On June 18 Max Gaming came to COSI (center of science and Industry) to show off Dark Horizons: Mechanized Corps! COSI is having a exhibition called Game Masters that shows games throughout the years including bios of famous game developers including concept art and game design documents. If you're in central Ohio go check it out! COSI was looking for local game developers to join the exhibition and to get some hands on feedback on the unreleased version of DHMC, we happily agreed.
On site where Jillian (Community manager) and Steve (Designer and programmer), and before they could finish setting up- there was a crowd of people gathering excited to see the game especially after seeing it was a Mech game. Once everything was open it was a consistent stream of people sitting down to try out the latest build. This was a very exciting day for us, as it was the first time anyone outside of the development team that had played and reacted to the game in its new engine.
The players mostly consisted of parents with their children. Lots of the dads nostalgic and commenting on how they havn't played a mech game for a decade. Even though the build is still in alpha, everyone who played it had a great time fighting against our new AI opponents.
There was a lot of people who signed up for a chance to win copies of the game and are ready to jump into action again. Overall it was a fun show and we're glad to get new fans and to people loving the game as much as us.
Stay tuned for more upcoming insight into the next release….
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DEV Diary 5/23/16 - AI Update
The original AI in DHMC was structured in a way that made things difficult to make it smarter and harder to predict. We decided a full rewrite of the AI was in order to address these issues.
We have chosen to use a couple of approaches to fix these issues. The first issue causing difficulty in the live implementation is the overall structure of the coding, which was very difficult and time consuming to implement new features. This has been replaced by something called a behavior tree. Behavior trees allow you to break up the AI into tasks, for instance a task to go from where the AI is standing to a position on the map somewhere. Then from there you can build a tree structure based on logic nodes and these tasks to create the AI. Not only does this allow for easy addition of new tasks the AI can perform, but it also simplifies making multiple types of AI (patrol, sentry, etc.) The other benefit this provides is we can create simplified trees that do certain things to test the parts before testing the whole tree.
The other issue of predictability we are working on is to create a maneuver system. You could think of this like plays in football. Basically the AI chooses a strategy when engaging in combat like a circle maneuver where it circles the target while firing at them. By creating a lot of these maneuvers for the AI to choose from, it can make the AI less predictable vs the current AI in live which always uses the same tactics.
These things form the basis for a simple AI like we had before, but gives the ability to add on more complex things like squad based AI. We will have more footage and information in a later update on the AI system, but I will leave you with a screenshot of the AI firing at other AI.
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DEV Diary 5/2/16
Hot off the presses of our last update, the team wanted to share some info and screenshots of the new mech appearance and customization. We have been working to revamp the look of the mechs with a new material setup and some texture tweaks. Bare metal and damaged paint should now look much more convincing, and the mechs as a whole have a more battle-worn feel to them.
Additionally, customization is now back in full swing, with the ability to change primary and secondary color (including alpha), as well as camo once more. The way camo is handled has also been changed to better bring out the true color of the mechs. Our next step will be to reimplement grunge using some new shader techniques, and tweaking the decals so they better blend in with the underlying armor of the mechs. As promised here are a few shots of the new changes in the hanger:
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DEV Diary 4/10/16
The next Dev Video Diary is still coming but we wanted to do a normal dev diary for a status update today. We are in the process of finishing up a first build for the new patch to release in the beta channel for testing and feedback. We are working on a rewrite of the AI in the game, polishing up the first 3 levels available, polishing up the UI, polishing up the weapons/equipment, and ironing out any major bugs.
This first release will allow you the players to try out the new patch in a pre-release state as well as provide feedback to us. It also helps us find major bugs we missed out on our systems as well as better testing on linux and mac clients.
We took the game to GDC 2016 and it was received well by those who saw the new patch content. We are excited to release it to you guys as well as soon as we can. We however do not have a release date for it yet, but will update with more information once we get closer to release.
That is it for the update today, if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments section. We will end this post with some updated screenshots of the game in Ubuntu Linux.
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DEV Video Diary 3/11/16
The staff thought we would start doing something a bit different with our update posts going forward in 2016. This first DEV video diary is a bit longer than we will be shooting for in the future, but since we have been heads down since the end of the year there was alot to catch you up on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjkcSjb7EdY
NEXT TIME......
Review of new weapons FX and some more detail around how single play and multi-player campaigns will co-exist in the Faction Wars system.
