MechWarrior 3®: Designer Notes
Most of the questions that are usually covered in a section like this have
been covered in great detail in the Computer Game press over the last few
months. I thought that it might be interesting to show a bit of the process
that we went through as we were heading towards the final stretch.
The following list is a dump of the active bugs that we were dealing
with at the end of February, 1999 -- a few months before we finally finished
the program. As you can see, some of these items are really obvious and
boring; others turned into problems that we spent the rest of the time
we had available getting them right.
I've added some comments in [brackets] to tell you what eventually happened
as we finally resolved these issues.
78 There are no heat effects other than
shutdown. There needs to be ammo explosions, penalties to targeting systems
(reticle), sluggish response to actuators (controls), threat of core breach,
and not to mention detrimental effects to MechWarrior (somewhat like redout
and blackout to pilots) maybe if things get too hot the MechWarrior passes
out. AJ - There appears to be an ammo explosion implemented, but we still
need all this other stuff.
[This actually turned into a pretty involved process that wasn't finally
resolved until close to the end. One of the more obvious effects that you
will notice is the 'Mech® slowing down as the heat increases.
This got us involved in a very interesting dynamic between the paper game
and the real-time interpretation. In the paper game, all of the heat that
is generated in a turn is added together -- then the heat sinks are subtracted
from the total heat. Only then are heat effects applied. In the real-time
game, heat effects are constantly being generated, and the heat sinks are
constantly dissipating that heat, and create a dynamic tug-of-war in the
player between shooting as often as possible without shutting down the
'Mech®'s systems. ]
113 Clicking the Abort button on the briefing
screen does nothing.
Now clicking on Abort locks up the game. - NN Ver. 0.167 2/16/99
[One of those tiny bugs that can drive you crazy. Not important in the
short run, but of major importance until they get fixed. ]
138 Mechs, including the player's, are
not taking falling damage from jump jetting, walking off cliffs, etc.
[Falling damage and damage from things being dropped on you were important
elements. At one time, brushing against cliff walls or large buildings
would also cause damage. This led to problems with the player losing an
arm before he even got into battle. It's very difficult to really see how
close you really are to the walls in the first person view. We finally
opted in favor of the fun factor and took this "feature" out.]
177 Frequently, player is killed by single
shots by the enemy. For example, on the first mission, the player was killed
by the first missile salvo from the Firefly. From the paper game perspective
that means that the salvo hit, 3 to 5 missiles hit, all the missiles hit
the head, and the player had little to no head armor on his Bushwacker.
[AI targeting was a major issue throughout development. We had to avoid
the dreaded "right arm, left arm, left leg" predictability problem. However,
all of the ballistic weapons and missiles have accurate physics models
that we didn't want to mess with if we could avoid it. The problem above
came about because the LRM's were all being targeted at the head -- and
if one hit, then the likelihood that they would all hit the same
spot was high because of the physics model. This was especially true if
you were standing still or if you were moving directly towards the enemy.
This issue was resolved in a number of ways, ranging from randomizing the
initial aiming point to tweaking the accuracy of the AI pilot to distributing
the damage areas of certain weapons. However, standing still, or making
a frontal assault against a 'Mech® with long-range weapons
is still a good way of getting yourself killed.]
214 Turrets do not target lancemates; they
only shoot at player. Turrets need to target all lancemates and give equal
attention to player and lancemates.
Note: This also occurs with MFBs. -Scott
[It just wasn't fair. Here were these big, juicy targets just waiting
to be blasted away, and the stupid things would ignore them for my poor
hide. ]
534 Different engine ratings or types in
Mech Lab do not effect run or walk speed.
[Ah, now they do -- and the clever 'Mech® designer can
put together a pretty killer machine by paying attention to how fast they
are going to move. The combination of a light 'Mech® with
no armor, a fast engine, MASC and jump jets can be pretty devastating (I'll
let you guess as to the weapon load used).]
575 Heavier Mechs should turn and accelerate
slower than light Mechs. For example, a 30 ton Firefly should be able to
outmanuever a 100 ton Annihilator.
[This works very well now. It's a lot of fun in multiplayer to use a
small, fast 'Mech® against one of those huge assault chassis.
Just don't let them hit you -- not even once.]
586 Unable to assign non-Clan Mechs Clan
weapons and vice versa. If player chooses a Clan Mech, none of the non-Clan
weapons show up in the weapon selection screen of the Mech Lab.
[One of the design decisions that we made to emphasize the fun factor
over being overly strict with 'Mech® management details
was to allow all 'Mechs® to use any weapon on the field.
This avoids the frustration of finally getting that PPC only to find out
that none of the 'Mechs® that you have is capable of using
it. Clan technology is still better than Inner Sphere tech in terms of
size and weight, however.]
754 Three MFBs are able to hold more than
6 mechs (2 apiece). By the end of Op 1, Mission 3, if they have salvaged
every enemy Mech up to this point, the player has 4 Fireflies, 2 Owen,
and 2 Striders in their MFBs, plus a Bushwacker.
[We played around with allowing the MFBs hold as little as one chassis
apiece to as many as three. We finally settled on two apiece. That still
allowed the player to bring a fairly wide range of 'Mechs®
into action, but still forces him to make those agonizing decisions: "Do
I take take the extra Mad Cat or keep the Annihilator?"]
871 The recycle rates for PPCs need to
be adjusted; they are currently the fastest firing weapon in the game.
