Allied Tank Attack Gets A Graphics Upgrade

Good weekend everyone! If you are in the US then it is Memorial Day weekend and many are already out and about traveling. This also is where domestic arcade news has been slow as not much ever seems to come along for Memorial Day weekend. It’s not Memorial Day yet but I salute those that have served, thank you for your service.

With InJoy Motion’s Allied Tank Attack manning my location, I’ve shared some feedback with them and Barron Games. They have been very receptive to that feedback, some of which I have collected from players, and yesterday I received a new graphics upgrade for the game. It is not a massive overhaul in that it looks wildly different but it fixes some things that were an issue and has brought it more to a level of where the game should have been in the first place.

The game originally shipped with an Asus nVidia GT640 1GB card; the upgrade jumped to a Gigabyte nVidia GTX660OC 2GB. It also came with a new SSD that was loaded with a software upgrade and a DVI cable. Originally it had a standard VGA cable. Just the cable change helps improve the image quality a little bit but after replacing the appropriate hardware, I was ready to go. I put together this video to show the differences although I forgot to grab my 1080p camera at home and had to use my lower quality 720p camera. I’m not happy with it as it’s hard to notice the differences thanks to the lower resolution, grain, and auto-focus but it will do for the moment; I will probably fix this on Monday.

As mentioned it is not a massive change but what I do notice: 1) The frame rate has improved to the point where it is consistently solid and smooth. It varied a lot between smooth and choppy in the previous build but now it sails along perfectly. The inconsistent frame rate was the biggest issue at hand so that has been fixed. It is quite noticeable when you open a new area and the game “unlocks” it (the blue/yellow barrier thing). That is a little unusual when you first come across it but before the effect was a bit choppy. 2) The colors are more vibrant than before, which I believe is mostly due to the DVI cable and it is very noticeable in certain areas where there are a lot of plants. In areas like Mission 1-1 and 1-2 that have a lot of flowers, I noticed a difference right off the bat. 3) Changes to the explosions with more smoke and particle effects. Subtle improvements to the lighting. It’s hard to put my finger on it but the tanks look slightly different and also some explosions (particularly big ones) have a subtle rainbow lens flare shooting from them that certainly wasn’t there before. Now when you destroy the Transcopter in Mission 1-2 a huge cloud of smoke billows outwards as opposed to the vehicle simply disappearing. Of course in regards to those animations, it would still be welcome if the vehicles would shatter in the pieces from the 3D model itself but

I need to spend a little more time with it to catch all of the changes but as I said, it is better. So thumbs up to InJoy and Barron for working to improve the game for players and operators to enjoy.