Mercenary Games : Battle Systems Prototype

[Mercenary Games]

Howdy, we'd like to present two game engine prototypes.

We rigged an interface that makes you design your own combat maneuvers.




This prototype package also features lasers bouncing off shields.


use this link if you want the EU version.

Interested?

Starting Monday Apr 9 @ 4:20PM Pacific, we'll take on some test pilots.

required system specs :

• Windows XP / Vista / 7
• RAM : 150MB
• GPU : Nvidia 9800GT
• Skype or Dropbox.

 

[Mercenary Games]

to clarify, those are the minimum system specs we need to run our engine.

 

[Ulminati]

Sounds interesting. I'll get in line at the recruitment office and do my duty for ze vaterland

One thing I noted while looking at the videos was that it might be useful to have an overlay with numbers/icons on the various ships. (Possibly an option to have a faded overlay of the fleet in it's previous formation. This might help in minimizing distance/rotation of large numbers of identical ships such as the shield vessels when switching in a clutch situation

 

[skuphundaku]

That's a good idea! I would take that and up it: how about displaying the original position of a ship translucently, so that, when creating a new formation, you can have a point of reference and keep track of how much each ship has to move in order to transition for one formation to another. Of course, this is relevant only if the the transitions aren't going to be so fast as to make their duration tactically insignificant.

P.S. If you need Guinea Pigs, count me in too.

 

[Average Manatee]

GPU : Nvidia 9800GT

Wow, I presume this is not the expected minimum for the final game, right?

 

[Ulminati]

Another thing you may want to consider is the rotation speed on your ships. It is most visible in your beam weapons test. Because the rotation currently slows down gradually to 0 degrees/sec, the last few degrees come agonizingly slow. If you are planning to bounce laz0rz about, that may be somewhat annoying. Maybe let the ships keep maximum rotation speed going for a bit longer and the slowdown/speedup on rotation be faster?

 

[Mercenary Games]

Thanks for the input on the interface.

I won't be able to implement those for tomorrows test, but I will keep track of the feedback from this forum.

The rate of angular shifts, as well as position shifts will be upgrades in the final product. I'll see about making rotations and shifts faster for this forum demonstration though.

Yes, the 9800GT is the minimum spec for the final build. We wanted the rig to roll out in very old systems that deserve games, we don't like the hardware rat race the GPU industry likes to force on gamers.

Also, I would like people who want to test this build to have a Skype. I'd like to chat live instead of posting to the forums tediously. Faster feedback allows me to track potential bugs you may catch.

And yes, thank you for your interest

 

[Mercenary Games]

Reporting in.

Skype : sync.hacker

Meet you all there.

 

[Mercenary Games]

gonna be on and off keyboard, be back around 6:30 pacific.

 

[skuphundaku]

Thanks for the input on the interface.

Yes, the 9800GT is the minimum spec for the final build. We wanted the rig to roll out in very old systems that deserve games, we don't like the hardware rat race the GPU industry likes to force on gamers.

I think that what Average Manatee meant to say is that Nvidia 9800GT is quite a steep requirement. A lot of older rigs (and not so old ones too) and most laptops don't have that kind of horsepower. The thing is, when most people see a 2D-looking RTS/RTT game, they assume it doesn't use hardware graphics acceleration or that, if it does, it doesn't compete with Crysis in the "highest minimum requirements" weight category.

 

[zeitgeist]

very old systems that deserve games

4 years (9800GT was released in 2008) is "very old" now?

Your minimum system requirements are higher than Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Shogun 2, The Witcher 2 and, well, almost any recent game.

if it does, it doesn't compete with Crysis in the "highest minimum requirements" weight category

They're higher than Crysis 2.

 

[Ulminati]

I'll add my voice to the list of baffled people. It's not too much of a problem for me personally since both my laptop and desktop have never cards (barely, in the case of the laptop) but the game does not strike me as that graphically intensive. I assume it's some fancy shader that's being used somewhere that forces this requirement? If the requirement is shaders version x.y, you might seriously want to consider adding a fewer-bells-and-whistles option to allow the game to run on slightly older graphics cards. I can think of several dedicated linux users from my college days who'd play something like this, yet whose computers have aging graphics cards since they generally don't bother with 3d games.

Can you provide any insight into how you decided that a geforce 9800 was the minimum? Especially since your stated goal on the kickstarter page was an eventual port to iOS/Android

 

[skuphundaku]

Can you provide any insight into how you decided that a geforce 9800 was the minimum? Especially since your stated goal on the kickstarter page was an eventual port to iOS/Android

Counter-intuitively, iOS/Android devices are a safer bet when it comes to having some up-to-date graphics acceleration hardware. Unless we're talking about low-end smartphones, most iOS/Android devices DO HAVE an OpenGL capable chip that is reasonably fast given the screen size of the device, which is not true when we're talking about PCs, some of which have only token graphics acceleration hardware (older computers, computers with an integrated video chip, most laptops, almost all nettops etc.). Despite all of this, I still think that the 9800GT is an extremely high minimum requirement.

 

[Mercenary Games]

Thanks for the intel and info.

Yes, we the lowest graphics card build we have tested is the Nvidia 9800GT, though we have hit the 7600 GeForce. We're still testing this, and we'd like to see where our hardware requirements hit. We aren't a big studio, so we don't have a lot of gear. We aren't sure about which graphics card we can roll on the minimum. And I'm sorry to say, but 4 year old hardware is "old" in the game industry. I didn't make up those rules man, just sayin.

If you guys want free ride in our prototypes : hit me up on skype : sync.hacker. I can send the build there.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Yes, we the lowest graphics card build we have tested is the Nvidia 9800GT, though we have hit the 7600 GeForce. We're still testing this, and we'd like to see where our hardware requirements hit. We aren't a big studio, so we don't have a lot of gear. We aren't sure about which graphics card we can roll on the minimum. And I'm sorry to say, but 4 year old hardware is "old" in the game industry. I didn't make up those rules man, just sayin.

In 90s and early, 2000s, yes. If I understand, correctly, in present times "old" means "released before X-Box 360".

 

[Ulminati]

Sadly, I posess an irrational hatred for Skype. I noticed the kickstarter mail thingmabob talked about using dropbox, so I'll chime in for that instead in a bit.

 

[Kz3r0]

356
Backers
$12,389
pledged of $12,000 goal

Congratulations.

 

[Kz3r0]

They launched a new campaign on Indiegogo, correlated with their Kickstarter, the gist of it is that they want to create a iOs version and are offering a so called omnipass, with it you will acquire FleetCOMM, the actual name of their game, and all the subsequent expansions, this is multiplatform, as an example this means that with one purchase you can have the Win, Linux, Mac version and eventual Xbox version too.

The Indiegogo page:
http://www.indiegogo.com/fleetcomm

Kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mercenary-games/vigrior-maneuver-warfare/posts