Cacophanus wrote:

oneils wrote:

PC has a couple of titles you could check out.

Hawken and strike suit zero

Worked on it for 2 years as lead designer and left a year before it was released. Final game was...uuuugggghhh....

Cacophanus wrote:

KDR_11k wrote:

Strike Suit isn't really a mecha game IMO, it's a space dogfighting game that lets you turn into a mech for short bursts as a form of special attack. You need to build a super gauge to even use the mech form. Zero was criticized for an abundance of annoying escort missions though the bad checkpointing was apparently fixed. I only played Infinity (which is just fighting waves of enemies for a high score) for that exact reason so I haven't seen Zero's missions first hand.

By the same reasoning Omega Boost is simply a space dogfighting game. In any case, it changed (for the worse) after I left - as the whole time limited transformation was never intended during my tenure.

The_Man wrote:

could you elaborate? GAF loves insider stories!

Well, I came up with the core mechanics, wrote the story, sourced both the mecha designer and composer as well as lead the design for two years. After I left, the controls changed, time limited transformation was shoehorned in and the gameplay balancing generally went south.

Originally the strike suit was intended to be quite uber, much like in Omega Boost in fact, but it all changed when the emphasis went on making the capital ships practically invincible. This ruined the balancing and nerfed the player's ability to make a difference, the corollary of which being the creation of endless escort missions and appalling difficulty spikes.

The sad thing about all this, was that these problems were entirely solvable through design (as in basic variable changes). There were no technical hurdles that created these problems, instead just wilful and likely pigheaded stupidity on the part of the design team.

The original version of the game was more akin to the flying parts of Warhawk, mixed in with elements of Gundam One Year War. In that the player could choose when to transform into mecha but still keeping a more arcade sensibility (as direct input rather than a simulated physics system, which is what was later put in sadly).

The whole reasoning behind this was that jousting in flight games is rather tedious and the mecha mode would break this stalemate (as the mecha could move laterally through space).

It was originally intended as a console game too, with the shift to PC happening after I left as well.

There were also seven very different strike suits, with specials, as well as far more and varied missions.

Anyway, next time I make a mecha game I'll do it with my own goddamn money. Thankfully I'm now living and working in Tokyo too, so at least I won't have to contend with the same level of functional ignorance when it comes to low level gameplay design (plus they get what mecha are here - in the West it's often just a long painful facepalm).

Cacophanus wrote:

distantmantra wrote:

Thanks for the insight, I felt like the game ended up being something quite different than it was originally advertised as. Was also wondering what happened with the PS3 version.

If people don't already go there, Cacophanus has THE site for mecha-related gaming at www.mechadamashii.com

It was originally meant as a PSN and XBLA game, dunno what happened about that. I was as surprised as everyone else when it went PC only.

There's definitely a lot more to tell but people might find it boring. Design isn't high concept a lot of the time, it's low level nitty gritty functional implementation. Most people lose interest when I start going into detail on this stuff (even in the industry, which is a tad depressing).

Cameron122 wrote:

Damn Caco, the original design sounds so much better. The rage meter was pretty silly yea.

Get to working on a new Mech game lol :P
I'm learning UDK just to make a mech game, pretty tough yea

I lost my shit when I saw the rage meter for the first time, such a stupid thing to do.

Good luck with UDK, it's a good toolset. I've used Unreal a lot over the years and it's pretty damn awesome