Author Archives: Developer

Development Status #45

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Dear Mechanics!

Welcome to our forty fifth Development Status update.
Let’s get straight to business.

Code Progress:

As the premiere has been postponed, we’re continuing with our post-premiere plan (but now it’s pre-premiere).

First off, test drive mode.

What has been done in this week and what’s the plan for the next one.

This week:

  • designing and implementing the engine startup procedure
  • added checking the engine when starting it (so we know if the engine, fuel system and gearbox modules are in place)
  • added temporary sounds for hand crank starting of Tiger I and Tiger I engine sounds (needs to be replaced in future)
  • designing and implementing the test drive tank model for Tiger I (as this model needs driving physics, we’re using Physics Tank Maker asset from Unity Asset Store)

Next week:

  • merging workshop tank model and test drive tank model (copying element/modules state)
  • adding test drive map (in the yard near warehouse)
  • finalizing workflow of creating other test drive tank models (automization of this process)
  • adding ability to rotate turret, elevate gun, basic interactions with tank electronics and panels (might be this task takes 2 or 3 weeks)

What is needed to be designed:

  • how to repair tank electronics
  • how to refill tank fuel and water supplies
  • how to recharge tank battery

As You might know, the premiere has been postponed. This means we have 5 months more to develop the game.

The game will be released as a full game, not Early Access as previous premiere was planned. 5 months gives us a 3,5 months time of adding new gameplay mechanics to the game – from our experience any work is getting slower near Christmas and New Years Eve, so all new stuff needs to be added up to mid-December. When this happens, we’re back to testing and adding localization for the game.

That would be all for this week and month. If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, write to us at contact@degenerals.com or visit our Discord server (https://discord.gg/HPbJj9y).

Have a good weekend and see you next week!

DeGenerals

Important message

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Dear Mechanics

We are very sorry to inform You that the premiere of Tank Mechanic Simulator has been postponed.

Our publisher did not agree to publish the game in Early Access mode and the premiere date has been changed to 29.01.2019.

What is the plan for the final premiere:

  • Test drive
  • Player/Business leveling system
  • Warehouse management
  • Paint room
  • Museum management
  • Tool/vehicle shop
  • In-game vehicle analisys
  • More maps and vehicles

Again, we want to apologize for this situation.

Sincerely,

DeGenerals

Development Status #44 – August Summary

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Dear Mechanics!

Welcome to our forty fourth Development Status update.
It’s time for our montly summary, so let’s get straight to business.

Art Progress:

New extraction map (Extraction3)

M26 Pershing

M26 Pershing

KV-2

Rear view

View from workshop

Code Progress:

We’re finalizing the build for the upcoming premiere. Nothing spectacular here, overall optimizations and fixes of bugs reported by testers.

More to report after the Early Access premiere.

We have 4 days to Early Access premiere. We’re fixing all bugs we and testers ran into.

The final word in the Early Access premiere has our publisher, PlayWay. If the build is good enough, we have greenlight for the premiere.

That would be all for this week and month. If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, write to us at contact@degenerals.com or visit our Discord server (https://discord.gg/HPbJj9y).

Have a good weekend and see you next week!

DeGenerals

Release Status #3

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Welcome to our third Release status update, where we inform about the state of the game before launch.

This time, the newly added Extraction 2 map (still WIP):

Can we test drive the tank?

Nope. The test drive is a game module, that we need to add after the Early Access premiere.

But… why?!

The main reason was the lack of time to implement a driving system for the tanks. That stopped being a problem after we have bought the Physics Tank Maker tool by Chobi from Unity Asset Store (link)

This system allows configuration of any tank driving mechanisms. But it’s still not enough for us to implement this into our game. Most of the time, the tank will not be able to drive – first the player needs to rebuild the tank.


When the tank is rebuilt and the player wants to take the tank to the test drive, how do we know that the tank is in a state, that allows it to drive?

Here we need to add a special manager, that will check if the engine, gearbox, suspension, fuel system, wheels and tracks. If all mentioned modules are in place and are rebuilt, the player can start the engine and drive around the yard.

What if the player also wants to rotate the turret? What if the player wants to turn the lights on or off? What if the player wants to shoot?

All this needs to be implemented in order to call the test drive to be fun and playable game mechanism. We want to add more gameplay to the test driving, so the ride won’t be as dull as one can think.

Maybe You have an idea for this part of the game? Write to us on TMS Facebook site, or visit our Discord server.

We will try to update the situation every few days, as our final goal is to cover the whole game and it’s current and planned features.

Have a good day,

DeGenerals

Development Status #43

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Dear Mechanics!

Welcome to our forty third Development Status update.
Let’s get straight to business.

Art Progress:

New extraction map (Extraction2)

Code Progress:

Another finalization week. Working on bug fixing and overall optimalization stuff.

Current biggest performance issue is the memory management, we need to sort this out before the premiere of the game. If we succeed, the starting and loading time of the game should be much smaller.

What is left to do, as there are only 1,5 weeks to premiere:

  • memory optimization
  • sound & particles finalization
  • bug fixes
  • default background ambient music 😀
  • finalization of tutorial and manual (updating the data mostly)
  • preparing all info on Steam and other places about the game

That would be all for this week. If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, write to us at contact@degenerals.com or visit our Discord server (https://discord.gg/HPbJj9y).

Have a good weekend and see you next week!

DeGenerals

Release Status #2

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Welcome to our second Release status update, where we inform about the state of the game before launch.

This time, the work in progress posters (for the warehouse scene):

Can we control the crane on the Warehouse map or excavators, cranes, trucks etc. on the Extraction map?

Nope. We’ve decided to avoid, for now, trying to implement such gameplay.

