KickStarter BattleTech Pre-Release Thread

[Alienman]

Damn, a 80's retro story thingy would have been awesome...

 

[Destroid]

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Don't recall seeing this clarification in previous Q&As:

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Next Q&A on Apr12th, perhaps they'll let slip more details on the beta:

HBS_Dagger

Admin
18 minutes ago

As many of you know, Chris Eck, was a BATTLETECH Backer and then applied to be our Tools Engineer when we opened up that position last year. When he came in for his interview, he was clearly a bit starry-eyed and even took pictures of the studio before he left "in case he didn't get a chance to come back." (of course, he was coming back - he was awesome!)

He'll be on for the first half of the Q&A answering questions you post here about what he does, what it's like to work at HBS, if he likes Seattle, what he loves about BattleTech, etc. Then Mitch, Mike, and Tyler will take your live questions for the second half hour.

So telll us - what do you want to Ask Eck?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Very Star Warsy, I rather like it.

 

[Starwars]

That dude is one of my favorite game composers today. He does great work.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Same here, the soundtracks for Dragonfall and Hong Kong are amazing. I was really pleased to hear he'd be doing the music for BattleTech, as well as seeing that they are using the same artwork team they had work on Shadowruns.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Dragonfall soundtrack is fantastic. Dong Kong = meh.

 

[Infinitron]

Most of the music in Dragonfall is from the original Shadowrun Returns soundtrack, which isn't by Jon Everist.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Explains why that's great and Hong Kong's music sucks dong dong.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The best tracks like Shock & Awe were by Jon Everist.

 

[Zarniwoop]

The BEST tracks?

Bitch please. The best track is Dragonfall.

Although to be fair that was also by Everist

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Yesterday's Q&A available to watch apparently, will prob watch later today and summarise here if someone else hasn't yet:

It's currently available on NGNGTV's Twitch channel VOD's, (no subscription needed right now) https://www.twitch.tv/videos/135188158

Based on how it's been done for the previous two HBS DEV Q&A's...

Soon it'll be available on their Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS_5K7X8sAt...

And shortly after that it'll be available on HBS's Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/HarebrainedSchemes/vi...

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Watched it, first half with Mitch, Mike and Chris Eck was a bit of a chat about working at the company and what he's up to. Quite an interesting behind the scenes view of the place. But most of the meat regarding the actual game development details is in the second half when Tyler Carpenter replaced Eck.

Christopher Eck: tools designer, backer, how he got the job
- Mitch passed on the juicy gossip that Jordan is very bad at the Battletech pods
- Chat with Chris on his most difficult tool: getting Unity map tool data to work with a non-Unity server
- Most proud of dynamic logic allowing designers without coding knowledge to put together events and write custom logic
- Initially worked mostly on art pipeline tools, recently more with designers and mapping tools
- Mitch said he hired Chris partly because he's not shy of asking tough questions, like when in his first week Mitch fired someone
- Unity update: didn't affect him personally too much, adversely affected editor performance while they were changing source control software and servers at the same time so a 'perfect storm', unexpected as previous Unity updates hadn't had as much impact
- Map editor release? Currently in Unity so would have to be distributed with all 3rd party tools etc, would only work in Unity, no polished UI, needs dev oversight and tinkering. So not feasible. With SRR the editor took 1 person plus some support a full year to develop, huge investment. Focus is just on the game this time. SRR was also in 2D, 3D adds issues.
- Mitch excited about the cutscenes and music

Part2: Exit Eck, enter Tyler Carpenter to join Mike and Mitch
- Hired new IT guy
- New tester, worked with Mitch at Microsoft
- Chat about Mike McCain being hired after being a contractor, Mitch: "should warn you I've fired 7 art directors before"
- Movement differential between slow and fast mechs has been narrowed, but not significantly, nature/character of the mechs hasn't changed
- Beta not this month, when confident in a date will announce
- Mechlab still under development, Mike says can now customise a mech according to its hardpoints and take it into a skirmish in their current build, but still needs work and polish. "Smurfy's online tool was a reference point"
- Dynamic lighting/weather does not change during a mission, but between missions. They particularly like the sunset ones.
- Definitely attending MechCon2017.
- Coding: Use C#, with JSON for serialised data files
- Still working on different ideas to ensure all weapons have a viable role on the battlefield
- Tyler's favourite weapon manufacturer in BT lore: Sunbeam Corporation
- No free "ton of ammo" when designing a mech, just a warning you're about to launch a mech with no ammo
- Asymmetric combat available in pvp, eg 1 assault vs 4 lights, option to require full lance or not, option for only stock mechs or not
- Archer not likely for launch
- AI a modular system based on roles mechs can fit in to on battlefield
- Silent protagonist from audio standpoint, choose your dialogue options but not voiced
- Discussion on what everyone is working on. Combat, multiplayer a big focus right now. Simulation game, event system, single player story, etc. Art in full production track to get more assets in the hands of the designers. Mechs far along in animation and textures.
- High level draft of the story done, missions/cinematics blocked out, but iteration on actual writing and dialogue ongoing
- Hard to say how long the game will take, including multiplayer and ongoing procedural campaign confident there is a good amount of content
- No omnipods (not the era for that)
- No "vertical slice" likely in the near future, essentially 3 games under development tested individually at this point (combat, simulation, story campaign)

 

[Infinitron]

Beta not this month, when confident in a date will announce

Damn.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

essentially 3 games under development tested individually at this point (combat, simulation, story campaign)

Bane of many projects that sounded good.

I think Mandate is a good example of a game project that tried to do too much.
Damn thing promised to be space combat/ squad based tactical combat/ crew & story management game with simulated world. Thought it was all too good sounding to be true.
(tbh. Star Traders 2 has exactly the same pitfalls, but at least it is not 3d.)

 

[Infinitron]

Wouldn't take that statement that drastically. It's more like how you could say X-COM is two games.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Wouldn't take that statement that drastically. It's more like how you could say X-COM is two games.

Oh, I'm not saying that this project will be vaporware or something like that.

What I meant is that they are building a game which promises to do said 3 (combat,simulation, story) things in one package.
Good combat games are hard enough to do, but when you add simulation part (I assume that they meant economy and game tracking players reputation/actions and reacting to it) and story parts; then project runs the risk that differing parts don't quite fit and the game may thus under deliver on some of the promised features.

Battle Brothers is probably better example of what I was aiming at.
Tactical combat/ CYOA / World simulation. I've mostly heard good things about first 2 elements, but they had to level scale the world to make simulation parts work.

Besides X-COM is bloody unique.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

And here's youtube embed of recent Q&A

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, it can be difficult as hell getting the separate elements working together and this is a more ambitious game than any of the Shadowruns. I expect a creaky mess at launch, that will eventually be patched and balanced by some Director's Cut or Enhanced Edition.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Yeah, it can be difficult as hell getting the separate elements working together and this is a more ambitious game than any of the Shadowruns. I expect a creaky mess at launch, that will eventually be patched and balanced by some Director's Cut or Enhanced Edition.

Or there will be that one part of the game that you just click through to get to the good parts.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I'd say a good example of the difficulties ensuing from trying to do too many things would be Bloodlines and the wasted time and resources on the abortive multiplayer component. Though it's arguably if that miscalculation was as significant a factor for the game's barely-made-it release and day one patch as the decision to use beta Source.

 

[Cudgel]

- Mechlab still under development, Mike says can now customise a mech according to its hardpoints and take it into a skirmish in their current build, but still needs work and polish. "Smurfy's online tool was a reference point"

This is nice to hear.