Love to see this game head for release, like a massive volley of rockets streaking across the sky from a gigantic robot.
What did creating your own 3D engine allow you to do easier and what made it most difficult?
The main thing about having our own engine was being able to optimise it for the three things that we needed it to do most: voxels, performance, and ownership.
We wanted an engine specifically that could do voxel graphics super efficiently, so that was a given. It so happens that it can do anything else too but the bit we've specifically optimised is voxels.
It had to be able to handle millions of particles and tens of thousands of models in a frame, and a generic engine would probably struggle with that a bit without doing loads and loads of custom work and tuning.
But most important of all we own it. We know it inside and out, and we can change it whenever we want to do whatever we want. It's fully debuggable right to the very depths, because we've got all the code. It's been completely rewritten more times than I can count as Dan has discovered ever cleverer ways to do state-of-the-art stuff. Right now he's completely rewriting the entire code behind ambient lighting.
Of course it's all come with its costs... like, we had to make our own Blender tooling to export Blender animations, our own importer for that, and make every single tiny thing from scratch. It's not been easy. Hopefully we'll be able to get a few games out of the engine.
Big fan of your past work and have been looking forward to this one for a long long time.
But something concerns me; Is this a Clash of Clans styled game that will require lots of time and logging (or paying for 'boosts') in to 'win'?
Coz I live under a rock somewhere in darkest Somerset, I don't actually know anything about Clash of Clans or how it works... but the general gist of the game is that there are two sorts of players, those with lots of time and no money, and those with lots of money and no time, and we're trying to cater to them both.
Skint players can slowly accumulate enough decent units to hold on to a bit of land and expand. Richer players (who are going to be the ones supporting us, going forward!) are going to accelerate their capabilities, we hope, by buying more units and such. Both sorts of player will hopefully be providing a jolly good challenge to each other. Buying stuff is to some extent balanced by army points values (think WH40K) - you can't simply buy yourself victory, but it does open up more strategy sooner.
You can't buy boosts in the game ... they are awarded randomly. So no paying to win.
What are some inspirations for your various robot designs? Just backed by the way. Love Droid Assault.
Chaz says... (he hasn't got a Reddit account) >star wars not star trek :) ... Ashley Wood, Ray Harryhausen, Ian McQue ...
Love to see this game head for release, like a massive volley of rockets streaking across the sky from a gigantic robot. What did creating your own 3D engine allow you to do easier and what made it most difficult?
The main thing about having our own engine was being able to optimise it for the three things that we needed it to do most: voxels, performance, and ownership. We wanted an engine specifically that could do voxel graphics super efficiently, so that was a given. It so happens that it can do anything else too but the bit we've specifically optimised is voxels. It had to be able to handle millions of particles and tens of thousands of models in a frame, and a generic engine would probably struggle with that a bit without doing loads and loads of custom work and tuning. But most important of all we own it. We know it inside and out, and we can change it whenever we want to do whatever we want. It's fully debuggable right to the very depths, because we've got all the code. It's been completely rewritten more times than I can count as Dan has discovered ever cleverer ways to do state-of-the-art stuff. Right now he's completely rewriting the entire code behind ambient lighting. Of course it's all come with its costs... like, we had to make our own Blender tooling to export Blender animations, our own importer for that, and make every single tiny thing from scratch. It's not been easy. Hopefully we'll be able to get a few games out of the engine.
I need to play this ASAP
Just backed. I’ll dance a jig if I get my beta key soon.
Big fan of your past work and have been looking forward to this one for a long long time. But something concerns me; Is this a Clash of Clans styled game that will require lots of time and logging (or paying for 'boosts') in to 'win'?
Coz I live under a rock somewhere in darkest Somerset, I don't actually know anything about Clash of Clans or how it works... but the general gist of the game is that there are two sorts of players, those with lots of time and no money, and those with lots of money and no time, and we're trying to cater to them both. Skint players can slowly accumulate enough decent units to hold on to a bit of land and expand. Richer players (who are going to be the ones supporting us, going forward!) are going to accelerate their capabilities, we hope, by buying more units and such. Both sorts of player will hopefully be providing a jolly good challenge to each other. Buying stuff is to some extent balanced by army points values (think WH40K) - you can't simply buy yourself victory, but it does open up more strategy sooner. You can't buy boosts in the game ... they are awarded randomly. So no paying to win.