Hey there, nice to meet you! My name is Chad Mauldin and I am a game developer and I have a deep love for mechs and mech games. Some of you might know this and think I am being silly, but I feel a lot of you reading this right now might not know this. This is my fault. You …
Hotfix 0.6.17.1
Minor hotfix to address some UI issues. * Player level will now display correctly.
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State of the Game #243: And it Begins Again
Yes, the Summer update is out and its back to monthly updates! I have been very busy this past week, following up on the Summer update, I went into Seattle to attend both a Twitch developer reveal conference as well as PAX West. Both of these were very great events for us, with a very different focus than what we …
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State of the Game #242: The Summer Update
The summer update is here! This update is packed with goodness, but the core focus was on overhauling the UI system. Every ui screen received a complete redesign, along with user testing, to rebuild it from the ground up! It all starts with a new Main Menu, focused on the core of what MAV is about, awesome looking mechs. The …
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Terra
The two massive war machines clashed again, making the ground shake under their awesome power. The one with humanoid legs and a red stripe around its chest pushed the lighter vehicle backwards, but the latter drew away graciously, moving over digitigrade limbs, trying to avoid the mining spikes the rebel pilot was so adept of. The military machine fired the …
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State of the Game #241: There is no Done
No, the update is not delayed 🙂 The title of this post is actually a reflection I had yesterday. You see, I had produced the first release candidate build yesterday for the Summer update and sent it out for testing. I have learned quite a few lessons the hard way when it comes to testing, so I actually had a …
Join the Adventure!
History is waiting for you! For years our civilization has struggled against the depletion of the fleeting resources Mother Earth had in store for us. We, as a species, have grown far too much for the meager confines of our home world. From our humble beginnings, carving tools out of stone, to the grand civilizations that made the wonders of …
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State of the Game #240 : Heads down
Sorry for the short update. I am heads down working to get the Summer Update out. I have finished the current garage UI and have moved on to the Battle report screen. Rachael has been driving for quite a bit of quality and I feel like it is paying off a ton! Here is a work in progress shot: That …
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Pwyll Crater Complex
Augusto GĂłis lowered his head to avoid banging on the bulwark as he passed underneath it. In here everything seemed to be working just fine, too. Looking around, the engineer checked all the valves and pipes passing through the frame of the structure. Still nothing seemed to be truly wrong. Some leaking from the water pipes, but that happened sometimes, …
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State of the Game #239 : Paint by Numbers
Have you ever sat and thought about how un-intuitive a set of sliders or even most ‘advanced’ color pickers can be to people that are not used to tools like photoshop? Like, could the average person make Orange, using a set of RGB sliders? Sure, a color fan mixed with a value slider is a bit better, but how long …
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Will I Dream of Him?
>\File selection – R001_08/31/2078 Booting memory … Playing Action cancelled Transcribing … Displaying… >\Start\ So, yeah, this is me – I mean, you – speaking. Okay, bad start… Let’s go again. This is AlizĂ©. Your past self, anyway. I don’t really know why I am recording this. It has been a long time since I felt the need to …
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State of the Game #238 : Quality of Life
Small things really add up to make a big difference in the enjoyably of things. That is the lesson I have been learning this week, and really the whole time I have been working on MAV. Some people would just yell “Your just talking about polish, you dolt!”, and I wouldn’t say they are completely wrong, but this feel different. This …
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Genesis of a Rebellion
If demonstrations could change anything they would have made them illegal. The people gathering in the streets of that city cried and screamed, and pumped their firsts into the air, thinking such a show would actually change the minds of those overseeing their lives back on Earth. But they wouldn’t care. They didn’t care for the masses that starved under …
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State of the Game #237: The Big Bad Garage
I feel like I have been here before, tackling the garage UI and functionality, making everyone’s lives better. I believe this is version 4 or 5 of the garage, but it’s a HUGE part of the game. The first task has been actually dismantling the current UI system. It was a tangled mess of mixed code, a giant 4,000 line …
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The Captain and the Rebel
That would be the last attempt to resolve that crisis before they arrived. Of course, they would come and unleash their terrifying destructive power on the colony. Although it had been him to send the distress signal, Captain Idris Layeni still felt that he needed to disarm the situation. Give it one last, desperate, try. Others would have believed …
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State of the Game #236: Another screen finished!
