Tiny tanks

Review date: 12 April 2003. Last modified 03-Dec-2011. First, the executive summary. These are tiny little remote controlled tanks that fight. Up to four can play. They're a bunch of fun. They're not cheap (at least 50 US bucks per tank, plus delivery), but you get a heck of a toy for your money. And now, the full review. Konami's "MicroIR" DigiQ micro remote controlled cars are the oddest, and the best, of the widely spamvertised micro-toy-cars. I reviewed a micro-car a while ago, but the DigiQ cars are quite different from it. They're controlled by remote-control-style infra-red signals, not radio, for a start. This system works surprisingly well; the cars are so tiny that they don't need very long range controllers, and they're likely to be able to see the controller anywhere in a normal room, provided you're not hiding it under a table. The DigiQ cars' steering mechanism is also odd. Bizarre, actually, but surprisingly functional. The front wheels don't steer at all, you see. But there's one tiny motor driving each rear wheel. Independent control of those motors' speed lets the tiny cars skid-steer surprisingly effectively. The fact that the DigiQs use skid steer makes their technology an absolute natural for a tank, of course. Tanks (and some other more commonly seen vehicles) are all skid steer, by definition. Some tracked vehicles can warp their tracks a bit for wide turns, but to change direction in a hurry, you've got to skid. So now there are DigiQ tanks. And F1 cars, and fancied-up sports cars, and trains, for Pete's sake, but those need not detain us now. The really interesting thing about the Combat DigiQ tanks, though, is the Combat part. They fight and bite and fight. Let's give them the once-over, shall we? What you get Combat DigiQ tanks are sold individually (well, except for the occasional special edition), and you need at least two of them to use the Combat features. This pair is a Tiger I (on the left) and a Sherman (on the right). These are the second pair of Combat DigiQs Konami have released. The first two are a Panther and a T-34. So if you get all four, you can play a two-on-two Axis-versus-Allies game, and everybody will be able to recognise their tank. (The four tanks released so far aren't the only Combat DigiQs out there. There's already a special edition winter camouflage T34/Panther pair with bonus obstacle set; see it here. You can buy the obstacles separately, if you like, though ordinary desk clutter works fine for spicing up the battlefield. There are also a couple of Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force tanks on the way - a Type 74,

Tiny Turtle Tanks V1.1Hello, and welcome to Tiny Turtle Tanks. This is a small Unity-engine based game that I have been developing. You start playing the game as a tiny little Turtle who must travel through the galaxy, defending each planet from enemies. Free download avaialbe on itch.io at a few things that I'm proud of learning and would like to highlight from my time spent on this project.Minature Planetary gravity for (most) objectsBasic AI with multiple statesCustom water and grass shadersCustom editor (for dev tools)Creating a working menuNew art style developed in Blender and MagicaVoxelPolish with VFX and CinemachineCustom procedural voxel tree editor (not shown in game)Custom implementation of Boids algorithm in 3Dand plenty moreRules and ControlsJump, shoot, and collect powerups to win the game (just be careful not to shoot yourself in the back).WASD - MoveSpace - JumpLeft Click - ShootRight Click - Shoot AltEscape - MenuFuture development

This is why it's so very bad when a tank "throws a track", rolling the track off its drive sprocket and, usually, also off various other road and guide wheels. Loss of one or both tracks is one of the many joys of the full-sized armour world. A tank that has left its track behind, or stuffed one or both tracks under its hull, will shortly be offering some people of lower rank an afternoon's healthy exercise. The DigiQ tanks are so tiny, and their tracks are so loose (to reduce drag, and to protect the drive sprockets from damage if something jams the track), that ordinary short-pile carpet is a somewhat challenging surface for them. Turn hard on carpet and you'll throw a track, sooner or later. (Rubber tracks are lousy for off-road use at the best of times; loose rubber tracks are even worse. I've reviewed a couple of rubber-track toy tanks, one a bit bigger than the DigiQ models and the other quite a lot bigger. Neither of them can conquer any lawn that's hairier than a putting green. ) You can pop the tracks back on very easily - a corporal with a 15 pound sledgehammer is unlikely to be needed - but that's no good in the middle of a fight. So you have to restrict your play to smooth surfaces. That's OK, though. The Combat DigiQs are so small that you can stage a satisfying battle on a coffee table. You don't have to use the carpeted floor. And they are tracked vehicles, so they can clamber over small obstacles quite successfully. Anyway, once the tracks are on, you only have to do three more things before you start playing. One: pop some batteries in the controllers. As with other micro-toys, these transmitters run from ordinary AA cells. In this case, you install them in one of the hand-grip sides of the transmitter. There's the usual little embossed diagram to show you which batteries go which way up, but you may have to look hard to see it. Two: Charge your tanks. Another feature the DigiQ tanks share with other micro-toys is their tiny internal rechargeable batteries. You charge the tanks by clipping them onto the transmitter. They charge in about 10 minutes, and run for up to 15 minutes, which is good. Short run times are OK for little cars which people only want to race for a few minutes at a time; most tiny-toys charge faster than the Combat DigiQs, but don't run for very long. For prolonged strategic armour engagements, you want some more duration. If you're bashing over desk clutter or playing sumo games, you can expect rather less than

And a Type 90. They're due for release half way through 2003. The tiny Type 90 would make a nice set with the one I have already.) You don't have to play that way, though. Any DigiQ tank can fight any other one, and any two can team up. You just have to set all of your tanks to different ID numbers. Four numbers are available, and it's easy to change. In team mode, if you choose to use it, the tanks with IDs 1 and 3 fight the tanks with IDs 2 and 4. Simple enough. "How small are they?", I hear you ask. Why, they're this small. The Tiger's 56.3mm long not counting its gun (2.21 inches), 37.7mm wide (1.48 inches) and 33mm high (1.3 inches), and weighs 27 grams, with all of its detail stuff on it except for the decorative hatch that covers the IR receiver lens and makes the tank look slightly more real, but stops it from doing anything. The Sherman's a little smaller, and weighs 25 grams. The controllers weigh in at about 350 grams, with batteries. Here's the Sherman sitting on my other Sherman, a 1/16th scale Tamiya model (I've also got this one). The Tamiya Sherman could be bigger, but it's about as big a model tank as most modellers are silly enough to buy. It's also a lot closer to true scale than the DigiQ tank. Note, for instance, the extra road wheel bogies on the Tamiya. Detail that small just wouldn't work right on the DigiQ tanks, so the Sherman loses one of its bogie sets, and the real Tiger's complex set of eight overlapping road wheel sets is abridged to three pairs of non-overlapping wheels, for its DigiQ edition. All of the wheels turn, though. On some small motorised tank models, turning road wheels are an option. The DigiQ tanks are very cleanly designed and moulded, and not completely cartoonish - they're not super deformed - but they're still significantly cute-ified. Scale detail fanatics will not be able to fix them, decal sets or no decal sets. Out of the box, the tanks are almost ready to go. They lack only some cosmetic detail parts (unimportant) and their tracks (important). It takes but a moment to pop the tracks on, though. The two tanks' tracks look very similar, but they're not the same. The Tiger's tracks are slightly longer and wider. Like most real tanks, these tiny ones can't go anywhere if they don't have tracks. There are wheels that touch the ground - "road wheels" - but they aren't powered; the tracks are driven by sprocket wheels at the back of the hull, up above the ground.