As it is, fighting against enemy Mechs with these weapons is nearly impossible.
[Recycle rate is the real-time way of restricting the number of shots
that can be fired by any particular weapon. At the time of this bug, the
PPCs were firing with little or no recycle time -- making them great fun
if you had them, but devastating if you were facing an AI with them.]
259 Default machinegun ammo is not sufficient.
The Mechs should automatically be given at least 250 machinegun ammo per
gun and should also be customizable to have additional ammo per the user's
inclinations regardless of the type of Mech.
Fix Confirmed: AJ - We now have a default of 300 for the Bushwacker.
Fixed. (Reopened by AJ 2/8/99) - Current build (.165) only gives you 100
mgun.
[We finally settled on 200 rounds per ton -- but you can load up as
many tons of MG ammo as you have room in your 'Mech® or
ammo available. An all-machinegun 'Mech® can be interesting,
but you have to risk getting extremely close in order to use them (they
have a very short range).]
395 In Instant Action or multiplayer, if
the player selects an Elemental, it does not come configured with jump
jets. Will the player be able to play Elementals?
[Elementals now have jump jets and, no, the player can't play an Elemental.
It would have been way cool, but there just wasn't time to do it right.
If we were going to allow the player to do this, then we would really have
to implement the "can opener" effect of crawling up on a 'Mech®
and ripping its armor off. No time.]
638 If the player's Mech is moving but
its speed is stabilized (kph is not changing), hitting Reverse (Backspace)
does not change the Mech's direction.
[An interesting design issue. Do we make it so that you cannot go into
reverse if you are travelling above a given rate of speed (like in a car)
or should hitting reverse slow you down and then start moving the 'Mech®
backwards?]
692 The player is unable to cycle to a
weapon group in which all the weapons are out of ammo. If the weapons in
a group are out of ammo, it skips over the group. This prevents players
from, without looking at the weapons list, knowing exactly how many times
they must press a button to get to a particular group, which is critical
in multiplayer.
[This came down to a matter of opinion between styles of play. Some
people wanted a weapon group to be selected even if there were no weapons
or ammo available in the group anymore (like the tester above). Others
were frustrated because they had to click past a group that didn't have
weapons. We opted to automatically skip the group.]
803 Player should be able to select lancemate's
Mech in Mech Lab. Player should be able to select lancemate's Mech to use
for himself and be able to put the lancemate in another Mech.
Note: This only occurs if the player has no extra, unused Mechs in salvage.
If the player does have an extra Mech, they can get their lancemate's Mech
by moving him into the extra Mech.
[This was a problem that was obvious once it occurred, but wasn't anticipated
at all in the design. In a nutshell, the problem occurs when your lancemate
is in a 'Mech® that you want. If you have an extra chassis
lying around, then you simply move your lancemate into the extra chassis,
which moves his original 'Mech® into the stockpile, which
you then select for yourself. However, if there wasn't an extra chassis
to move your lancemate into, how do you get his 'Mech® for
yourself? Thus was born the "no 'Mech®" selection in the
Mech Lab. You simply assign your lancemate to "no 'Mech®,"
grab his old 'Mech® for yoursel, and then assign your old
'Mech® to your lancemate. Or not, if you don't want your
lancemate to come with you in the mission, just leave him with no 'Mech®
selected.]
806 Mechs, both the player's and enemies',
are not limping.
[Very bad. One of the coolest things in the game is to shoot at an enemy
'Mech®'s legs and then see him try to limp away. This was
working great, and then suddenly it stopped working for about two weeks.
Nothing major, the programmers were just working on some new animations
and didn't want to bother with the limping for a while -- but it was sorely
missed while it was gone.]
930 The voice-over on the training mission
for 'Mech® combat says that once the MFBs have repaired
the 'Mech®, there should be a list of repairs completed
at the top of the screen. There is no such list in training or any other
part of the game. Not sure if the list will not be in the game and the
voice-over is incorrect or if there will be a list and the voice-over is
correct.
[There was going to be a list, so the voice-over was initially correct.
Then the list was removed and we had to delete the line. One of the biggest
headaches in a game of this type is dealing with the recordings. It takes
time to write the script, make the initial recordings, process the recordings
and get them into the final product. In a perfect world, all of the scripts
would have been done well ahead of time and they would, of course, match
the final implementation of the missions for which they have been recorded.
In the real world, you realize that the five Mad Cats that you've put in
the mission are way too many for that time in the campaign so you have
to change them to two Mad Cats and a couple of Shadow Cats, but you've
already recorded the lines that talk about the five Mad Cats -- oh, well,
that's what pickup sessions are for.]
That's a quick look at a day in life of developing this game. In case
you're wondering, the numbers on the left are the bug numbers in our database.
On the right are the bug descriptions. I had exported just these two bits
of information from our database and exported them into this table for
a bug discussion that I had with Zipper Interactive. When I came to writing
these designer notes, I found this list on my hard drive and was fascinated
to see where we were back then and where we finally ended up.
I want to thank everybody who has been involved in this process -- just
take a look at the credits list and you'll see that that is a lot of thanking.
However, beyond the credits list, there are a whole lot of people that
I want to thank without whom this project would never have been completed
-- and those are the wives, husbands, children and significant others that
had to put up with nearly two years of intensive effort. This especially
goes to the people behind the people at Zipper.
And a final big thank you to the real Epona and Dominic, who went without
a dad for a couple of months.