GDC Plays MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries with Piranha Games' Russ Bullock

hi everyone welcome to the GGC twitch channel my name is Brian Francis the invisible voice inside your head the person hosting your game development adventure today we are here today checking out a game called MechWarrior 5 mercenaries which if you're like me this series should be very familiar to you because it was a big staple of the 90s PC gaming in the last couple years we've also had the new battle tech game which came from Harebrained Schemes but today we're getting back in the world of mech piloting we are as you can see right now suiting up to get into a nice big stompy mech and this game comes to us from the fine folks at prada games in the lower left hand corner of the screen piranha games CEO Russ Bullock is joining us today Russ how you doing great thanks thanks for your interest and glad that it sounds like you like the game and I think that's all any developer you know wants to hear ok they

want to hear that the game is successful but one of the more rewarding things is seeing that you know the fans got what they wanted out of it right on going over to the chat real quick let me give a quick shout out some reviewers like unnatural flavors who've shown up already for folks in chat if you're not familiar with our stream what we do is we will be talking to Ross about the making of MechWarrior 5 mercenaries and we're gonna be taking your questions so if you have questions about MechWarrior 5 you want to know about mech design if you want to think about have questions about heat doesn't balancing heat levels Azkaban chat people like Veritas the snazzy dragon feel free to just ask questions we will pass know under us the ones that are on topic and from there we will just hopefully learn more about how this game got made Russ like I said implied before MechWarrior was once a dominant PC PC shooter game it's kind of a simulation game shooter game because not just because it was able inch of

levels where you popped in a mech and shot things but also because you you chose an array of mechs you you managed your mix in your hangar across a variety of missions and then around 2000 mech warrior was the last proper named MechWarrior game in the series kind of spiraled out for different reasons and just didn't wasn't amazed anymore your studio has been working with MechWarrior Online for a bit how did your studio get started working in the MechWarrior franchise and sort of what are your origins for MechWarrior five it's a lot of question I'm sorry I'm sorry it's okay no I I would say well first off I was a fan you know of I played all those original PC games you know even starting in 89 the original MechWarrior which honestly it might be one of the biggest inspirations for mech 45 mercenaries so I'm never playing that one you know begging my mom to buy it in the mall and then we had to swap out the CGA monitor for an eg a monitor so we could I could do those simple new early

graphics and I played all of them and I guess even the last one McQuarrie for anyhow would have been around even since we became a dev studio so we started our studio in 2000 and 2002 2002 was where Mike worked for and up to Macquarie mercs was launched so this was a brand I always had huge interested in it's really a dream of mine to work with it and I always felt like it was almost certainly well out of reach but we really long story short we we started to form a relationship with Jordan Wiseman who had the original fossa you know founder and creator who had sold Foster to Microsoft but then he had spent some years there and started a new studio and had to license to rice back and in 2008 we started that relationship and 2009 we released this video some people might remember it it was our attempt to kind of push for a new mecca where game and that never got off the ground but by 2011 we had managed to license those rights and started work on

MechWarrior Online so macarone mine was something we were extremely interested in but it was also kind of a step we felt like we had to take because either we weren't ready or the market wasn't ready or a number of things just weren't ready for the next single player MechWarrior game yet so we kind of established both ourselves and our knowledge of MechWarrior but also kind of reestablish a foothold for the brand with McCoy online ran that for a number of years and then it was clear though the minute we started Mecca online that the fans were super excited and also in the next breath they were like okay great but where is McCoy or five so we knew all those years that we this is something we really wanted to get to when the timing was right mm-hmm and then it was early 2016 we started development so three full three years since we started some basic prototyping in production and ramping up to where we finally shipped it so it's really a long path dream come true right