I have finished the pregame lobby! The new lobby is functionally better, is designed with the future in mind, and I feel looks pretty nice as well! And now, the next big undertaking is the Garage. As I get to each screen, the design gets easier and easier, as there is a larger pool of assets to reference. The difficult …
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The Epitome of Waste
The battle was still raging. The white plumes of missiles and rockets arched across the skies, as the warheads ascended and then crashed onto their targets. The golden treads of tracer rounds cut through the air, as the shells flew straight and true. The staccato sound of gunfire and explosions echoed through the hills in a crescendo of fire and …
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State of the Game #235: The value of progress
Wow, it’s been a very busy week! I have been spending a lot of time this week getting things ready for other people, as this week marks the first time there are 3 people other than myself working on MAV. I am still continuing to work as well, of course, but at a bit of a reduced pace as I …
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Evening News
Good evening. This is Travis Bailey, and welcome to the Evening News. We’ll start with the ongoing crisis in Luanda. The clashes between rioters and security forces started one week ago, after the depletion of the stocks of flour and vegetables in stores. There is still no plan to replenish these stocks, as the food situation in the sub-equatorial …
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State of the Game #234: Back to work with a change of pace
I’m back from vacation! It was a very lovely trip, we went and saw many parts of the south west and west coast of the US. Of course, I couldn’t stop working entirely, but without my developer desktop, I was a bit limited in what I could do. So, I started working on an end to end solution for linking …
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State of the Game #233: Vacation
This week, I am doing something I haven’t done in the over 5 years I have started MAV. I am taking a family vacation! I know some of you might have been expecting an update this week, since I promised a suprise, and I am sorry to disappoint you with that. However, the surprise is actually already in the …
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A Piece of Heaven
“So, he did everything to save the flower, dad?” The boy’s words almost went over Jié’s head. Although the eyes of the miner were centered on the display in his son’s hands, his mind was drifting way beyond the cartoonish pictures bouncing under limpid blue skies. “Are you listening, dad?” This time the boy managed to …
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State of the Game #232: Tease
One week left in the month! Time keeps on flying and the work is just shooting though. I ran into a bit of a snag this week as I continued to ponder the exact methods and game flow I wanted to put into the new pre-game lobby. In wanting to support screen sizes ranging from 720p to greater than 4k, …
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0.6.16.1 Build Released
This is a minor patch. Knock back effects on cockpits has been reduced by a factor of 100, across the board. Yes, a factor of 100.
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Welcome to the Revolution
The second troop transport shattered, more than exploded, when the rounds tore through its flat flank and emerged from the other side. The innards of the vehicle flew over the scenery in a multicolored shower of armor plates, internal components, and hapless soldiers. The assailant then trained his crosshairs at the last of the eight-wheeled transports and fired a final …
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State of the Game #231: The goodies pile up
So, another week of great UI work for me! I have finished up the single player menu and the multiplayer server browser and have moved on to the pregame lobby. The pregame lobby is getting a bit more than just a visual uplift though, as it needs some new functionality to better fit MAV as a game right now and …
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State of the Game #230: Just keep working
This week, I am in a heads down, bulldoze through, full force work mode. I have been falling behind, significantly, with the rate of my production. It’s painful to me to admit, but it was because I was not enjoying what I was doing. Sometimes, important != fun, and I have really let that get in my way in the …
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Brasswolf
At that moment, the memory that hit her more strongly was one of emerald fields, azure skies and a warm breeze. Her parents had been farmers, growing corn in the wide plains of Colorado, their hearts and minds turn earthward while their daughters dreamt of the starry depths of space. As they grew, though, reality settled in. The …
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State of the Game #279: UI Preview
After continuing to work on the UI, I figured it’s time for a bit of a preview! This should give you a good overview of the style that will be present in the final version. Functionality wise, it’s greatly improved from the current version. Less clicks to do the same actions, all while better communicating the functionality to the players. …
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State of the Game #278 : Cresting the hill
Another week of UI work down! This week I have been hard at work on the new flow of the single player game options screen. A LOT of what this new UI/UX experience is focused on is making things very easy to understand and for controls to operate in an intuitive manner. There is of course an ascetic upgrade happening …