The reason is trivial – such gameplay mechanics require a lot of time and skill in physics configuration, so the thing is bug free and looks like the real thing. We have tried implementing the crane lift on the Warehouse map – without success. The crane physics caused massive lag and had big problems to behave like a real life crane.

We’ve decided to suspend this mechanic untill “better time” comes. That is, after the release of Early Access.

Fade out/in substitution

When player wants to move a turret to a turret stand, or to move an engine to a engine stand, he does not need to manually control the crane. He just needs to select proper option from the radial-menu. Then a fade out/fade in process starts, where the turret or engine is actually being moved from one spot to another.

The same goes for the excavation process, on the Extraction map. The player selects an area for excavation works – a popup window appear if the area he select is correct. If it is, the player can accept the excavations, fade out fade in process starts, where the digging is done. Again, no gameplay here for the player.

Are You planning to add such features in future?

Yes, we want to add such gameplay mechanics. Of course, this means more work for us, but more gameplay for the player. This needs to be seriously designed and developed, so it can be a fun and interesting gameplay, instead of a dull and irritating routine.

We will try to update the situation every few days, as our final goal is to cover the whole game and it’s current and planned features.

Have a good day,

DeGenerals

Development Status #42

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Dear Mechanics!

Welcome to our forty second Development Status update.
Let’s get straight to business.

Art Progress:

KV-1 (Tank 04) Interior

KV-1 (Tank 04) Interior

KV-1 (Tank 04) Engine, Gearbox, Fan & Cooling system

KV-1 (Tank 04) Interior

Code Progress:

Another week spent on bug fixing and build finalization. As we are 2,5 weeks from the premiere, next week is going to be the same of the previous one. WIth some addition of optimization and sounds/particles mastering.

So to sum up – nothing spectacular here. Just as it should be before the launch.

As You may have seen, we have started another status update series – the Release Status Update. We will try, every now and then, post a status about the release, what the player can expect to buy on the release day, what get’s added and when.

That would be all for this week. If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, write to us at contact@degenerals.com or visit our Discord server (https://discord.gg/HPbJj9y).

Have a good weekend and see you next week!

DeGenerals

Release Status #1

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Welcome to our first Premiere status update, where we inform about the state of the game before launch.

This time we want to show You the roadmap of the project (bear in mind, this will change):

Why Early Access?

The Early Access premiere option is best for the current team and project situation – the original plan was to release Tank Mechanic Simulator 1.0 in September 2018.

During development, we have received lot of support and suggestions from Tank Mechanic Simulator fans (especially our Discord community is very active) regarding how the project can be improved. All the ideas and new features proposed by the community have created a vision of a game, that our initial project would look dull and empty without them.

Another big factor in this decision is our limited budget. With the start of the Early Access premiere we can get the funds to continue the development of Tank Mechanic Simulator.

We will try to update the situation every few days, as our final goal is to cover the whole game and it’s current and planned features.

Have a good day,

DeGenerals

Development Status #41

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Dear Mechanics!

Welcome to our forty first Development Status update.
Let’s get straight to business.

This week was spent on:

  • Implementing the Sherman tank into the game (unfinished yet, needs some tweaking and optimization).
  • Implementig the new Tiger tank into the game (same deal as Sherman, needs few tweaks and animations)
  • Game optimization:
    • re-working on how the game is saved and the data translated from and into the game
    • tweaking the post process effects and quality settings for the game to be as optimal as it can be (so at the highest settings the game would look the best, but the fps be maxed if possible)

Here’s a screenshot:

That would be all for this week. If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, write to us at contact@degenerals.com or visit our Discord server (https://discord.gg/HPbJj9y).

Have a good weekend and see you next week!

DeGenerals

Development Status #40 – July Summary

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Dear Mechanics!

Welcome to our fortieth Development Status update.
It’s time for our monthly summary, so let’s get straight to business.

Art Progress:

Sherman M4A3E8 Fully In-game screenshot. Exterior & Interior

Tiger I Fully In-game screenshot. Exterior & Interior

Tiger I – Engine, Gearbox etc. interior elements

Code Progress:

The first month of game finalization process is behind us. What has been finished and what is still in progress:

Finished:

  • tank configuration script – makes our life easier when a raw .fbx tank is ready to be implemented in game
  • game economy – it’s core mechanics are here

In progress:

  • optimization of code – make loading times smaller, stabilize fps etc.
  • game economy final values – how much player should gain from finishing a contract etc.
  • steam integration
  • animations (hopefully)
  • as always, bug fixing

We’ve got less than 5 weeks for premiere (30.08.2018) of early access of Tank Mechanic SImulator.

Why early access?

Our original plan for the game release was to :

  • implement minimum 3 tanks
  • have basic economy, renovation and extraction logic

During the development, our fans have supported us with many suggestions and feature request. Now, after internal discussion, we treat those suggestions as obligatory to be in the game, for the game to be called version 1.0.

We will present the roadmap for those missing features we want to add after the premiere in a special graphic in few weeks, here is the plan in text:

  • Steam workshop integration – custom music, localization, paint/camo textures/decals etc., custom tanks (with special .pdf how to implement them)
  • Test drive
  • tank analisys mode
  • tank camo/decal apply mode
  • replacement of fade in/fade out screens with actual gameplay (on extraction scene for instance, where player could control the vehicles to dig out the tank himself)
  • Museum manager
  • Official localization of other languages, than ENG and POL
  • and, of course, more tanks

That would be all for this week and month. If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, write to us at contact@degenerals.com or visit our Discord server (https://discord.gg/HPbJj9y).

Have a good weekend and see you next week!

DeGenerals