Dark Horizons: Mechanized Corps
New Tutorials by DHMCs Community Manager
With all that, he put together some great started tutorials for new players recently so we wanted to make sure to share.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=468565749
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=469170058
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=470005886
To request new tutorials please visit the forums at:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/530645446309072126/
To stay up to date with the latest updates, please join the official game group here on steam at:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
DHMC - State of Live Development 6/26/15
We launched in July of last year, and started development on the Steam project a bit over a year ago once we received Greenlight support. The game was based off a project that we had started developing on and off in 2010, but since we launched on Steam, players have been seeing a game being build pretty much from the ground up.
Doing Live development was not new to us, but this was the first time we started it so early in the process and we have to say that it has been very rewarding for the team. Though we have had a couple moments where we have been slow to get new updates, the response we have gotten both positive and constructive criticism is exactly what we were hoping.
The Present
We have the core game elements now functional for our Faction Wars system, including base mission mechanics, economy system, mech customization system, persistent balance of power map, squad management systems and our core mech functionality, and basic AI functionality.
The game has come a long way, but we know that some of the systems are still rough (i.e. Mech movement, AI functionality for SP and online support, and visual fidelity). So for our next part of the journey and to live up to expectations set by ourselves and all those whom have and continue to support us we are taking steps to improve in these areas.
The Road map
Though we are not putting dates on the roadmap at this time, we can tell you we are already working on several of these items. As we get close to implementation we will be sharing details.
- Updated AI systems and Single Player
-- The current AI system is receiving updates in the next couple patches to make SP and MP games involving AI bots a more competitive experience.
-- We will be updating to a new AI system that allows us to bring to the game a more compelling SP experience, along with bolster AI support of Faction Wars missions.
- Engine updates
-- Updates to visual Fidelity to bring in line with modern game engines
-- Physics and animation system updates
-- Updates to hit detection
- New Gameplay modes for MP and SP missions
- New customization's
-- New equipment pieces (repair bots, ammo stations, radar jammers, etc...)
-- New ammo system allowing you to purchase ammo per weapon
-- New torso and legs combos
- Cross platform support. We will still be pushing a Linux branch client out that does not support the Steam overlay. As we work toward updating our visual fidelity and adding more AAA features we will be working also toward a fully functional Linux and then Mac Client.
The Team
Many do not know that Max Gaming is a fully functional game studio whom has been part of development of well over 50 titles across mobile and PC games over the last decade. We are mainly funding development of DHMC ourselves with help from EarlyAccess. With the focus now shifting to bringing more Polish to all aspects of the game we have been able to add more resources.
Outside of adding a couple more programmers and a art resource, we have also asked one of our long time community members to join as to help with the community. We would like to welcome DeMyztikX to the team, whom will be helping us get the word out, be the point person on setting up community events and available to answer question on the forums.
You should still expect updates to the game every 2-4 weeks, and we will be ramping up our community and public relations output over the next couple months.
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
Patch 0.0.8.1 is now Live!
For this build we worked on making the AI bots a bit more competitive, included in the patch are the following.
Patch 0.0.8.1 Notes:
-All new AI Configurations
-Improved aiming for AI
-AI will now only fire at a target when it has a shot
-AI will now lose target if they lose LOS
-AI now will switch weapon groups correctly and make use of all of their weapons
-AI will now try a suicide run if they run out of ammo and there is no repair bay
-AI will now try to navigate around players and other AI to avoid getting stuck on someone
-AI will now only go to capture pad if no one is on it
-Other misc tweaks to AI combat behavior
-Tweaks to Canyon Assault to improve AI on that map
-Pacific Station map redesigned
-Bug Fix: fixed an issue where you could lose credits when building/editing a mech.
-Bug Fix: Abolisher second top mount can now use seeker missile/rockets correctly.
-Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where launching with an illegal config in SP would cause issues.
-Changes to powerplant energy settings
-Changes to jumpjet settings
If you have comments or suggestions please feel free to post in the following discussion:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/598198173701741165/
To get info on organized community fights join the official game group.
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc
More info on the State of Development on the games roadmap will be posted soon, we look forward to sharing with you whats coming.
Faction Wars Test is LIVE!
The first iteration of Faction Wars is now available to play on live.
We will be holding a few events over the next two weeks, and publishing patches to resolve any issues as needed. Join us for the first event tonight as the FS and EC battle for MARS! at 7pm EST/4pm PST.
Demy will be presenting the game via Twitch - http://www.twitch.tv/demyztikx
http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc/events/191746403284300696
Checkout the live map here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=447877579
Patch 0.0.8.0 Notes:
- Faction Wars is now Live!
- While you may still use the server list to access games still, the new and preferred way is the faction wars map, just click on an activate sector to see live games running and join an active battle.
