re-entering a battle. There was a bug where, if you exited a battle, you would be unable to re-enter a battle and connect to a server. This problem has been solved, and you can now exit and re-enter battles at will.


I'm still working on having TankDestruction's servers up 24/7, but I'm trying. For now, you can run singleplayer games if there are no servers running. 

Thank you for reading,

Joe

Please note that TankDestruction still doesn't have a code signing certificate (seriously, a code signing certificate costs over £100...), so there will be warnings about TankDestruction being from an "unknown publisher" when downloaded.