Development Status #30

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 30th Development Status. You can see what we have been working on for… yeah. It's been a while, right?

For a long time, we managed to publish development statuses regularly. Unfortunately, by focusing on testing, optimization, and documentation, we didn't had anything interesting to show you and we preferred to avoid uninteresting publications.
However, after this break, we are back and we hope that you missed us as much as we missed you!

Vertical Slice

We’ve been focusing the most on transitions between repair and battle levels. When a player launches the game, the first thing they see is the main menu. They start a new game, first, they are going to select a campaign and create a room so other players can join them. Once they start the game, they begin at the repair station, where players spawn the vehicles they want to use, prepare them for battle, load ammo and fuel, customize them, select a strategy for battle, manage resources and choose some support units. Then during the battle, players' tanks will receive some damage, they will spend resources, gain new resources, lose some AI support, etc. After the battle, players depending on if they have won or lost the battle, will go back to the previous repair station or move to the next one. Also, they will be able to restart a battle. All the information between players and levels has to be transitioned and synchronized.

Panzerfaust animations

A series of animations for soldiers with Panzerfaust and Mauser Kar98k Carbine. In gameplay anti-tank grenade launchers like Panzerfaust will be visible on units if they are equipped with them to inform the player that such unit is a bigger threat than the rest of the soldiers, of course in case of Panzerfaust it will be thrown away after use.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Repair Scene

We are making a new design for the repair scene. It includes:

• Headquarters
  
• Quartermaster
  
• Human resources
  
• Field hospital
  
• Infantry
  
• Logistics/sappers
  
• Scouts
  
• Repair Stations
  
• Player spawner/despawner
  
• Vehicle parking
  
• Graveyard
  
• Spare parts
  
• Rearm station
  
• Refuel station
  
• Paint shop
  
• Bergepanther

On the repair scene, we’ve been developing an interaction system with NPC. It required some changes in the configuration of characters. Players can approach NPCs and interact with them, which will be required to gain or convert resources, gain or sell vehicles, set a strategy for a mission, etc.

Game economy

We’ve begun to work on the game economy. Here are some basic questions that we have to answer:

• How many resources and vehicles player will gain with each mission?
  
• How many resources will we drain from players in each mission?
  
• How expensive are going to be parts and vehicles?
  
• How much fuel will the vehicle consume in each mission?
  
• How much power will the player gain during the progression of the game?
  
• How quickly vehicle parts will need maintenance?
  
• How expensive is going to be a new vehicle?
  
• How much AI support will the players be able to take with them to each mission?
  

The difficulty in designing and balancing the game economy in Tank Squad is in the fact that we have to balance repairing vehicles, balance battles and do all the balancing for 4 players in multiplayer simultaneously. So we are going to do a lot of iterations and testing to find an optimal solution. Sometimes a small change in the game economy can decide if the game is going to be too easy, too difficult, or impossible to finish in certain circumstances. We are going to use mathematical calculations and statistics in developing game economy but we won’t rely only on that. We are going to play the game over and over again and take some intuitive decisions as well.

Economy structure (code)
We’ve written code for economy structure. It contains:

• Resources pool
  
• Resources container
  - Static
  - Mobile
  
• Resources migration
  
• Resources converter
  
• Resources inventory
  
• Pricing
  
• Resources source
  
• Resources drain
  

The game will feature a variety of gameplay when working with resources. For example, two separate mechanics were developed for using a liquid type of resource (fuel and oil) and for a solid type of resource (for example, ammunition for a tank). Thus, we want to bring the player as close to reality as possible and add interest even to such details. We have also made progress in interacting with such objects. For example, now the player can refuel his tank using a canister, which first must be filled at a special point on the repair station map. We’ve written a code for moving a resource from one place to another using a special container (in that case, a canister).

Environment: Railroad

As you’ve probably seen in previous development statuses, we are working on the Prokhorovka map. It contains a railroad and train station. So we’ve been working on that too. Here is a screenshot of new 3D models for that specific map.


Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals