Blog #122 news - Battle for Dune: War of Assassins

Hey everyone, sorry once again about the lack of updates. Real life and other things really do grab our time but we have been working don't worry. Now, this blog is pretty much all done by our coder, triattack. He has been working on a lot of new things for War of Assassins including redoing our old scripts!

To start off, we have a special stealth detection script which allows the Scout to detect stealth in a E:BFDish style. It works by the Scout having his Binoculars equipped and being uncloaked so he can uncloak any nearby enemies, then after some time he will cloak again (so it can hide again) and allows after the timer is expired it can be detected again.

We also have our own split MCT (Main Frame) system and a special repair mechanism that will be talked about in a later blog. The health of the building is split between 2 objects and once 1 is destroyed it means that the building's health is cut by 50%. For the rushing type of people amongst us this means that they will have to destroy 2 points per building or just tank rush the enemy base.

As seen in the last blog we have something that is unseen on W3D, sprinting. It’s still a WIP though as some things need to be tweaked for the sake of balance but in the end it should be as smooth as sprinting in battlefield or any other modern FPS/third person shooter.

Another script that is done is the deploy script for the Mortar and Kindjal. This script required some testing and tweaking to find the right solution for the game. Deploying in BFD is all about being immobile as infantry and still able to shoot which isn’t something the W3D engine isn’t good with handling. There are several ways of doing this, all with their pros and cons. In the end we have chosen for the simple method that can be compared with entering a mortal in BF3. where you “enter” the deployed weapon. This way you won’t have to worry about moving the vehicle and not being able to shoot or being stuck in mid-air because you deployed while jumping. Once everything is more to our liking there should come a video showing this.

Last but not least there is the worm script, an incredible script which is still WIP but it WORKS! There are only a few bug fixes needed and then there is a really nice worm that ignores the hard ground and randomly comes above ground to attack the units which should weigh the most together (yes it will chase a group of sand bikes over a single harvester). Just as in Dune, a worm feels vibrations from the ground (not really but that is how it theoretically works if you ignore that this worm “sees” ). Once the worm found a tasty meal, it will chase it until it’s death or it's attacked something from the group. If the group is dead or not able to be attacked, it will go underground again. This whole idea sounds simpler than it is in practice, this is why the code still requires a bit of tweaking and making sure it also destroys targets in its mouth while he is not chasing them.

I hope this gives a nice idea of how work is going and I hope to have more scripts to talk about later on. As there are some really cool scripts planned and WIPs (for example a new harvester/carryall script combination). If you have any questions about the scripts post them and I’ll reply to them.

triattack

We are currently recruiting new staff members and testers!

Staff we're looking for are:

- 3D Modelers
- 2D Texture Artists
- Riggers
- Animators

If you are interesting in apply please apply in our Recruitment section or PM me here.

That's it for another Battle for Dune blog, we hope you liked it! Be sure to keep following us here, over at our site, Facebook and Twitter!