Welcome back for another week of development!
This week, I present to you, Version 0.4.0!
For this version I set out to work on balancing the parts a bit more, but it became very apparent to me that there was still a lot of things to be worked out before I could balance everything. So, while I was still working on the game theory and designing the systems, I set out to polish other areas of the game.
The first thing I tackled was setting up parts, other then weapons, for the procedural part generation system. To do this, I decided to create a new set of Biped legs to be the first test part. After I had the model created, and all the attachments, the generation system needed some tweaking to handle the new setup.
Once I got all the setup taking care of, I threw the pieces in to see what would come out. Well, from the pieces I put it the system was able to generate ~ 11,000 sets of legs, all of them visually unique! That number of parts quickly relieved the inadequacy of some of the other systems and pretty much broke the whole game, in every way possible! But, at least the generation was a success and I discovered the areas that need work. After that experiment I parsed the generation down to just 4 new parts.
To go with the new variety of legs I created a new cockpit as well. This cockpit served as a good test for me on further refining the art direction, as well as providing a cockpit that fills a role between the other two that are currently in the game.
So, with 4 new legs and a new cockpit, I moved on to getting the generators in the game. I got a generator made, with 2 additional variations, but I could not establish the system I wanted to use for this part type. Since I could not decide how I wanted to define the role of the generator, I did not fully implement them. They are in the game and you can check them out (and equip them) but functionally they are little more than spacers / armor pieces.
So, as I working on game theory and trying to figure out what to do with the generators, I started polishing up stuff that was already in the game.
Here is what I polished up:
*Redid the Animations for all legs
*Tweaked the foot placement system in-game
*Adjusted the turning speed on all the legs (much slower now)
*Pulled the camera further away from the M.A.V. in 3rd person
*Adjusted the acceleration and braking speed of all legs
*Adjusted the shadows strength
*Adjusted default spread on shotguns (made them tighter)
*Adjusted the bullet fire effect
*Adjusted the Sniper fire effect
*Adjusted sniper impact effect
+Added much tighter collision boxes on all the legs
+Added impact sound for bullets (shotguns, machine guns, assault rifles)
+Added impact sound for cannon shells
+Added impact sound for sniper rounds
+Added fire sound for cannons
+Added fire sound for Howitzers
+Added fire sound for shotguns
+Added Camera post process effects
+Added 4 new biped legs
+Added 1 new cockpit
+Added fog to the Desert level
+Added fog to the Mountain level
+Added dust storm weather to the desert level
+Added ambient sounds to the desert level
+Added ambient sounds to the mountain level
-Removed ‘bounce’ effect if two or more cannon shells hit close together
For the upcoming week I will be focusing on the level design of the game and adding in environment models. This includes things like level layout, better building, trees, rocks, foliage, and getting the AI to plan and react to the terrain as well.
See you then!
[Reminder: M.A.V. is currently in Alpha funding for $10. If you want to participate in the Alpha program and get access to the weekly builds, you can sign up for an account Here, and upon logging in you will be presented the option to purchase an Alpha membership.]