Do the words “walking tank” mean nothing to people?

Recently a good amount of demo footage from Square-Enix’s new entry in the Front Mission series, Front Mission Evolved, has surfaced. Granted they’re not making it since it’s not an SRPG like the others, rather it’s a 3rd-person action shooter similar to Mech Assault or Mobile Suit Gundam Crossfire. A lot of people have had a lot of complaints about it, and personally I feel some of them are unwarranted. I mean that shouldn’t really be surprising seeing as how this is the Internet where logic frequently seems to take a backseat to shouting loudly about your opinion. Anyway I feel it’s time to add my own voice to the mix in terms of some of the more vocal complaints I’ve seen

1. The Wanzers Move Too Slow: This is kind of a big one. Many people who have played any 3rd-person mecha game has probably not played the ones I mentioned but instead played Armored Core, a game which very heavily relies on the “gundam” model of movement i.e. strap on some vernier boosters and go nuts. Front Mission is a lot different. While you do have a system for boosting it’s often limited to just going in one direction at a time and in very short bursts. This is not anything new. Every single Front Mission that has used the boosting/dashing mechanism has done it in short bursts. Same for the Verniers (or Jump Jets for you Mechwarrior fans).  Of course maybe I’m missing something since I didn’t play Front Mission 2 or 5 (they weren’t released stateside and I’m not into modding consoles or trying to read japanese at this time), but the systems always worked the same in the 3 games I did play, if they were even there at all (Front Mission 4, I’m certain, did not have in-game dashing). As to the Wanzers moving too slow, well that’s kind of the point. “Wanzer” is a portmanteau of “Wanderung Panzer” or “Walking Tank”. Tanks, to put it bluntly, do not go fast. Sure there are some wanzers that are lighter than others and thus can move further per turn (i.e. faster) but it’s not a huge difference. None of them are going to tear up asphalt at 100 mph. They are definitely a lot more like battlemechs or the HOUNDs from Chromehounds. Weapons of war that are far more utilitarian than stylish. And perhaps the biggest thing to consider is that the Wanzers used in the demo footage by the player looked a lot bulkier than normal, so it stands to reason they would move slowly.

2. AI is stupid. I disagree seeing as how the AI for games like Mech Assault and Chromehounds seem to have only one setting: “run forward, fire relentlessly”. And don’t get me started on the AI for Armored Core. Either it’s cheap as hell or dumb as toast. In FM Evolved the Wanzers will actually flank, move to cover, make tactical withdrawls in the face of overwhelming force, etc. No it isn’t perfect, they tend to have trouble finding accurate cover from sniper fire, but it does work fairly well. Another thing to consider is that again, this is demo footage. Demo footage never seems to be cranked up to the max difficulty settings (if such a thing exists) because the demo exists to show a player what they can do, not what they can fail at.

Those are really the two big complaints, I’m not going to address the truly stupid crap like saying the game automatically fails because the developer hasn’t put out anything good. Actually on second thought.

3. Double Helix Studios Sucks. Again, disagree. Double Helix is fairly new, formed by a merger of two other companies, one of which was Shiny Entertainment. Yes we can agree that Silent Hill Homecoming wasn’t up to par, but then again it’s hard to do a good SH game if you’re not Konami. Yes we can agree the GI Joe game wasn’t very good but it’s hard to judge a company based on a movie tie-in game. But really the whole reason why this argument is dumb is because if we’re to judge future output based on previous output alone, then that would’ve meant Deus Ex would’ve never been lauded as the amazing game it is because of Daikatana. And that obviously wasn’t the case seeing as how Deus Ex is awesome

Ok so now I think I’m done addressing the complaints. Really I think it’s dumb to immediately label a game crap based on demo footage unless it’s really obviously bad, which again is not the case here. To judge a game without playing it feels disingenuous to me. So far I have to say what I’ve seen of FM Evolved is good enough for me to want to play it when it comes out next year, and I feel that it will hopefully be that good. It has what I like out of games like Armored Core only seeming to do it just a bit better. Heck it even allows you to target the specific wanzer parts like in the strategy games. So I don’t worry about it too much. I do worry about the people who spend too much time complaining about it though.

GameX: A Retrospective

So today I got back from GameX, a combination game and game industry convention that was taking place in the Greater Philadelphia area. I did do a couple tweets on what I had done while I was there but clearly that was insufficent. Since my laptop was way too broken to be of much use I’m going to have to condense everything I did/saw/found interesting into a blog post right here. Of course since this is really the first convention of any kind that I’ve been to I probably didn’t do enough things that people would deem sufficient for a con-goer, but oh well. More after the jump

More Mammoth Ministrations

So I went back and further messed around with the Mass Production Mammoth model, as well as came up with a breif description.