on I'm super happy super happy it's great to hear out those you get to sort of be inspired by games when they were younger and then get to follow in their footsteps as they build their careers I am going to go to the chat real quick we are going to ask we're gonna pull hammers lights question here it's not quite super dev focused but I like it someone asked anyway how did it feel to make an entry to what is considered to be a premiere PC series from the 90s and early 2000s and how do you adapt this genre to today's markets especially as a smaller studio I stand corrected that's a great question him recite it is a good question and it definitely identifies some of the challenges that we face because you know it's not the same world in the same market and everything that it was in the 90s when Mecca was at its heyday and so you have a lot of tough decisions to make or beyond in production it's like do you want to attempt something radically different that you think today's gamers want will adapt to all of today's gamers and you

know try to establish it in that regard or do you want to give longtime fans of the franchise what they want and we chose the latter and I think that's for some good reasons and it doesn't mean of course that microfiber mercenaries doesn't have a significant amount of modern updates when it comes to things and not just visually and graphically but in the destructible environments even in the this controls and a lot of things that modern games do today but ultimately what we decided to do was let's update in give Mecca we're mercenaries fans the Gandy all's dreamed up the one that they were in they were playing mecca where for mercenaries or Mecca where two mercenaries and they loved it to death but when the experience was a little too linear and was over too fast and they were left wanting just after maybe eight to ten hours of a single-player campaign we we decided

well let's make something in the in those moments are always dreaming like well what if what if you could fly anywhere or if you could take contracts anywhere what if you know this you could do this or that and had your own dropship and connect CCE or mechs and we tried to essentially bring what I felt like would be all the dreams of all those years playing those games to life in Mecca where five mercenaries and in doing so we would meet the requirements and dreams of long time McCoy fans but also by modernizing it to today's engines technology destructible environments control schemes we have also a chance to reach out to you know maybe a new generation of McCoy fans as well so that's how we approached it you could have gone a different way you could have really radically changed and revolutionized the entire thing and hoped that it would find an audience but we we stuck with what we started with our core audience I guess in and in advanced a concept from there right on cameras I'd also wants to say thank you

for making something as great as make four or five after 17 years of quote toilet years I don't know if that's a specific reference Battletech lore but we're going to get to some other questions from folks in chat sia t as may we do see your questions but for now we're going to lean in on some of the development focus questions that we've got lined up here rust the first one I have to ask is I think what some of the things that like defines MechWarrior for me and and my love of giant robots is the sensation that unlike other giant robot experiences in video games this one is dedicated to make make it feel like you're piloting something you [ __ ] you have the system where you know you move the torso and the legs in two different directions the heat management you and I were talking before the stream about our days planning this on joystick in the original series as a new without without sort of any code or assets from the old games to sort of buoy you which is an assumption I'm making how did you start from the ground up making something that would

feel like the old systems that was probably more meant to be played on keyboard and mouse since joysticks aren't as popular these days and get that piloting sensation even and even without the piloting peripheral yeah well it's one of the huge advantages we had was that you know even when we started McCoy five mercenaries in early 2016 we had already been working on McCoy online for over five years so if there's people out there that know mech we're online there's you know we could talk and debate about you know it and its success rate but you know here it is it's a game it's been around for eight years in the free to play space and there's one thing that everyone would agree on I think is that the mech combat is is great it's just a high point of the of the product so it really we really did establish really great mech combat and so we were bringing that into

micro 5 so we were starting with I guess a strong know-how of how to create strong that combat and starting with all a lot of the all the mech concepts and assets for all the battle mechs that we spent well now you know the last eight years concept and developing which is also another like top to strong point of Mecca where online and Parana games work on mech warrior is really the establishing and or reestablishing of the look and feel of all the bottom X in the universe our artist Alex Iglesias has concept it out almost all of them at this point I mean there's still some we haven't got to you but there's so many well over 100 chassis Xin mech we're online with you know four to five variants each so we're up into the you know over a thousand range and people have really gravitated towards those and its really become kind of a standard now we license those art assets out to a harebrained scheme so you see the same mechs as mech or online and as mech

