Hello there, HLP community.
A few weeks have past, and after the warm welcome we received we made our self at home here. Since we are currently at the start, and mostly depended on codechanges (which already shape up quite nicely) there isn't that much "substantial" to show in the first place. However, I want to pick up one suggestion from one of the welcome threads and introduce the current team, and besides that show some minor stuff and grant some foresight to what's coming in the future.
First, let me introduce the team to you : Currently we are 6 Members, 2 of us HLP Veterans. The coding department is based on
magic and
codemonkeyjonathan, and newly reinforced with
niue. On the modelling side its currently
karl, hades and myself.
The Goal of our project is, as I already said, a technically enhanced, and more modding friendly version of the game. That's why I picked that name for it. For those of you familiar with Battletech will know that "Omni" could be taken as the term for "easy moddable" (meant for mechs that could be refitted easy with different weapons in the field, developed by the clans, and therefore called "omnimechs"). IMO it fits very well to what we have planned with Mechcommander.
What's currently in the works ? Our coders are currently working on two major issues.
Magic is revamping and creating a completly new logistic system, that will be in the end turns out more similar to the Mechlab from MW4/Mercs, which will allow a more battletech like fitting for the mechs, also there will be a enhanced economic part in buying and selling components and mechs. Besides that, he is fixing the existing alpha and the editor.
Codemonkeyjonathan is giving the graphic part a revamp, that will include many different objectives once finished. Not only will we be able to raise the polycount of objects with a LOD System together with the max polycounts the engine can display per screen , but also the resolution of textures will be raised and will be enhanced with bumpmapping. Since the game is 10 years old, and was developed for the systems from the past, we have quite a huge playing field for upgrades to newer systems).
Both will be assisted by
Niue whereever he can.
Karl has volounteered for the job of the "mech creator" and is adding new and even never seens mechs to the game. Here is one of his first works, which turns out very great already :
Hades is already upgrading buildings to give them a higher polycount. Take a look at this to get a feeling what we are aiming for (the dark one is the old lowpoly) :
I for myself decided to give the vehicles a try and will also create a few more buildings in the future, sofar only turrets have been done. Take a look at this, to get another idea what the changes will become like. Again the small truck in the lower left is the retail version :
Of course, this will all still take a lot of time, and will need a lot of testing. So everyone asking questions like "when are you done ?" will be punished to help us
And to give you people something to stay focused on this project, let me say this :
We have agreed to release the Alpha to you once we fixed a few bugs in it. it features :
- ca. 75 different mechs (more than 90, if you take Clan variants into account). Retail Editor had only 29.
- ca. 70 vehicles (including variants) featuring different chopters, powered armor types or the vehicle probs movable. Retail had 34
- a few new buildings
- a different purchase system (different from what we plan, so this one is obsolete)
- an updated Carver 5 campaign ( a little more challenging)
- Magic's Exodus Campaign
- Single missions, replaying MW2 Mercenaries
- the editor allowing you to make missions with all the new stuff.
Cudos to
magic, for creating most of the new units !!!!!
So, that's it for todays update. And even if it is already a few days old, the Mechcommander Omnitech Team wishes you all a happy new year !
Best regards
The MC OT Team
(Starman, Magic, CodemonkeyJonathan, Karl, Hades and Niue)
