Battlezone Forums

Bill Witts wrote this as his first non-trivial Java program back in 1996 as a challenge to write BattleZone, the once well-known Atari arcade game, in 24 hours. In the end, it took 32 hours. Bill wrote the original Atari-approved Quicksilva BattleZone game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum back in 1983-84, and it took perhaps 15 months in total, so this is a quite favorable comparison of Java versus Z80 machine code (although it helps that your computer is probably 2-3 orders of magnitude faster than a Spectrum...).

In order to avoid adding more hours, we have left out the demo screens and the other frills. For instance, all controls are keyboard based - clicking the mouse restarts the game. Keyboard instructions are on the intro page. Remember, you're driving a tank, and the controls drive the caterpillar tracks independently. Don't stay in one place for long, kill everything that moves, and watch the radar!

By the way, source code is not included - no sizeable code written in a day is pretty, and we wouldn't want to offend anyone. Just enjoy the experience!

http://www.cyberdyne-systems.co.uk/bz/bzsplash.html
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I always got a kick out of it and the idea back then of one day playing a 3d game... like bz1 or bz2 was like saying ''one day well be able to make lazers for evrything... or talk to someone far away on a tv screen... with voice!!! well just like in Star-treck!!! ''

And yet here we are evryone has computers and every kinda ectronic toy that you can imagine.
it took 20 years to get to bz1 and bz2 since the arcade battlezone and now 30 years latter still going
wow
what other games have lasted ass long ?!...
one thing will always ring true... and trust me on this
they dont make em like they usto

I automatically have it on my computer.
Cool right?

LOL hi Baconboy

Yes thats cool for sure ...and again many will never truely understand that old battlezone version ...and it seems very lame by todays standards ....understandedbly so...a tank game so primitive a game indeed ...if you could put your sleves in the shoes of the poeple who palyed this game first and why it drew them?! and how that was the driving force to games like we have today?! ''battlezone ''

Because of its use of first-person 3D graphics combined with an actual "viewing goggle" that the player puts his face into, Battlezone is widely considered the first virtual reality game. Likewise, The Bradley Trainer is considered the first VR training device used by the U.S. Army.

anyone that tells you its wansent wow!!! to poeple 30 years ago...there wasent even internet from what i remember ...at least not your average home owner ...owning a computer ? not many poeple i knew did
this game did push the development of the idea of playing 3d.

well it has for me
And you could see it getting better and better i think.... Bz3 maybe someday? i wish ufff.....
I wish pendemic bought back the rights
i'd like to see them do it! they where on the right track with bz1 and bz2 equally good and probably the only in all the different battlezone games out there i know of and tested .
I feeel atari just dosent have the feel ... not that they dont have good games !!!

trust in that. peace out man !!!
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