A Look At The Graphical Evolution Of Battle Tanks

Nearly everyone has played or seen Combat2600 on the Atari or Battle City on the NES. Here at Gameloft, we wanted to revisit an older but very popular gameplay style for consumers.

Battle Tanks features World War II tanks that face off against each other in hopes to blow the other to smithereens. You can play against the AI or co-op with a friend in Campaign Mode to overcome 50 maze and paint ball-like levels. There’s also a fun multi-player option also allows two to four people to challenge each other in Death Match modes or Capture the Flag mode.

Nothing beats blasting through walls with rockets, scorching enemies with flame throwers and carefully calculating the trajectory of bullets to win battles. The controls are simple: the left stick moves your tank and the L2 and R2 buttons are used for firing. The aiming guide is highlighted when you hold down the L1 button and comes in extremely handy when you’re trying to stealthily eliminate enemies on the field. To reduce the waiting time when a player dies, we added a new feature: Gun Turrets! When you’ve lost all your lives, you still can play and help your partner win the game.

As soon as an early version of Battle Tanks was installed on our PS3 test kit, it quickly became the most popular attraction in the Gameloft Studio. Everyone who passed by was drawn to the game’s colorful graphics and intuitive gameplay. During a recent office gathering, Battle Tanks was main party attraction. Crowds gathered and stood in line to watch folks challenge each other and have the chance to play themselves.

Battle Tanks captures all the youthful fun you can imagine. It is available on PSN right now and is priced at £7.99/€9.99.

The images below depict the graphical evolution of Battle Tanks for the PSN.

We initially started off by drafting a few futuristic concept styles (human vs. alien invasion).

We then considered using a 2D background, but quickly found that it did not provide the effect we wanted, so we added a real terrain.

We also considered the idea of creating a child-like environment that featured tanks made from cardboard, rivers and lakes made from pipes and obstacles from toys left behind.

None of the styles above matched what we wanted to create for audiences. So the Production Team decided to take a different approach and create a semi-realistic graphical style with cartoonish tanks.

We then fined tuned it even more and decided to remove the cartoony aspects to provide more realism with the graphics.

We liked the look and feel of the terrain but decided that realistic tanks inspired from the WWII era would be a nice touch. Below are a few concepts we drafted.