Tankaar 10.08: Three platforms and half century of Astras
Tankaar reached another milestone this Sunday, 8th August, 2010. After another two months of development (read sleepless nights and head banging with code) we finally released Tankaar 10.08. The previous version Tankaar 10.06 has been disabled completely and new one is available for download. There is something which makes this version special which I would like to share in this blog.
With this version number of astras in Tankaar touched the half century mark. So there are 10 more astras as compared to the previous version. These astras present new glimpse of the capabilities of Tankaar to offer variety. So with these new innovative astras the strategy of play becomes more involved. Apart from being innovative these astras bring Tankaar closer to the Indian mythological battles. “Rath Chakra” will remind you of the instances of Mahabharata where wheel of chariot was used for defense and offence. One such instance was when Abhimanyu was caught in Chakravyhoo and he used wheel of chariot for his defense. In another event Lord Krishna took the chariot wheel and tried to attack Bheeshm, as Krishna had vowed not to use any weapon in the battle. “Divya Trishul” will remind you of Trishul of Lord Shiva. “Shila Astra” will remind you of battle of Ram and Ravana where Vanars often used rocks as weapons. Inspiration of “Manav Astra” comes from astra used by Ram against Marich, uncle of Ravana. So with this version Tankaar moves it few steps closer to Indian Mythology.
Apart from this, there are new features which you will definitely enjoy. Players often complaint that Tankaar Bot was too perfect and playing against it was like playing against Mr. Perfect of Tankaar. So you can never have joy of winning. Though we as developers know that there are ways to win against this perfect Bot too, because there is so much strategy involved in Tankaar that designing a perfect Bot will mean having true AI (Artificial Intelligence), which is still a dream in computer science. Anyways with this version you have not one but 5 bots. Tankaar Bot can be set to 5 different levels, level 1 where Bot is most stupid and level 5, where it is most intelligent and perfect. So anyone from beginners to pro can have the joy of winning against the bot.
With this version we have tried to satisfy another group of fans of Tankaar, who often complaint that why Tankaar is not for Mac. Tankaar 10.08 is available for three operating systems viz. Windows, Linux and Mac. Though I would say Mac has certain issues with Java 6. I have come across blogs and articles which say that Java 6 is available for Leopard and Tiger versions of Mac but not for others. I am not sure whether a hack is available for running Java 6 on these versions or not. All we know is that Tankaar requires minimum Java 6, if you have that then just download Tankaar and it will glide smoothly on it. Tankaar inherits platform independence from Java, so it is as much platform independent as any other application on Java 6.
Finally, we have resolved the most controversial issue, which came up when we released Tankaar 10.06. There were frequent mails of people saying Tankaar is spamming, though we had mentioned in privacy policy that it will send invitation mails automatically. Later as you know we abandoned this auto mailing. We made a policy that “we will never activate auto mailing on our server” if it is so much disliked. So in this version too there will be no auto-mailing. A more interactive friend invitation screen is available which you can use to invite any of your friends whenever you want.
Tankaar Team would like to thank all the fans of Tankaar for their feedback and hopes that this version will enhance the experience of messenger gaming.