Shrapnel
Shrapnel is a really simple little tank game, similar to the incredible Scorched Earth, in which up to five players take it in turns to try and shoot each other from the opposite sides of the screen. Shrapnel was written using Allegro, and full source code is available.
The difference with Shrapnel is that you can make your own totally unique weapons, and there's no limit to what you can make. The game comes with six fairly average weapons, and then you can download a few extra weapons that I've made or have been given (see bottom of page). Thing is, most of the extra weapons are so powerful, they really dwarf the standard weapons, but they're such a laugh it would break my heart to make them any less powerful :-)
The six weapons it comes with are: the standard tank shell, bouncing bombs, banana bombs, cluster bombs, machine guns and the (originally) almighty mini nuke. Players start off with a limited number of each weapon, and by winning matches you earn money with which to buy additional weapons.
New weapons are created by making Weapons Scripts. The behaviour of all weapons is now taken from easy to write text files, which are becoming increasingly flexible as time passes and I add new features.
I've also added sound effects now, as well as fixing a few bugs. If you want the sounds to work, you'll need to download this extra file and unzip it into your 'weapons' directory.
What I would love would be for people to start making their own weapons and sending them to me, so that I can build up a really big database on this site. There are so many different things you could make, I don't know where to begin.
If you do download Shrapnel and enjoy it, then please take the time to fill out the included response form and return it to me, and I'll add your name to a list of alpha testers in the next version ;-)
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Downloads
| Shrapnel 0.863 | Main Game Package (~250 kb) |
| Allegro dll | REQUIRED dll (~250 kb), unique to version 0.86 onwards |
| Sound files | Optional package with some simple sound effects |
N.B. If you wish the latest version of Shrapnel to work, you MUST download the new dll. Older versions of the dll will NOT work.
| Name | Author | Description |
| Fireball | Andy Geers | Bursts into flames after a few seconds and looks very cool |
| Acid Rain | Kit O'Neill | Rains down destruction upon the opposition |
| Death Ray | Adam Antonik | Laser type weapon with cool sound |
| Doomsday Gun | Kit O'Neill | Radial burst cluster missile - good for clearing terrain |
| The Blade | Kit O'Neill | My favourite weapon of all time - takes a swipe at the enemy |
| The Amazing Cow Bomb | Kit O'Neill | Okay, so it makes it a bit easy to win, but this really is AMAZING |
| Fairy Dust | Andy Geers | Fire it over your head and it heals you |
| Stinger | Vedran Jelenic | Powerful homing missile |
| Jun Maeda | Chris McGuire | The WWII Kamikaze pilot |
| Dove From Above | Andy Geers | Avian Bomber |
| Bread Bomb | Andy Geers | Shoots toast everywhere |
| Napalm | Javier | Drops burning napalm over the enemy |
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New in Version 0.863:
- Loading and flash screens
- 'Are you sure?' menu changed to allow you to return to the main menu
- Made menus more responsive to key presses
- Slight reorganisation of 'Local Game' menu to make it more intuitive
- Finally tracked down and fixed the bug that caused it to crash when you moved the mouse over a shield in the weapons selection menu, then moved the mouse over another weapon
New in Version 0.862:
- Nice new menu system
- Bug fixed that made it crash when you selected a shield with the mouse
New in Version 0.861:
- Added 'Times' property to weapons scripts, allows you to restrict the number of times a weapon can split
- Lots of bug fixes (mainly to do with weapons selection)
- Small improvements to the graphics
New in Version 0.86:
- Weapons script fixes, allowing directional weapons to rotate
- Various bug fixes
- Shields
- Cursors can now be used to select weapons
New in Version 0.851:
- Bug fixes to allow up to 5 players in a network game
New in Version 0.85:
- Tanks can now be moved
- TCP/IP network support!!
New in Version 0.821:
- New weapon selection menu, much quicker and easier to use
- Ported to Windows (DirectX) since I can't find a way to support TCP/IP in DOS
New in Version 0.820:
- You can now play with up to FIVE players at once!!
- Shop totally revamped - weapons classes/descriptions, plus mouse interface
- Main Menu
- 'Are You Sure?' confirmation upon exit
New in Version 0.819:
- Homing weapons
- Fixed bug which sometimes made weapons fired by player 1 disappear
- Stopped some flickery graphics
New in Version 0.818:
- Randomised variable properties
- Scaling
- Multiple graphics sets for weapons
New in Version 0.817:
- Weapons animations
- Spinning bug fix
New in Version 0.816:
- Loads and loads of new weapons parameters, including fuses, spinning weapons, icons, etc
- A few more bug fixes (you wouldn't believe how many there are to track down)
New in Version 0.815:
- Fixed bug which meant that unless you downloaded the sounds you could only use cluster bomb
- Made a tutorial on creating weapons
- Made a few tweaks to the weapons scripts
New features in Version 0.814:
- Extra weapons script features - Weapons can split/reproject once within range of their target, or when Space is pressed
New features in Version 0.813:
- Weapons bug fixes (causing lots of crashes)
- Fixed graphics/weapon scripts (I'd forgotten to include them in the zip before)
New features in Version 0.812:
- Serious speed increases
- Textured Terrain
- Numerous bug fixes