While the X-66 Mammoth Tank was a wildly successful battletank in the First Tiberium War, the costs involved in producing and maintaining such a gargantuan beast of a war machine kept the GDI from being able to field it in large numbers. The R&D Team behind the X-66 proposed a stripped down version, the M-66a Mammoth Tank (Mass-Production Type). The M-66a is roughly 3/4 the size of its predecessor and has only one 120mm cannon. In place of the other cannon is a mounted .50 caliber machine gun to protect the tank against infantry. The M-66a keeps the Mammoth Tusk missiles as well, although the launchers have now been angled back 15 degrees in order to intercept aircraft more effectively. With this new configuration, the M-66a could be fielded in battle at half the cost of the original Mammoth Tank, as well as being more maneuverable while only sacrificing a minor amount of armor protection. However the First Tiberium War ended before the tanks could be deployed to the front, and as such the M-66a became a relic, quickly handed down to second-line units and Special Forces teams around the globe. Many of these mass-production models were lost to time, some of them found their way into the hands of the Forgotten, and others were used by police forces in riots that occured as large portions of the Earth were evacuated as Tiberium’s hold increased on the planet.

Insomnia Creates Inspiration

So I couldn’t sleep too well last night. The end result of that was I went back to something I had worked on for a friend and turned it into something entirely different.

Some people will note that it looks an awful lot like the X-66 Mammoth Tank from Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn. They would be right, since that’s what’s inspired this design. This is a conceptual rendition of what a theoretical “Mass Production” model of the Mammoth Tank would be like. A more cost-effective tank that sacrifices some firepower but still remains a viable force on the battlefield. I’ll probably texture this at about the same time I get the Yabusame done.

It's amazing what no sleep can do

Tiny Warz: Big on Fun

Recently I’ve gotten into looking at browser-based games that are either free or have an optional pay model. One such game is Tiny Warz, a Massively Multiplayer Turn-Based Strategy Game (or an MMTBSG if you like alphabet soup). The game is free to play but of course there are some restrictions that are only lifted if you do pay for what are called “TinyDays”. Still, even without paying to play the game is very open and accessible. Not to mention fun.

Now in refreshing Lemon-Lime, it’s Yabusame!

For the heck of it I did a quick color test of the Yabusame, just flat stuff, no texturing to speak of. Apart from it now looking like the spokesmecha for 7up, it’s also colored based on the design of the Prototype of the Zaku II from Mobile Suit Gundam, which as the mono-eye sensor clearly indicates, is one of the main design influences.

BEEP. MAKE 7 UP YOURS.

UV Texture mapping is going to be a big issue here, since I did a lot of transforming and shaping and such. But first I need to optimize the geometry as best I can, since this comes in at roughly 3000 polys, which I’m sure is fine but in theory you’d want lower-poly models in a game where you’d have a lot of units running about.

More than Half the Mech it Used to be

The Yabusame is coming along nicely now. I still have some optimization work, not to mention UV texturing, but it at least looks…complete, of a sort.

Need...oil...

In Which I Bemoan the Loss of Skill

Mechwarrior 4 still has a steady multiplayer community, unfortunately that community is full of campers and cheap pilots who’s only idea of combat is to strap as many PPCs as they can onto a mech, then hit their enemies so that the electronic interference from said PPCs makes it impossible for return fire. Yes it’s essnetially become a sniper battle with giant robots. This is not, nor will ever be, how mech combat is supposed to go. Personally I partially blame MekTek for creating new weapons that have faster recycle times, but I also blame the players themselves, who have forgotten the tactical nature of Mechwarrior and instead reduce themselves to popping up from behind hills, taking a potshot, and then hiding again. It’s like fighting a submarine if the submarine was walking and had long distance weaponry. And it is cheap.

There’s no longer any balance, and I dread how this may flow into Mechwarrior 3015.

More Progress

The Yabusame is coming along. Right now I’m almost done. Just need to finish making the hand, and make the foot, and then it’s just a matter of copying over one side and texturing it.

The handless wonder

Work in Progress, for real

Taking a break from mapping again (yeah I know). I’ve refocused myself on 3D modeling, and am starting to get the feeling back for it. With this new-found enthusiasm I’ve been hard at work on something that’s related to a game design idea I’ve had for 4 years now. All I’m going to say about the idea is that it’s a Mech Combat game mixing elements of Mechwarrior, Armored Core, and Battlefield, with some other stuff thrown in. That’s said, here’s a preview of what I’ve spent two days slowly building.

Don't ask me where the legs are, they ran away.

Before anybody starts crying “weeaboo anime bullcrap”, let me explain. “Yabusame” is a Japanese word that Samurai used to describe the act of archery from a moving horse. Since mecha are often described as futuristic armored calvalry, I figured that would be an apt name. It’s obviously very incomplete, mostly because I’ve been wrestling with ways to make the joints seem functional yet also protected, but I’m getting the hang of it now. Hope to have this done by the weekend.