- Earn credits in battle and purchase new mechs, weapons, and equipment with credits.
- Sell your old mechs for credits or place items in your inventory for later builds.
- Access inventory from the inventory button on the hangar screen to view and/or sell items in your inventory for credits.
- Each player starts with 5 million credits in their account.
- Every 24 hours you login to the game you earn a daily bonus of 50,000 credits
- New Mars map Canyon Assault
- More weapon balancing
- AI tweaks to make them use torso twist and avoid side stepping
- Ghost Town has been updated for a larger play area.
- Redesigned lobby UI
- Redesigned end of game UI with additional info on your player stats. Screen now stays up twice as long too and has the option of exiting the server early.
- You now get a scrap Credits bonus for total kills.
- You now get XP and Credits based on how much damage you deal out in game.
- Default new mech color is now white and grey
- New Spectator system on no respawns that follows the mechs still in play and lets you switch between them.
- You now get XP and Credit percentage bonus based on which faction you fight for. The current bonuses can be viewed in the factions tab.
- If you belong to a faction you now spawn on that factions team initially. If you are a merc then it auto chooses like before.
- Team spawns are now dynamic in faction wars. If EC owns a sector, then EC will spawn as the defender not the attacker and vice versa.
- New server rotations for FW
- Attrition Game Type now has a 16 ticket option for faster games.
- Bug Fix: Stability fixes
- Bug Fix: Fixed issue where steam cloud could get corrupted and cause the game to not load
- Bug Fix: in SP you can now spawn up to 15 AI.
- Bug Fix: Fixed bug where Nuclear Fusion Cannon beam is now destroyed if the weapon is destroyed while firing.
DEV DIARY - Faction Wars PT. 2
Balance of Power Map
Derived from DHMC’s predecessor Lore: Invasion the balance of power map allows players to see what the current state of the war is in the universe in real time. As sector battles take place the sectors will gain a battle icon and allow you to join the battles that are in progress.
As shown in the following image, players will also be able to see at a glance what the current status is of the sector, how close the attacker is to taking over the sector, and how close the defender is to defending the sector.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=436926286
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=436926515
Once either the defender or attacker reaches 100% on the sector it is successfully defended or taken over. If taken over the sector will change ownership and the attacker will now spawn as the defender in future conflicts.
In the future, contract raid missions will also show up in the missions select but for now only attrition and team death match style missions will be part of Faction Wars.
Faction Bonuses
As a reward for owning sectors, each faction player will receive a XP and credit bonuses based on which sectors they own. The bonus information will be displayed on the sector information and a player's total bonuses will be displayed in the player profile..
For mercenaries, they will get the bonus based on the missions they fight for each side in the current iteration. In future interactions mercenary units will earn bonuses based solely on their reputation with each faction. The plus for a unit is that their bonus will persist and not just be based on the mission at hand.
Mercenary reputation will be based on how successful the mercenary unit has been in its missions for each faction.
New in-game Lobby
To help make the in-game lobby more information, we have been working on a redesign of the lobby as seen below. This lobby may not be available until 0.0.8.1 but we will attempt to have it in for the 0.0.8.0 build.
In the future, Faction Wars battles will limit players to only 5 mech configs they can take into battle, so we will update the lobby to support this selection in the future.
AI Updates
AI will be continually worked on to help enhance both single-player and multi-player gameplay over the next several releases.
In the upcoming 0.0.8.0 Alpha release the AI will sport new configurations to help increase their effectiveness in battle. We are also working on trying to fix some of the AIs movement issues that we hope to have in 0.0.8.0 or 0.0.8.1,
Next level of AI improvements will be around working with its player controlled teammates more effectively. We will be updating some of the functionality of the laser targeting system to also give commands to AI from the player to attack specific targets.
Other Updates
Linux client - We are still trying to troubleshoot with Steam an issue with the steam overlay. In interim, right after the 0.0.8.0 release we are going to look to release the current Linux client in the beta channel. To NOTE, this beta channel release will not support the Steam overlay or SteamOS until we can rectify the issue with Steam.
New Missions - Faction Wars 0.0.8.0 update will ship with 2-3 news missions, with an additional sector mission available about 2-3 weeks after the launch of Faction Wars.
To ask questions on this DEV Diary please post on the following discussions:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/620712364038235875
To be kept up to date on scheduled events we encourage you to join the OFFICIAL GROUP at http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc .
APRIL DEV DIARY Part 1
Because Faction Wars is such a huge addition to the game we are going to post a 2 part DEV DIARY for April leading up to the 0.0.8.0 release which will have the next big phase of Faction Wars.
For part 1, we are going to discuss some of the systems we are adding that will tie both Faction Wars and single player aspects of the game, this focuses around earning and spending Credits as part of the game experience.
Credits and how you earn them.