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DHMC Dev Diary 12/22/2015
First and foremost the team wants to wish everyone a happy holidays and thank you again for your continued support. That said we have a few updates we would like to share with you on the state of development.
Winter Sale! DHMC is on sale during the Steam Winter Sale.
Upcoming update - We will be posting an update sometime this week to the current live version of DHMC. This update will be solely focused on adding some more single player scenarios to the current game as well as a slight update to the 1st missions.
The update to the 1st mission adds an additional success criteria to the mission. After destroying the Radar array the player will also need to travel to an extraction point in order to successfully complete the mission.
The team will post more detailed update information the day it is released.
Road to next major update - The team is continuing its major update/upgrade of the game and is making great progress. The hope is to share this progress with you in a playable version in the first of of 2016 when we will be moving from an alpha state into a beta state of the game.
Among the changes we have talked about in previous posts to movement, animation and physics of the mech we are also working on upping our visuals in all facets of the game. Below are a few pictures on new things to come in the first part of next year.
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
UPDATED animated mech hanger
NEW - Ambient battles action (Above is a battleship battle)
NEW - updated urban gameplay environments. Improved visual, improved navigation.
DHMC Dev Diary 11/1/15
The month of October has been another great month for development of the game. As our designers are making progress on new mission environments, the programming staff has been working on some retooling and cross platform testing.
The team is working to make sure the next major release will include support for not only windows but also Linux and Mac platforms via steam, hopefully with support for a wider range of hardware. No release date yet for the next major update.
As a quick sneak peak we thought we would share a few pics.
(NOTE: These pictures were taken in and unfinished environment)
As you can see the Windows and Linux clients have similar graphics quality
The Mac client is running on a lower Intel graphics card, and though there are some noticeable differences the game is still playable on the card.
Stay tuned next week for some more of the new visuals from the game, plus info on an upcoming minor patch to the current client with some new missions.
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DHMC Dev Diary 9/28/15
The staff wanted to share more of what we have been working on over the last month. The team is focused on making some major improvements to the game including SP/MP campaign re-envision, networking improvements, IK/animation updates, new AI, and overall improvements visual quality.
Last Dev Diary we showed some of the work adding IK to the mechs and animations, so this update we wanted to make it short and just share some screenshots of new environments we are working on.
The design team is very excited about the way the new environments are turning out, and are working on several new missions for release later this year.
We will work on giving development updates more often and we appreciate all the continued support for DHMC.
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DHMC Dev Diary 8/28/15
Been a very busy month behind the scenes for the team as we work on more Contract missions, internal redesign of how SP and MP will converge to fuel the Faction Wars campaign and some major updates to the games graphics and animations.
We are not ready yet to share the vision that the players have help shape for SP and MP, but we are at a point with some of the new updates to the game graphics, animations and physics.
No more floating mechs!
One legacy issue, we pulled in from Aftermath, was that it was built on a platform made for FPS and lacked the ability to do cool things like IK (Inverse kinematics). We are now in process of implementing IK which is being combined with our animations. This is a big change that will really affect the way the chassis moves and reacts to the environment, including giving them a much more sense of weight.
Example 1 (Viper standing on uneven ground)
Above is old vs new IK on mech
Example 2 (Abolisher)
As you can see the feet and legs of the mech chassis now conforms to the ground instead of floating above the ground. This may seem like a simple thing, but in our next Dev Dairy we will share some video and these changes will become very apparent in how the mechs move.
Higher Fidelity environments
Another part of what we are working on are higher fidelity environments. This includes more detail to the terrain and the objects in the levels, along with larger environments more similar in size to the Arctic Battlefield.
Speaking of that battlefield, here is a shot with the new terrain which really bring to life the feel of being in more of a glacier type environment.
Other larger environments are in the works
Coming next
The above changes are still a bit away from being released, and in the next Dev Diary we will share all the some more of the behind the scenes happenings. Coming in the near term we are focusing on providing more SP contract missions and improvements to current MP missions.
Next Dev Diary will coming in about a week! Look at for shots of the work we are doing behind the scenes, and we will also share with you the player inspired re-envisioning of Faction Wars!
To join the conversation hit the forums:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions
To keep up to date join the official game group:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DHMC Downtime this coming Sunday 8/9/15 - and patch.
We are in process of moving to a new backend server setup this week, and this Sunday we will have a short period of downtime while we switch to the new environment.
With this we will be pushing a patch for the game that will need to be downloaded, this patch will include same fixes and new features for the game. It will also include some more weapons balancing from the last build and some other goodies people have been waiting on.
