☀️ Tank lessonshow our diep.io tanks do what they do

How our tanks do what they do

People keep asking how the Halloween tanks pump, bite, watch, swing and fade. None of it is a mod: every trick is built from the three things the sandbox tank editor gives you, barrels, parts and auto turrets, set up in ways the stock tanks never use.

Each lesson below is one trick. It comes with a tiny demo tank: step through how it is put together in a mock of the editor (same panels, same field names), press Play to see it move, then download the pack or copy the tank and open it in the real editor to poke at the numbers yourself.

Start with lesson 00 if you have never looked at the Layers panel; otherwise jump to whatever you were wondering about.

Importing a lesson pack

In the editor's pack screen press Import pack and choose the .diep-pack file (or drop it on the window).
Pick Import as new pack. (Add to this pack also works and puts the demo tank into the pack you are editing.)
Select the tank and press Play to spawn as it. Lesson tanks sit at level 1 under the stock Tank, so they also show up as an upgrade.

Or press Copy tank JSON on a lesson, open a pack of yours in the editor and press Ctrl+V. All 24 demo tanks are also in one pack, the lesson 22 boss included: tank-lessons.diep-pack.

Lessons 19 to 22 cover what the editor update of 6 October 2026 added: parts that ride parts, parts that keep their heading, your own colours, and bosses (lesson 22 includes the boss stat levels of the 9 October 2026 update). The editor now labels custom tanks #C1, #C2 … in pack order; the mock here does the same.

The demos here are a sketch of the game, not the game: speeds and timings are approximate, and the editor's own preview does not animate at all. What the field names and numbers do is exact.

How the editor draws a tank

Barrels, parts and auto turrets are stacked in layers, and the body splits what draws over it from what draws under it.

A face that keeps the team colour

Paint anything you like over the body, as long as the body itself stays on Team color and shows through somewhere.

Drawing with barrels

A barrel that fires nothing is a rectangle you can put anywhere, hair-thin or fanned out, even across the middle of the face.

Spinning parts and a pulsing light

Spin speed turns a part on its own, and two stars spinning against each other read as a light that pulses.

Parts that pump

A wing or a leg that moves is a barrel firing a harmless speck, because every barrel that fires slides back on the shot.

Eyes that watch

An auto turret turns toward the nearest enemy. Make its disc the eyeball and let the pupil ride on it.

A tail that swings

A turret with a narrow arc, facing backward, mostly rests; when the tank turns it lags and settles back, and anything riding it swings.

A hand that follows the cursor

An auto turret with Range 0 that aims with the cursor rests at its Facing, swings to the cursor while you hold fire, and drops back when you let go.

Two cursor pivots resting apart swing together when you hold fire, and invisible barrels along the jaws hurt whatever is caught between them.

Limbs that live

Give a cursor pivot a Range as well, and the limb twitches toward passing enemies while you are idle and follows the cursor while you fire.

A body that trails behind

An invisible rear barrel that always fires a shot with no speed leaves a segment wherever the tank was, so a chain follows every bend.

A dash on right click

An invisible barrel pointing backward fires a harmless shot with huge Recoil, and the kick throws the tank forward.

Hiding the body, keeping a hitbox

Shrink the body to a dot and give the figure a hitbox of its own with a Collidable part.

Shots that are pictures

A projectile has its own layers, so a bullet can be a bat, an egg, a skull or a spiky star with an eye.

Ghosts that fade

Invisibility is three numbers, and parts marked Visible while invisible stay drawn while the rest of the tank is gone.

Staying under the lobby's budget

The lobby refuses a tank that fires too much, keeps too much alive or has too many pieces; here is what counts and the one stat that buys you room.

A missile that steers itself

A bullet with a backward barrel on it is a rocket. Put that barrel on an auto turret and the rocket turns toward whatever the turret sees.

A missile that bursts

A short barrel that fires when the missile dies is a warhead. Put that barrel on a second, short-sighted turret and the missile goes off by itself when something comes close.

A salvo that fans out

Six missiles leave the tube as one, a sideways recoil barrel kicks them apart a moment later, and each bursts when it dies. The missiles are drones, which is what makes the volley affordable.

A part that rides a part

Since the October 2026 update a part or a barrel can sit on another part. Spin the carrier and everything riding it goes round: moons, a lantern wheel, a chained tail, a gun ring that turns and fires.

A part that keeps its heading

A part's Rotation can be Fixed. It then holds its angle in the world while the tank turns, like a dominator's base or a compass needle.

Your own colours

Every colour box now takes any colour as a hex code, with an opacity slider. A body painted this way still gives its Same-color parts the team colour, and the new Fallen swatch is the stock bosses' grey.

A boss of your own

A pack can now spawn bosses. A boss is a record in the Bosses tab that wraps one of your tanks: a size, a health bar, a brain, a behaviour, a spawn ring. Here is one, and what the game does with it.