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Tank Mechanic Simulator News

Development Status #99

[h2]Dear Mechanics,[/h2]

welcome to our ninety-ninth development status update.

This week we would like to present our plans for the 1.2.0 patch. We would like to show the list of all planned features, where we are currently and what is yet ahead of us.

[h3]Main plan[/h3]

The main plan for this patch was to add the ability to use custom tanks and collectables through Steam Workshop, as well as adding new damage system, that will allow to make the extraction tanks have a real damage, repairable by player (but not required, player might leave the destruction and still repair the other part of the tank, if that is possible).

A list of main features, to have them clearly stated:
  • Custom tanks
  • Custom collectables
  • Damage system
  • Welder (to fix damage)
  • Collectable shop
  • Second tank on extraction
  • Movable stairs
  • Tank Warehouse (parking for tanks)
  • Ammo in tanks
  • Merging workshop and test-drive tank models
  • All the new tanks shown in previous dev statuses


[h3]The mistake[/h3]

When starting to work on the new stuff, after releasing last patch in June 2020, we've made a big mistake. We did not begin working on the new stuff on a separate branch of the project. Instead, we kept working on the production/standard main branch of the project repositorium, and the amount of work required to finish the patch caused to severly prolong the planned release date. It is November and we have yet lot of work ahead of us, instead of steadily sending out smaller patches, to bug fix the game, as you guys had reported us lot of times. It is my fault, by not thinking ahead, and now we are paying the price. We can only keep working on.



[h3]Where we are now[/h3]

We have reworked how the game handles the tanks, instead of hardcoding everything, it now dynamicly loads tanks and collectables and ammo models from files, and actually can handle them.
Oonly thing left is to add the mechanic, to delete information about the tank/collectable when player unsubscribes from it from Steam Workshop, and the game needs to handle it correctly (like some of you suggested, just erase the information from the next save at all about that missing tank or collectable).

Also, we are working on allowing the player to enter the tank on extraction, and be able to pick up ammo from inside. When adding this logic I found it very hard to navigate inside the tank, when the player has taken a crew slot - so we want to add some ability to crouch/lean when player is inside the tank as crewman - we will see how this folds out.

When all this is done, we can start working on adding mechanics to fix the damages, and add the collectable shop.

[h3]When are we going to release the patch?[/h3]

We think that most probable date is late January 2021 - after good testing (probably through the new Steam Testing tool, we will see if we can do it this way, or the standard way of sending the patch to the Unstable version).

And of course, there is the need of adding the new tanks, which are coming in from our artists. We will soon show them implemented in game, these will also require good testing.

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Thanks for all the support and have a good day,
DeGenerals

Halloween 40% sale

[h2]Dear Mechanics,[/h2]

Tank Mechanic Simulator is set to be on -40% sale, till 2th of November 10:05AM PST time. Grab it when you can ;)



Happy Halloween!

Thanks and have a good one!

DeGenerals

Development Status #98

[h2]Dear Mechanics,[/h2]

welcome to our ninety-eighth development status update.

We are steadily progressing with task of adding the modding support/tools. This week we have reached another milestone, that allows the game to load custom collectable objects - this will come in handy when a custom tank requires some machine gun or props from a country that our game not yet has officially added.

[h2]Code update[/h2]
The game now has all of its collectables as external files, located in StreamingAssets folder, called MetalObjects. Here players will be able to put their own models that they want to gather during Extraction missions.

Below is example of how a folder with one of the collectables look like and its items:

  • .json file with the config for the object, so the game can correctly understand what this object is and what are its properties
  • .png file for the texture/icon that will be shown in various places ingame, for instance in collectables shop
  • .bundle file for the loadable object itself, in UnityEngine called prefab. This gets loaded when the game demands it, only when it needs to be spawned (no reason to keep this loaded at all times, as our game already takes too much memory in our opinion :( )




In next dev statuswe will show the same system/framework but focused for the ammuniton for tanks, so modders that want to add their tanks can also use their ammunition models, and the game will know how to handle them (load when required, put it into tank ammo storage etc.).

[h2]Art progress[/h2]



This week we have an update regarding the IS-2 development. Grab few screenshots from our modeller, shout out to him, nice work!



We will keep you updated, as we are coming to a point where all our effort is starting to be connected, and will be soon put to internal tests.

Thanks for all the support and have a good day,
DeGenerals

Development Status #97

[h2]Dear Mechanics,[/h2]

welcome to our ninety-seventh development status update.

[h2]Code update[/h2]

We are making slow progress with custom tanks support, here's the report:



New features in Tank Creator Editor brings functionalities related with data export/import. Generated object has logic internally stored in fragments of code, called scripts.
Every script has special settings, called public fields. Editor automatically fills field values, depends on options selected by user from tool window.



Generated data is made from three files - two configuration files, and bundle file, which contains object data.

Tank loaded into game:


[h2]Art progress[/h2]



We would like to present another tank we are working in the meantime. This is the second british tank coming to the game. First one showed was first british prototype tank proposed by you - community to have it in game - Little Willie. A quick update reagarding Little Willie, we are still implementing this vehicle to the game. Be patient, we are working on it :)



The second tank we are going to introduce to the game is the Mk IV Churchill tank, or in fact its version - AVRE. This was special version of tank with Besa 7,92 caliber machine gun and with 290 mm Petard mortar. Created to be able to quickly destroy opponent fortifications and also to be used to transport specialistic sapper equipment.

More information and progress from the work as always now every Friday. See you next week!
Thanks for all the support and have a good day,

DeGenerals

macOS launch and 40% sale

[h2]Dear Mechanics,[/h2]

we would like to announce, that our game is now available to buy for macOS users here, on Steam. It has been asked/suggested many times, and now here it is.

The version that the macOS users can now download and play, is 1.1.0 (a stable version from May 2020n).

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Additionally, the game is set to be on -40% sale, for 14 days. Grab it when you can ;)

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Thanks and have a good one,

DeGenerals