warrior five in Hera brains biotech product as well almost entirely they've they've have done a couple like the hatchet man and they have the new the new one in their latest DLC which is an original concept but for the most part it's been the new mexic we've established here at piranha and in Mecca or online so we were bringing these two real strong pillars I think to the table and that was a lot of know-how that we had either developed over the years and and had at our disposal and then you know we the rest so you I think if you play Mecca where five I think it also would be fair to say that that remains a high point you know our strengths would be the mission to Mission combat simulator is maybe unsurprisingly because of our history with Macquarie online is the high point of Mecca where five as well but we had to develop other expertise is in artificial intelligence systems and in campaign and storytelling it I think those areas are good but

they're not as strong as some other areas and so again our strengths are in the combat simulator and so I think that might get to most your question it did I miss maybe a piece of that yeah well I guess I'll zero in on the question of what do you think makes what do you think makes piloting feel good in a modern game is basic what do you think what do you think your team did about the feeling okay yeah well the torso twisting feeling that is you know and it's kind of it's good that you're showing the tutorial of the game here because it is type of game that still requires you know a tutorial because there's a lot of people that don't have never played anything quite like this before and that's what makes mech wired so unique is that you know there is this concept that you're essentially a walking tank and and that's where my query 5 is good because it has this really great third-person camera which quickly explains the players that that notion as you turn your torso when you're in first-person mode that can

become a little more challenging to understand so I think what makes it feel great is that even though it seems to people like it's slower combat then say like your average first-person shooter I think the amount of things that's going through the person's brain while they're playing again Mike McQueary is everybody's higher intense as any super twitch fps it's just that because you're always making movements on your controls is that you're thinking ahead like five steps ahead like well if I want to back up and get behind this building and get covered before that guy finishes turning around then I've got to start making those movements ahead of time to slow this giant mech down put it into reverse and turn and back around that corner before he can finish his turn so although what's being presented on the screen is it's a slower action simulation compared to a twitch first-person shooter I think the actions

inside the players head and the movements that they're planning is is every bit as intense so it's very very satisfying that way and you have the you know the lumbering sounds the turning sounds of your torso the reaction as you shoot your weapons or take hits the sparks in your cockpit that when you take them when you take a hit as you lose bits and pieces of your mech in turn losing weapons there's just so many things that add up to a mech cockpit experience and again I think that's something we have had now about eight years to fine-tune between mwo and mccoy five so the magic is in there and it's just a collection I think of dozens of things that the guys have learned and developed over the last eight years right on I'm going to jump the cyber LFO five and asked if there was any collaboration with the hairbrained Studios battle tech team I think you mentioned there that you guys just licen have been licensing mech design to them

anything else from the fine folks at harebrained that have helped you out oh not much and there's not a lot between the studios in that regard we know each other well we're friends of each other and they you know they come with the mech on and everything for you know I for for battle tech we likes this artwork to them and they use that and it's pretty much the same thing this way they the jump ship you see in the travel sequences there that's the only artwork that I'm aware of but also they offered quite a bit of valuable help in the localization front because they had they had already gone through localization a Battletech and I believe they ship at the same languages that we did we shipped with besides the English we had French German and Russian which are strong languages for the you know the MechWarrior brand and they had gone through the same process so I know that our guys here in localization got help from a couple individuals on their side helped out a lot on localization so you know that's about it there's not you

know where each of our Studios I think it's just so busy with our own games there's not a lot of like you know we're not talking about the you know campaign of the story which with each other about each other's games or anything like that but just help out oh can we help you hello can we help with some shirt you know you can use our art we'll use some of yours and stuff like that stuff that would help with you know production time production risk things like that the loking is actually something I would super want to dive into just because you know reaching new markets in any video game space is kind of an important conversation for devs I am going to dive to one more question before I return to my questions however veritas listen is he dragging would like to know would you talk a little about how the Mex ported to MechWarrior Online were overhauled to have new damage models for me this is one of the most important impressive parts of MechWarrior five visually y'all are asking some good questions today thank you mmm-hmm yeah so we were able to bring over the mechs pretty much as

