Yet Another Remake Attempt

[irjayjay]

Hey guys, I've been following all the remake attempts over the years and never had enough skill to help out, plus I kind of selfishly had my own idea of what a remake should be like.

I don't mean to give anyone hope, this might be more misplaced optimism, but...
Since I'm a programmer now and Unreal Engine is ridiculously easy to work with, I've been playing around with it for the past week(extremely little).

I spent today remodeling my favourite moth, yeah, that's right, the humble hunk of junk, the Silver Y - in my next post.

Now, I've been deeply analyzing the game mechanics, trying to figure out what made it fun, what made it balanced, what made it addictive and what would make new players keep playing.
Specifically in a long term dedicated server/mmo setup.

Some important points:

• The risk/reward for the following roles are pretty much equal, more risk = more reward: 
  Trader, Scavenger, Pirate, Enforcer, which makes all modes doable or worthwhile depending on your play style
• In an MMO setting griefing would need to be prevented by allowing blood money(stealing money from the wanted person) on griefers, yet balancing it so that people still attack each other every now and then.
  
• There should be a way to cap a person's riches, but organically, otherwise richer/older players may get bored or cause an imbalance in the game world by always respawning.
  
• Moths need to be limited, perhaps in weapon/equipment slots, to prevent one build meta that everyone will end up using(this could be tweaked after launch though)
  
• Killing noobs marks you as a pirate, killing pirates marks you as an enforcer, that way you can't hide your sins and can be rewarded for killing pirates in a way
  
• Will AI pilots be needed? Depending on amount of players it may
  
• The game economy needs to somehow survive, yet be dynamic, or am I wrong, are basic economies okay? Would traders get bored if prices remained the same for certain goods?
  
  
  Anyway, I'm hoping to get some pointers from people as to what mechanics actually made the game fun and also what would prevent an MMO/dedicated server game from sucking?
  

[irjayjay]

As promised, the Silver Y.

Coincidentally, did anyone know that most of the moths were named after actual moths? I googled Silver Y this week and it gave me pictures of a moth called Silver Y.
Same goes for Tiger moth, Deaths Head moth, Hawk moth, Moon moth(has a swallow tail like Hardwar's moon moth)
All except the Swallow and police moth, oh and ofcourse alien moth, haha.





Obviously I took some artistic license with it, rounded what used to be square, removed limbs that weren't adding to the look, slightly changed some shapes, but the main idea is there.

[Denacity]

If you posted a picture it's not showing.

Great work though, it's always good to see people working on Hardwar clones.

One of my favorite parts of Hardwar is owning a hangar around other people.

Would be interesting to limit what machinery people can have so people have to work together.

The main thing Hardwar needed but didn't have is player factions and let players set their hangars private so only faction members can enter.

[irjayjay]

Hey... yeah, sorry, not used to forums without image hosting, haha. I've updated my post, hopefully it shows now.



Thanx for the feedback!

I also loved owning a hangar, starting a life of my own(as a 13 year old boy back in the day, this was awesome).



I want to hopefully if all goes to plan allow hangar building, you could place hangars on nodes of other structures in a modular way, much like the old Hardwar:

A pylon would have a hangar and that hangar could have another pylon on top of it, etc.



I also want hangars to be a lot more expensive, making it a large goal to work towards. Maybe 100k for a cheap hangar. Building would be way more expensive, but it would be great having craters filled to the brim with buildings.



This is all ofcourse a dream, I have a lot to create before I get there.



Here's a few images of the hangar models I have so far:














If these aren't displaying either, please visit: irjayjay.blogspot.com/, as it should all display there at least.

[irjayjay]

Here's me trying to rebuild Alpha. I know the buildings in the background are wrong, I just put them there for a sense of scale. 

I generated the crater from a heightmap I found on this forum, texture needs a lot of work. Got a full 3ds model of the original game somewhere else on here and created higher poly meshes of the rocks in Alpha from that.
I was also playing around with a new lightwell design, not sure I like this one, I'll give it another go sometime.









As always, if these images aren't visible to you, you can view them on: irjayjay.blogspot.com/2020/02/hardwar-remake-lightwells-and-alpha.html

[Denacity]

Awesome. I might suggest trying to work on the flight mechanics and release a demo flying around Alpha, might get people interested in helping if they having something tangible to try.

I wouldn't worry too much about making the map exactly like Hardwar, I think some creative liberties with the map would be fine if you wanted to make it more interesting.

