Work on this game started about 3 years ago in May of 2013. Development had recently been canceled for MWLL, one of my favorite games to play and I was inspired to create my own mech game. The first thing I did was create a crude mech model in Blender and make some walking animations for it. My plan was to take it into Zbrush and make a high-poly version later but in order to keep this whole thing feasible I later decided to have a retro look for the game, something looking somewhere in-between MW2 and MW3.
I had some previous experience with a friend messing around with Cryengine Free SDK trying to make an FPS game (A game that I still plan on making at some point.). My friend was doing the programming but things came to a halt when we ran into obstacles in the code, he became more busy with school and work and eventually we stopped entirely.
When I was inspired for my mech game I used Cryengine, it was very difficult though, I did not have enough programming knowledge to do anything with the source code. Pretty much all I knew how to do was use the editor and basic importing of assets, I don't even know why I even thought it was feasible to try on my own but I guess my enthusiasm for the game drove me forward.
Work on Cryengine came to a halt when the plugin Cryblend which allowed me to import my mech model stopped working and remained unusable for years. The project laid dormant for about 2 years until in March of 2015 my friend recommended that I check out Unity for my game, he said it would help me with programming because in Unity you create everything from scratch using your own code from the get-go, minimizing the confusion that comes from trying to work within code that is written by someone else. I tried it out and within a week or two I had my mech in-game walking on my terrain with torso-twist controlled by mouse movement! It was a dream come true, Unity was the key to making this all possible.
With that being said I wanted to publish a road map of milestones showing how the game has progressed over a year and where I intend to go with it.
Basic movement and torso-twist controlled by mouse and keyboardNetwork code that incorporates an authoritative server, so that clients cannot easily cheatClient-side interpolation of other mechs so that they don't look choppyClient-side movement prediction so your own mech doesn't seem laggy- Projectile simulation that controls bullet flight paths through the air plus rocochets and penetrating through materials, MUST pass performance testing or be dumbed down. Working on this right now
- Get the projectile simulation working on the network, with client-side prediction, server-side lag compansation, etc. the whole she-bang
- Create basic collision models for the mechs and get them working with the projectile simulation, create simple damage and death rules so that some mech fighting could actually begin.
- Get a working HUD in game
- Start coding the inner-workings of the mech, heat management, electricity draw, ammo count, etc. and tie the functionality of each component to a collision model on the mech so that those things can be individually damaged and cause either minor inconvenience all the way up to catastrophic failure when hit by enemy fire depending on what component was hit.
- Work on mech resistance shields and get them working.
- Work on sensors and detection of enemy mechs and it's integration with the HUD
- Create a cockpit model that incorporates screens in front of you within a large chamber where your chair will move around to diffuse G-forces.
This is a short list of things I was able to write up right now, I've crossed out the features that I have completed already. These are not necessarily in chronological order either, I might jump around a little bit depending on my mood.
Right now I work a full-time job in the low-voltage installation industry, I don't work on this game all the time but recently it has really ramped up and I plan in the near future to quit my job for at least a year and live off of saved up money so I can work on this game full time and hopefully get a somewhat completed version out in that time.
Cya later for now, thanks for reading!