is you know we didn't we didn't remodel them which was really key to our design I mean we were like okay we're only so big of a studio sound like we can remodel like you know six years worth of models so good thing that they were they were still really great models that held up hold up really well and we brought them over but we did know that we want to go significantly further with the damage date in Mecca and mine it looks great but it's limited really to basically just arm removal once the arms are blown off I think that's the only thing that actually has a model swath if I'm not mistaken Mecca rn9 well model swap out the and so of course we thought about a lot of different ways we could approach this but we also wanted to be careful that we weren't overreaching into something overly complex where you spend you know massive amounts of engineering resources just to end up with something that looks kind of odd you know so we we basically

just went with a kind of what we knew but went a lot further so it mech we're online you you have the pristine paint when you get shot with a laser you have the laser glow and then whenever you get shot where this laser anything you have the damage texture layer so like it removes the pain it shows the pock marks and stuff like you're taking damage and then that's kind of all the mwo does until like a limbs loss like an arm is lost and then we do the model sauce in MEC where five we have the damage like the laser glow and we have the damage texture but we went a little further we said okay damage texture represents your armor like you're still in you still have armor left on your maxes but when you get to internal structure we're actually gonna do a model swap and then once the lunch all the internal structure is gone will do another model swap to the destroyed state and that's the case in almost every component but obviously with the certain areas like

Center torso when you're done with structure your mechs dead anyhow but there's still another model swap so what this turns out to be is you have two arms two legs tutorials the center torso ahead and then even the rear torsos and you add this up I think it's something like what is that two four six seven seven times three and I think I'm missing some you end up having something like between twenty and thirty I'm a little rusty in this knowledge now I used to have it all down perfectly but somewhere between like twenty and thirty of various damage dates per mech mm-hm and so it did it was a pretty big effort if you look here like I guess your footage you just recorded you can you just walk past the sensor and you yes some of that down the screen that's okay they can see it so these legs I think that right leg there is destroyed that's you know down to its it's a base model swap or the out of structure and then the other leg might be showing some structure left and so it did take quite a bit of effort with with every chassis

in the game we had to model both states both armors gone and now structures gone and we do swaps based on everything so that's how the system works and I think for the most part it works I'm really happy with it it shows tons of detail when you get back to the mech lab and that was part of the point - it's like I want the feedback in real time in combat but when you the whole point of McQuarrie 5 immersion he's coming back and being alive in this hangar and you want to see that damage persist so that was a main point as well and I would say we're like I'm like 95% happy with it the only time it kind of trips up a little bit is in combat because the model swaps are so precise if you're very precise in your shooting and so you're just hitting one particular component like just the right dead center in the center torso you'll see all the model swaps happen there and it's a very distinct line that's so I

think if we're ever to make any improvements we try to do some sort of bleeding out from that pristine line to make it blend a little better but otherwise you know really happy with with the overall system right on brief shout out here to the voice actor behind this particular character spirit it's the same guy who wishes Adam Jensen and Deus Ex and I'm blanking on his name but I loved his voice that's a Elias - fix it that's it good and he was also in battle tech if the people in China would know he was yeah the bad guy red haired bad guy in the cinematics where you any other spoiler so I won't say it but he's uh he's in that game as well let's talk about Mick micromanagement outside of piloting we just sort of got a glimpse a second ago into the into the loadout system which looked very familiar as someone who played the old McCoy games it looks familiar even it's just someone to play battle tech like picking your loadout