Credits are a currency that you can only earn by playing the game, you cannot buy them with real money, via the persistent multiplayer portion of the game (Faction Wars), online play, or through playing offline (single player) missions.
Players will earn credits based on both their performance and their team’s performance in-game. This includes factors such as number of kills or assists the player gets, whether the player’s team was successful, credits for salvage for the winning team (a credit bounty for each enemy mech destroyed by your team) and amount of damage inflicted. (Mockup of new results screen below).
(note: this is purely a mockup, though its close to the final in-game layout)
Will there be other ways to earn credits?
The answer to this is yes there will be a couple other ways. All players will begin with enough credits to build out a couple of custom mech configurations which will help them get started. Players will also earn credits each day that they log into game (as a stipend from the merc guild or your selected faction that you fight for in Faction Wars).
There were also be other additional method for earning credits in future releases (beyond release 0.1.0.0) which include, but are not limited to:
- Player market (the ability to sell parts and builds)
- More complex salvage system
Spending Credits
As we previously mentioned one of the uses for the player to use Credits on will be building mechs! Currently in-game you can build as many chassis as possible with no limits. As a planned feature, with the implementation of Faction Wars, players will now earn credits and then spend those building out their mechs. The following item categories will cost credits:
- mech chassis
- weapons
- equipment (targeting laser, ammo deployer, jumpjet, etc…)
- engines
- extra armor
- additional ammo (future feature)
So essentially every component used in building your mech out.
Future updates:
- Squad upgrades
- Custom mech builds
- Additional mech slots
- and more...
Can you try out a config before purchasing?
This feature will come in a future release, but until then we will allow players to sell back the build at full price for an unspecified time period while we pull in analytic data to ensure that your credits earned is balanced with your credits spend.
With that said you also can sell just the base chassis of a build and strip the weapons and put them into your inventory (for use later on a future mech config that the player will want to create). A mockup of this functionality is as follows:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=431133920
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=431133566
Once an items is in the player’s inventory it can be used in future builds without any additional costs, or the player can choose to sell the item on their own.
In Closing
So that is the credits and inventory systems at a high level. Please feel free to post questions or make suggestions in the forums . http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/618460171315113977/
Tune in next week, we will be posting details on the rest of the upcoming 0.0.8.0 patch including:
- Faction Wars, Balance of Power map
- Faction bonuses for territory control (XP and Credits bonuses)
- New in-game lobby layout
- New AI and default config layouts
- Status on some other items
- New battlefields
- Linux update
- New team member introductions
Upcoming events
May Faction War Fridays! We will be hosting Friday events again focused on the start of the 2nd Machine Wars. We will also be looking to host more events on Sundays also.
To be kept up to date on scheduled events we encourage you to join the OFFICIAL GROUP at http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc .
DEV DIARY & Patch 0.0.7.4
Updated gameplay video and screenshots
We wanted to thank everyone who helped us grab some new gameplay footage and screenshots for the store page on steam. Here is a link to the new Alpha gameplay footage.
https://youtu.be/LRQFd8KqJak
We will be making some new videos over the next couple weeks to go thru some tutorials on building out you chassis, setting up squads, and of course Faction Wars functionality as it arrives.
Latest patch notes for build 0.0.7.4 released 3/15/15 :
Redesigned UI
- Games now opens up into Hanger
- Play now button will let you access SP and MP games
- NOTE: The FW Map is not in this current build, will return shortly as its being redesigned.
Weapons rebalance
- Removed energy as a weapon restriction
- Added extra info to the weapon/equipment popups in the hangar
- Beam lasers changed to burst fire weapons like the Nuclear Fusion Cannon
Hanger Updates:
- Illegal parts are now removed automatically when switching chassis on a new build and when editing an old illegal configuration.
- Added addtional info to Weapons/Equipment tooltips
Misc BUG Fixes
- BUG FIX: Music slider in options now saves correctly
- BUG FIX: Deployable turret now shoots one laser bolt instead of two.
- BUG FIX: Fixed bug where it would go completely dark in the hangar when you alt tab in fullscreen.
- BUG FIX: Chat no longer clears when opening the hangar.
- AI now waits until countdown is completed to start spawning and they now spawn in 5 second intervals instead of 10.
- AI now switches configs on respawn.
- AI will now rebalance teams on respawning.
Key Features from patch 0.0.7.3
- Faction Wars - You are now able to join a faction, including joining a squad to a faction.
- Squads can now promote and remove members from their squad.
Whats up Next?
- SteamOS/Linux we are still working to resolve some issues with the Steam overlay. Please keep a tab on forums for more info.
- AI updates. Working toward better AI of SP modes and Online modes.
- Faction Wars. Along with AI updates we are continuing to work toward fully functional online campaign system.
- New missions and mission types.
