We are working on what we are calling a developers release in late June. We are lucky to have Quin, one of the Red Eclipse leads to help us. This is very exciting and will enable us to deliver a fully working game based on Red Eclipse (about 1.3). This will include campaigns, bot missions and online multiplayer. There will be many more different game types than the original game, however it will include
MA classics such as destruction, team destruction, CTF(with variations) and Base defend. There will be a number of mutators such as LMS to add even more variations. This first cut will feature a mek you can customise the load out of its weapons. You will be able to edit your maps, even cooperatively, online with your friends. Ther will be a huge collection of open licenced models to play with. If the gods of cross platform compilation are smiling there will be Windows,
MAC and Linux versions. Sorry no 360.
The aim of the first cut is to start to balance the weapons and gameplay, test some new gameplay & mission features and ultimately work out some designs of meks for the second release. We will need testers and mappers to help us.
This next release is slated in vaguely for the second half of this year. This release will feature multiple meks, a closer approximation of
MA gameplay, as well as some novel new game features.
The new development site is
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mekarcade/
The game site is still
http://mekarcade.com; its due a major redo soon, we are trying to work out how to implement online world with clans and a persisting galaxy.
Cube2 engine on XBL & PS3
I recently was able to confirn in discussion with CEO of Proper Games that they have ported the Cube engine over to the Xbox & PS3; their game Flock, uses it. They had to rewrite a lot, some for licensing reasons and some for technical, eg changing all the OpenGL to DirectX. It is nice to know that MekArcade could one day get to its natural home.
Mad March Modelling Month!
Despair was required to finally fix the 'stork' leg problem on the first Mek. True, unremitting despair, but it worked. Now I have to 'split' the mesh and implement torso rotation etc. We also have the first 'human walker' mek coming out, we are calling it Adam, as I hope it will father a family of human walkers. I will post a preliminary design in the preproduction forum later.
Also as part of Mad March we are churning out map models, particularly 'destructibles'. Things like oil tanks and ammo dumps will use a generic explosion, so there won't be any animation as such, just a frame with a squished black splodge. Things like buildings and bridges require there own unique collapsing animation, so they are more time consuming. Then theres street lights & signs, which can probably done with a single skeletal animation with different tops. Walls, gates and doors I am not sure about. My memory is they sort of dissolved into dust and rubble.
New Recruits.
March has been a good month for recruiting, we now a have a 'sound guy', a linux compiler & tester, an experienced Cube mapper and someone who actually wants to be a tester. The team is expanding. I would still really like some more people from the
MA and
MW communities to sign on, particulaerily for their knowledge of meks, maps and weapons. Eventually we are going to start to do replica maps of
MA1 which will require people with knowledge of the maps to work on them.
Afterword.
I plugged my laptop into the Plama TV, ran one of those joystick/gamepad emulators, plugged in 360 controller and fired up MekArcade. 50 inches of pure destructive meka joy. It's going to be fun!