I'm struck by how similar it was across the old games that strategy game in your game the types of weapons you have available all of this is super familiar stuff if you've been playing MechWarrior for as long as some of the folks in chat have been you know this is old hat how do you think you approached you and your team approached redesigning those features for this game and making sure it was still accessible even the players who didn't know that like hey it's not a good idea to just get up your mech with all lasers because then it overheats yeah it's um it's you're right it's one of the key like pillars of any mech warrior game and it's also very it's a it's a big discussion point for a lot of people because there's so many ways to go about a mech lab and in fact as many numbered series mech games as there are there's a different Mecca yeah and and those that know the intricacies will understand that like for example people might remember that mech warrior 3 was a no-holds-barred almost Franken Maxim which had maybe a

few fans with some detractors and Becker 4 went with more of a sighs heart point system McCoy your online not part of the numbered series but MechWarrior Online has like without a doubt like the most robust mech lab known to mankind I mean it is it is out there like we it does everything and so we had that experience of having a mech lab like MechWarrior Online which is great for a PvP game that allows people to do unbelievable numbers of different builds looking for the min/max situation so we had all that and we could have brought that over exactly to mech warrior 5 but we didn't and for a few reasons one is it is way too much if we're trying to re-establish mech warrior single-player games PvE and be successful enough that maybe there's a mech where six one day we needed to we needed it to be understandable and reachable to more than just you know the most hardcore

fans of the brand so that was a fairly big part of it and of why we brought down the complexity somewhat but maybe the bigger element and this what I've expressed to the you know the mech or online community and it is the bigger element is mech warrior five is not a PvP multiple game it a single-player game that allows co-op play and for this reason you're also managing a mercenary unit unlike ever before like to to a level of freedom that they want to dreamed about in the past in order for that to work you really need the all the various variants of the mechs and the markets that you visit in the star map you all have some meaning with a mecha online style of mech lab you can almost take any mech and the customization levels so high that you can kind of accomplish the same thing that other mechs do well just to customization and we needed to we felt

we need to limit that quite a bit so that when you customize your mech it has meaning but you're also not overriding what other mechs would do so when you go to the market and you see mechs for sale there almost any everyone that's there has some meaning like Oh need I haven't seen that one yet I'd really like to buy that one and have this free market system in this meta game really work and makes sense so there's a couple reasons but still it's a very for a brand new player there's still you know plenty of depth there I mean you can still swap all weapons very different types of that so we have kind of a hard size hardpoint system as well like mech where for so there are some restrictions but you can generally put smaller ones in and but we just don't allow what we what's called hardpoint inflation where you can't say pull out like a large energy weapon and then put like three small ones in oh so any Ally I think you know it's an hour long

conversation going to mech labs but it's core to any macro experience for sure and I I feel like anyhow and I've got some feedback to this some some of the most hardcore micro online fans might still long for the deeper mech left but I think for the most part the feedback has been that we found the right balance for you know this single-player experience you know market driven game right on I will get back to some chat questions in a second I wanted to ask about one worth system and how you all approach as you mentioned this game is not just about power to the mechs it's about running the whole mercenary group taking systems of systems contracts so it's a really neat meta game that fits in with the story missions negotiating contracts I'm a super big fan of these systems because they they help with that simulation aspect and they get help help you personalize the decisions you're making I'm not just a you know mech design level but like who is my group

what kind of jobs do we take on like how risky how risky you know how much trouble are you in right now I wish we had more time to dive into another stream but we're just going through some of the early missions here but how did your studio approach designing that one knowing it would kind of be not just the anchor for your single-player mission you know not just a backbone for your single-player missions but also where people will be spending a lot of time if they chose to ignore the single-player all the main missions and just go run their companies hmm yeah I think fairly early on and one of the messages we kept saying I know I repeated it and a lot of meetings was you know where the game is lost you know out the gate if we can't create a meta game experience in the front end that's nearly as fun as being out in the missions or released as you know addicting and engrossing to want to manage your company so that's I don't know if we achieved that entirely I

