BattleCity
History
BattleCity was the first multiplayer online game I ever played. The original BattleCity by CodeHammer was taken down in 1998. The source code was never released but the administrative team stated they would not stand in the way of anybody recreating it.
With CodeHammer's release of the rights toward BattleCity, CodeMallet's BattleCity was coded completely from scratch in C++ using the original BattleCity artwork, sounds and music. It was released in February of 2005 and was ran actively by CodeMallet for a couple of years. In 2007 I begin the Spark project and turned BattleCity over to loyal and long time community leader Weebo.
Gameplay
In BattleCity, players compete to defend their own city and destroy enemy cities. Players can rank up by earning points from attacking and defending. Each city has a mayor who builds the buildings in the city and defends. Three additional commandos may join a mayor's city providing offensive/support roles. Factories built by the mayor will produce the following items to use for offense/defense:
| Item | Pic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Laser | First weapon--Arms your tank with a laser that will damage players and buildings | |
| Cougar Missile | Secondary weapon--Arms your tank with rockets. Does much more damage than lasers. | |
| Time Bomb | Destroy enemy buildings within blast radius | |
| Land Mine | Invisible to enemy players--deals a huge amount of damage when ran over | |
| The Orb | Most powerful weapon in the game--Destroys entire city when dropped on the city's capital--Only one available per city | |
| Walkie Talkie | Allows you to communicate with your teammates across great distances | |
| DFG | Generates a field that temporarily disables enemy tanks--Invisible to enemies, activates when hit | |
| Turret | Regular turret--automatically fires at enemies | |
| Plasma Turret | Turret with extra high damage plasma shots | |
| Sleeper Turret | Invisible to enemies until they are in range | |
| Wall | Strong wall that takes multiple enemy shots to destroy | |
| MedKit | Restores health to full |
Current Status
There are no live BattleCity servers running at this time. The game's forums and source code can be downloaded at the community site at BattleCity.org