This is it! 4 years of working on this game have passed as of today!
One fateful Friday afternoon - March 23rd, 2018, exactly 4 years ago - I had an extra long lunch break and decided I had enough free time to get started on an idea I had been wanting to pursue for a long time: a remake of the Tanks mini-game from Wii Play! So I got to work. I didn't know how much was ahead of me - over the next few years this game pushed me to learn a lot of stuff. Along the way, I converted my game from Java Swing to LWJGL OpenGL - learning an entirely new graphics library, ported the game to mobile devices, brought the game to use 3d graphics, learned GLSL to write shaders, learned how to use Vertex Buffer Objects as opposed to immediate mode rendering, launched the game on Steam, and more!
The little Java Swing game I started off with grew to over 70,000 lines of code over 4 years, and it's been a fun journey. I'd like to thank my code contributors, Discord members, and friends for helping! This wouldn't have gotten to where it is without their ideas and support. If you want, you can join in too - by checking out the Discord and GitHub!
As a little bonus, I've put together this little video that shows exactly how far this game has come. Hope you enjoy it!
Here's to another few years of Tanks! (And don't worry, there are more updates coming).