meaning I still think you know going out in the missions is is the funnest aspect but I do we did put a lot of effort into that to make sure that we tried to make that meta game experience really meaningful so you touched on the high points first off there's the ability to travel anywhere you want but it's fairly expensive to hire you know jump ships to take your your drop ship and your unit places so those every time you travel you know you're thinking about that casinos 100,000 sea bills 50,000 sea bills that's a lot and the other I think one of the one of the bigger innovations that we did in our game that I don't think has been done before is this notion that sure you can repair your mechs anywhere but when you're in the wars it's more expensive to do repairs and it takes more time so we created this because we wanted to try to bring the starmap alive where players we're actively always thinking about the

starmap and and where they do certain things and so we kind of went out of our way to well what for one we the player wants to hire pilots for their for their battle mechs they're only available in the industrial hubs and then to kind of to reinforce the industrial hubs we also said well those are penalty free areas to repair and get to repair your mech so you don't they don't cost extra and it doesn't take extra time so now we've created a situation where there's there's a lot of motivations for the player to plan around how long they're visiting the war zones versus how long they're visiting the industrial hubs and now there's a bit of pressure on you as a mercenary commander to try to have enough functioning mission worthy battle mechs and pilots that you're not just going on one mission repairing everything going on one mission repairing everything but perhaps when you go to the war zone you're thinking well you know we have enough mechs and

pilots to do two missions maybe even three if we've got a good stable before we need to incur those costs to fly out to do all those repairs and whatnot so we did we did quite a few things like that in hopes of bringing you know more life to the star map the view Intel button tells you you know which planets have which contracts and what mechs you might encounter in the battlefields and so on so that's I hope that answers the question but it was it's definitely a big effort for us it wasn't just like it's all about the missions when you go in here it's there's nothing really to think about except you know which contract you accept it's it's a little more than that there's you think about the contracts but you're always thinking about where should I find X and when should we fly and stuff like that I like that answer I especially like the part we mentioned that you mentioned the using the war zones as like as an incentive like hey you can only be in this area so longer your funds will run out that's some good insight yeah and speaking about Aaron centric art says

there's an incentive to fill your Mex table for that reason I am going to go back to questions from chat for a minute these will be a little off topic for dev but you know you guys have been great will give you a some questions that a lot of topic do you have any plans for mod support and if that's the case or if it's not the case can you talk about what it takes to implement to support monitors for games like this yeah we do we told the community quite a while ago that we plan to support mods and in fact we are preparing the editor for release right now it's we told the community recently on our the discord channel so anyone who's about the game at this point can get access to the microfiber in his discard channel by the way and so welcome you to come in there and there's lots of good resources around joystick support and just you know a whole bunch of things there's a bunch of drop areas if you're looking for people to play

co-op with but one of those things is mod support channels and we just let everyone know that our goal is to release the editor here sometime next week before we all break for Christmas I think there's a good chance that we're gonna meet that goal and so basically we're gonna release the editor and what that will do is it'll allow mod creators to get started we're still gonna be lacking the kind of a smooth you know end user experience for just like selecting and downloading mods so we're gonna be working closely with epic on that I'm sure we're gonna be one of the there's no timelines or etas yet on that aspect of it but you know they're adding that kind of functionality to the epic game store a similar to a Steamworks type of thing and so we're gonna be right there with them I hope being one of the first videos to support that but you won't have to wait for that I mean the editor would be out soon and people can get started making mods and they can

still you know potentially share them with each other through more like old-school methods you know like here take this folder do this do that you know all sorts of things like that and then we're going to be you know looking to get more that end user experience in as soon as we can know ETA yet on that but there's the answer right on that's actually also a to give a shout out to central for asking that question I'm gonna questions about working with epic in a bit but let's see we can talk about couple questions like sour Max Starbucks as they're bringing some questions from the ng ng TV community stream so shout out to the folks at ng ng TV star Mex would like to know if co-op players will be interact with the star Mac and McVeigh in the future and I guess what was sort of the challenges of doing a co-op co-op mode in the first place because I I mean you know take every problem you have making it for one player multiply it by two and that's what it sounds like to me yeah I mean