- BUG Fixes
Patch 0.0.7.3 Live
Here is the detail:
NEW FEATURES:
-Faction Wars Update 1 Phase Features:
Squads can now promote and remove members from their squad.
-Faction Wars Update 2 Phase Features:
You can now change your faction from Overload Mercenaries Guild to Eastern Confederation or Federated States.
If you create a squad it will make the squad's faction the faction you were using at time of creation. Once you are in a squad you have to be the squad's faction. When you join a squad it will automatically switch your faction to the squad's faction. The Squad owner can change the faction which will change everyone in the squads faction to the new squad faction. Currently the factions do not affect gameplay but this will be in the next patch.
-Factions Tab now shows info on all 3 factions currently in the game.
UPDATES and BUG FIXES
-Flak cannon has be updated to be top mount only, reduced direct/splash damage and updated battle points cost.
-Nuclear Fusion Cannon has splash damage removed and battle points cost updated.
-Larb and Sniper Rifle also have had their Battle Points cost updated.
-Fixed a bug that was causing some shadows to disappear at angles.
-Fixed bug causing Squad Stats to not display.
NOTE: more weapons balancing will occur in the next couple patchs as we tweak the new weapons and add in new equipment.
Discuss the patch here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/617329150710430853/
Coming Soon
- Faction Wars Update 3 - squad listings, battle bonuses, sector ownership
- New Equipment - Ammo deployer, Nano repair station, Radar jammer
- New battlefield
- Weapons Matrix (all the stats!)
DHMC DEV DIARY 2/10/15
Engine update status
As we dug deep into some performance issues on Windows and Linux we looked at the latest updates for our game engine to help resolve some of these problems (as well as provide new features). As such we made the decision that for the past few weeks, our programming team would put some new features on hold so we could do a major update that will benefit everyone.
While this meant that we were not able to put out updates to features like Faction Wars as quickly as we had initially hoped, the good news is that most of the issues that had been blocking updates are now resolved! So we should have a patch up soon.
Art Updates
While our programming team has been tackling this engine upgrade and performance issues the rest of the team has been hard at work in several other areas.
One of the most significant updates has been with updating the weapons and mechs that are currently in the game with more detailed geometry and textures. Though we are only part way thru these visual updates, we will be integrating this new content as we complete it. Here are a few shots including a updated Viper mech with new mesh detail, texturing, and a sampling of some of the weapon updates we have done.
Mech chassis updates
The art team has spent some time looking at the current mech chassis and starting adding more detail into the geometry and in the texturing. The Viper chassis (being the first mech that we made for the game) is the first to get a makeover.
New weapons textures
Below you see the latest Viper chassis with an assortment of the updated weapons models.
Is that a new hanger you see in the background? Why yes it is!
Weapons balancing updates
We have been lucky enough over the last couple months to be able to collect more data around the weapons and also see how different players outfit their mechs. During this time we have found some imbalance issues and have been working on updating all weapons to better fit their designed functionality.
Though not all weapons will change, we have touched about 70% of the values, with that we will be posted a detail of the changes once they are live. Why? Because any current configuration will likely be affected.
We have also added in some chassis specific power plants so configurations can get the custom power and system specifications it needs.
Faction Wars
Though not in the immediate upcoming patch, more Faction Wars functionality is coming very soon with the ability for individuals and squads to join Factions and the Faction interface to include initial functionality.
We will be holding a mock war event in a few weeks which we will post soon including the dates for the event!
Linux and SteamOS
Now that the engine upgrade is completed we can now finish the Linux/SteamOS client port. The initial release of the Linux client will be very early alpha, but with the new engine upgrade we have improved performance a good bit. For more info on the port please visit this forum post:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/616189106649380833/
Shout out to our supporters
We want to thank everyone whom has shown their support for the game, and to help celebrate you, we are going to start looking thru posted screenshots and then share our favorites on the forums. The team would especially like to thank Sophisanimus for his extensive thoughts on the weapon balancing and of course dedication to the game. Thanks again, and we hope to continue to earn your support.
Join the DEV DIARY discussion here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/618453594739384001
Patch 0.0.7.1 LIVE
NEW FEATURES
-New Map Pacific Station (map #3 in dedicated server rotation after Arctic)
-New Rocket Pod Turret
-New ARC 4 Barrel Turret
-Faction Wars Updates:
-The owner can now change the squad name and/or tag.
-You can now edit the squad rank names and permissions those ranks can set.
UPDATES and BUG FIXES
-Laser Turrets in Arctic now fires out of both barrels.
-Fixed an issue that was causing the faction wars server to go down.
-Scaled some of the weapons to be larger.
Coming next......
- More Faction Wars updates with BoP map
- Weapons balance pass #4
- More missions
NOTE: We will be setting up some games times this week which we will be broadcasting on Steam!