Side note, could be fun if we could go underwater.

[irjayjay]

I remember tons of discussions about under water, I don't really think there's a point to it yet, despite all the amphibious moths vs flying moths vs water moths things we were discussing. I'll think about it a bit.

As for the exactness, I want to keep key elements of the original in order to get people interested in playing through that. Eg. The Witcher series came out recently and watching that made me finally try the games.
Also - sticking with the old Hardwar close enough helps me and others remember the good old days.

Don't worry, I do plan to eventually extend the game, but for now it's mostly working on getting that Hardwar feel back, the loneliness, the piracy, the greed.

I say this as if I never get bored of projects, we'll see how dedicated I am to this in a few months.

[extratitanian]

One of the things I liked was how unfair it could be at times. It wasn't like most other space sims where you're in the "starting area" or the "capital" or something and were pretty much safe from attack, someone can get you, anytime, anywhere. Halfway into an airlock under a police station, incoming FireBurst, hopefully you can get into the hangar in time. If not, oh well, some days you're the cat, other days your the mouse.

Same thing with trading, spend all your money on some choice goods and running them across two craters? Hopefully someone else doesn't get there first, because the next place buying isn't going to have anywhere near the margin. And you're going to have to fight your way over there now. And you should probably get a recharge soon...

[shrekken]

Some good work there!

There seems to be some kinda subconscious connection between us Hardwar players hehe...

[The Kurgan]

I'm seeing the images just fine. What software are you using to build the meshes?

[irjayjay]

@extratitan: That's a great point! Nobody should be safe. If a noob got 6 shots of plasma on you before you saw him, you'll probably die, no matter how rich you are or how many fusion cells you have.


shrekken: Well done Shrekken! That's the moth from the cover!! I love the retro look! Amazing!
I don't have any cockpit for mine yet, haha, will polish the looks later.

@the Kurgan: Seems Shrekken and I are both using Blender 3D. I'm using Unreal Engine as game engine.

[shrekken]

Thanks irjayjay,

I'm still working on the moon moth (redesigning the landing gear) and I'll be rigging it for landing/take off animations.
Got the idea from this little screen shot of the intro sequence:



Would really appreciate comments on the style of landing gear you flyers think would look good. When it's done, I'll send it to you to import into UE4... See how it looks and works

I was also thinking of creating the silver-y in this concept art (it's been on my HDD since forever... Can't remember where I saved it from tho!)



I'll work on the other moths too. Would you like help with the buildings as well?
Oh, while I think of it, British slang for a policeman is a copper... There is a copper moth

[irjayjay]

Hi Shrekken, though I really love your work, I'm not accepting help with the project at present.
The project isn't in a state yet to easily import other assets, so I'm sticking to my lazy workflow of modular buildings, and so forth. I might at a later time ask for help though, but then I fear I'll be very particular in the help I ask for.

You are one extremely talented individual though, maybe check if you can add it to unity or unreal yourself? Game engines are really easy to learn these days.

There's this strange balance between keeping to the feel of the old game, but also considering that some design choices were down to the technology available at the time.
I thought about this rounded Silver Y concept art a lot, but decided to opt for more of a angular design, since the feel I got from it is that it was a cheap worker moth, like one of the first one's made and only a few very rusty ones were still around.
If I rounded it like the concept art it would be beautiful, but won't have the same feel, I think.
Still, would be cool to see one in 3D!

[shrekken]

No worries, I'll carry on designing as it's good to keep practising.
Good luck

[extratitanian]

Feb 9, 2020 14:42:56 GMT -5 shrekken said:

Thanks irjayjay,

I'm still working on the moon moth (redesigning the landing gear) and I'll be rigging it for landing/take off animations.
Got the idea from this little screen shot of the intro sequence:

Would really appreciate comments on the style of landing gear you flyers think would look good. When it's done, I'll send it to you to import into UE4... See how it looks and works
I was also thinking of creating the silver-y in this concept art (it's been on my HDD since forever... Can't remember where I saved it from tho!)

It'd be pretty cool to have some sort of swing down feet like on a Y-wing. Right now, the gear just kinda look like chicken legs that extend straight down.

That Silver Y looks pretty legit. It's too bad that we don't have more design materials from development, I'm sure there's some more stuff that'd be pretty sweet to check out. Maybe call it the Gold Y.