even adding peer-to-peer co-op it might sound simple and perhaps you know compared to the online infrastructure that is required for something like Mecca where online it is simple but it still makes almost every programming task that you do in the game like take twice as long because almost everything you do you have to make sure is ready for a co-op player now replicates to the player so it definitely added a lot of development time a lot of complexity and things like he mentions I don't know what the likelihood of stuff like that is it because you have to consider things like well we're not just it's not just technical requirements that we have to consider we have to consider you know gameplay aspects like does your friend or you know person that you're playing a game with do you want him to actually spend your C bills because you know in instant action you know you so it's not a limitation of technology because an

instant action you know you can you can edit your Mac edit your loadout edit your paint job all that kind of stuff but when it comes to playing in someone else's campaign game you don't there's a different aspect there because they have certain mechs in their campaign they don't have all mechs and they have certain pilots and you come in and you essentially take the place of one of those AI pilots so you become you know name and AI pilots name it's like okay you're gonna be him so play him for me and play this mech and come out my missions with me and help out so you don't bring your own stuff in and we also didn't think that we could allow the player to adjust and spend the person's campaign that you're in you know because then it's gonna open up a massive can of worms like yeah well we'll put in options to say if you want to allow it or not so everything's possible time but you know we might have had to release December 2020 if we wanted to put all of that stuff in so who knows where patches or updates will

will go from here no commitments but I will be listening and we understand the you know people are really enjoying co-op and I'm sure there'll be a few you know there would be some additions and adjustments just as long as we're being you know careful and in just remembering that this is you must not MechWarrior Online it's a single-player game that allows co-op play the majority of their co-op play will probably be an instant action but helping your buddy out in his campaign is certainly fun but you just just remember that your year and his campaign and using his his see bills and his equipment right which some other questions what were the positives and negatives of experiences of developing this game how did it go transitioning to a new engine and how was it how was the transition to working they say hammers lights asks how was it like

transitioning to a genre where narrative was at the front and center compared to the multiplayer online MechWarrior Online I would rephrase the question as what was it like transitioning to a single-player campaign you know just kind of a campaign thing because narrative maybe narrative focus maybe not quite the adjective I would use but I guess you know I like his question one of the ups and downs of making this game oh my goodness in hindsight it feels like co piranha games is not a brand new studio right yeah we've been around now for 20 years Oh even making this game was still a massive challenge it was very hard it was there almost was no aspect of the game that wasn't incredibly challenging I mean the base core mech combat damage model assist and everything that was challenging but probably the one area that you know coming from the core online that was even though we felt challenges we knew where we were going and how we're gonna get there but almost

every other aspect from telling a story which obviously micro online has nothing like that creamy I systems creating the procedurally generated missions everything at one point in the project felt like extremely challenging and oh my god are we actually gonna be able to do this so I couldn't even narrow it down there must be a half a dozen systems or we're you know very very challenging and there were moments during the development where you wonder if you're going to succeed finishing off that risk that item or if you're gonna have to drastically change the way the game works you know and stuff so you know we came through and I believe every case and so very challenging production I think that goes for a few reasons I mean a lot of seals might feel this way about almost almost every game they make but I do think there were some extra challenge here because even though we were a veteran studio we've been on for

a long time but we had been you know 100% in PvP multiplier game for the last five six years previous to to making mecha wave 5 so yeah a lot of challenges in almost every area right on some questions on my part just a heads up for folks who've got about 20 minutes left in the stream so if you've got some questions get them in chat we're gonna talk about some of the stuff bubble grab more before we're out of here let's talk about the epic game story this is a big new thing for the game world that's pending you literally a year almost a year to the day since it launched that might not be tired entirely correct but it's been a year since the you know like it kicked off at the right around the time of the game Awards Hades launched in early access back then and you all were able to choose to be an epic game store exclusive for your lawn which isn't you know I think that's such an interesting decision in a world where you know you say when you say okay our market its PC players we're only going to launch on PC and then to say right

