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Post by AncientxFreako on Jan 6, 2015 14:35:41 GMT
I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, maybe it just seems this way, but since the announcement of MWO most mecha modding has either stopped or slowed down. Mektek stopped supporting the battletech/MechWarrior community and went to their robots on rollerblades thing, this effectively put an end to AssaultTech1 and some others...MWLL stopped updating/developing. I don't know of any others but I'd bet there were some. Back when Jordan Weismann started smith&tinker he should've focused on MechWarrior right out of the gates instead of "neveron" and the other lame ideas they had. It would've given them the capitol they needed. That was a real shame.
Does anyone know of other private developing MechWarrior mods that are currently active besides Project Battletech Universe?...which looks pretty cool btw, but it's not a cockpit sim, more of a 3rd person view game similar to games like Diablo.
I guess they all decided to step aside and just play MWO...but it's a real bummer. It's giving up...but someday the need everyone had for a great MechWarrior game is going to return again. After all the negativity regarding mwo it seems to me like that need has never left us. There are people out there with enough determination and ability to make great MechWarrior games that could be better than mwo. It's sad to me that we don't see that right now. Maybe sometime soon someone will step up.
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Post by Perigren on Jan 6, 2015 14:41:40 GMT
It is a licensing issue. IGP/PGI were given exclusive rights to the mw IP with the power to shut down any indy projects and or mod.It is a shame too, MW:LL even in its unfinished state and difficult to get running problems is still a far better and more polished game than mwo.
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Post by AncientxFreako on Jan 6, 2015 15:40:07 GMT
power to shut down indy projects? even not for profit not making a dime? That's bullcrap. It may have worked on mwll and mektek, but freedom of speech can prevail.
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Post by subject9x on Jan 11, 2015 15:39:32 GMT
I believe it is a multi-faceted issue not just centered on mech games specifically. Since at least 2000-2003 the video game market swung over to game consoles. The PC market was no longer where the top games were released, nor is it the target demographic for the big publishers now. That's why you see a lot of games that are released on Xbone / PS4, and their PC version? ports with childishly limited graphical settings and inferior graphics. What does that mean in this context? top tier games are no longer released as 'moddable' and the publishers don't think 'moddable' is a desired trait anymore. Game engine design has increased to a point where builds of a game can be locked down to any degree a programmer would like, a conceit is that no game is truly unbreakable but many people won't try to mod a game if its too hard to do so. From this, I believe that this trend of un-moddable games has actually created a dirth of game designers, people who were unable to quickly test their own game ideas by simply modding a game they loved. Valve is a great example of how mods for games can turn into their franchises: Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead. DOTA / LoL games would never have gotten off the ground if it wasn't for a small mod to Warcraft 3 all those years ago. In the context of mech games, it gets worse. The mecha genre has been waning since MW4, mainly due to the loss of simulation games popularity and publishers not willing to take a risk given the lack of popularity. Take 2 of the official offerings the mecha genre has to offer: MWO and Hawken. Both are F2P (I could rant a lot on that subject  ). F2P means the games themselves are heavily client/server. Players cannot make their own servers, players cannot mod weapons, players cannot mod mech stats because the entire game is server-authoratative and the server validates the client's data before letting the player connect. In essence, new and seasoned mech pilots have no 'playground' to work out their own ideas because the F2P design of each game does not allow for player ingenuity. Conclusion / TL;DR; I think the way forward for the independent modder or mech enthusiast will be making their own games. Taking something like Unreal 4 (it's only ~20$ a month for the whole kit) and making what they'd like to see in a mech game. In fact, this is approach I've decided upon; I've been talking with my cousin (who helped me finish an actual game:http://eamonnmr.com/zond) about creating a mech game before 2016. The total work done for it now is just design documents and discussion, and 1 test mech model without any animation or physics. |
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Post by AncientxFreako on Jan 12, 2015 1:42:28 GMT
Awesome!
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Post by subject9x on Jan 13, 2015 0:26:14 GMT
Heh, just my two cents as a mech junkie and game designer hobbyist. I'd love to devote more time to the mech idea, but its not a great project to learn Unreal with so it'll have to wait.
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Post by Yogaphobe on Mar 16, 2015 6:39:28 GMT
The MW:LL people had two major things stopping them from updating it: One was the sudden arrival of MW:O and the other was actually Star Citizen. A number of the Wandering Samurai people have moved over to the dev teams of Star Citizen now. As sad as I am to see MW:LL development stop, I am happy to see quality developers working on a game that I've been extremely excited for since I first heard about it.
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). F2P means the games themselves are heavily client/server. Players cannot make their own servers, players cannot mod weapons, players cannot mod mech stats because the entire game is server-authoratative and the server validates the client's data before letting the player connect. In essence, new and seasoned mech pilots have no 'playground' to work out their own ideas because the F2P design of each game does not allow for player ingenuity. 
just checking in