now the best choice for us is to launch on the epic game store and exclusively work with them what's that process been like and how did it feel working with epic as a partner mm-hmm well a big question I would say you know I you know the jury's still out a little bit to say if you know 100% everything works out the way we thought it would or planned it would when we when we decide to take the epic game store deal and we took it for a number of reasons which I'll get into but you know I think we you know we still have some maybe even like a few months to go here before we can we can say if all of it panned out like we we hoped it might so but the reason that we we took it if there was there was I've known the guys over there for quite a long time as a lot of developers do because you know they've been working with Unreal Engine at one time or another over long careers and no

the gut you get to know the guys over there well but we were already using unreal for obviously we started developing in 2016 and we had been a kind of company though that you know with mecha reliant we've been self-publishing and selling our own games on our own portal now for years and years so we were developing MechWarrior v not really just kind of intending that you would be sold everywhere including our own portal and that was the plan and there really wasn't any knowledge I didn't even know that you know epic was you know it isn't necessarily even doing these types of deals he just started to kind of hear about it maybe I would say even in early but early 2019 you know first quarter 2019 you start to hear about I think Metro Exodus is one of the first ones I kind of heard about where's like oh there's a thing going on here you know like yeah this is making

the news okay what interesting still didn't have any you know really knowledge that we'd do something like that then any rate I had a conversation with Joe and it probably wasn't until April or May that we had our first real conversation with them that this came up is like oh there's there's a there's something to consider here you know there's an opportunity there's a you know a proposal to become one of these games and so for us as any small developer would say is like well what are the you know the pros and cons and one of the major benefits of course was we felt very strongly that we were gonna be able to make a better game because it was going to just the nature of switching over to the store changing how the co-op's gonna work with the you know epic game store and a few other things that you know we were gonna be able to move our release date really stay from September to December which was gonna make it the full you know full one-year delay really from the original release date and we just had a pretty

good idea of just how much extra quality we were gonna be able to put into the game and so that was really the number one thing mm-hmm and then there's other you know deal terms that I won't get into specifics here but there's other deal terms that make just add on top of that where it's like removes a significant amount of risk for for small studios that or perhaps even all the risk and and it says well then it almost becomes just you know a bad decision if you don't because we've got a situation we can make a better game and and remove the risk and then if I'm talking about the type of game that I'm making and who I'm making it for this becomes a very easy decision because I want to deliver the best microfiber in this game I can that's my number one priority as a developer and you know if you do that you have a lot of faith that the rest of it can get was gonna work itself out because all that really matters in the end is is quality people want a quality product that they can they can play and

they can play for a very long time so that really made it pretty easy for us um and we started to work on it and I think you know in hindsight that part has definitely worked out you know the quality of the game is significantly higher than it would have been with an earlier release and you know working with epic has been good they've been very you know very very responsive and they take care of the developers that work with them very well because now they understand that we're you know we're under some challenges when it comes to you know the marketplace still adapting to some of the things they're not happy with about the exclusivity and then also understand that their stories is you know behind when it comes to features compared to the big stores like Steam and so they work really closely with you to prioritize the things that you need for your game and to you know just work hard to you know get you know updates as fast as they can so I think it's it's worked out pretty well for us

I'm not sure I've answered all the intricacies of your question but that was that's kind of a gist of our story on it and I think you know for MechWarrior fans out there you know at the very least should be I think happy that the game got the amount of you know resources and development time that we were able to give it and some of that was due to you know us doing that epic game store deal right on we can address one thing that folks in chat are asking about you and you mentioned before we started the stream that you had a new update going on today it looks like that update has arrived folks are asking where the patch notes will be posted and I guess I guess um what you know we talked about the nature of making games in 2019 is different than making games in 2004 and different in 1994 and one of the things has to be that games are not

just a you know fixed product that goes on the shelves and is done they have patches and notes and updates and expansions and how are you all thinking about sort of you know this isn't a live game this isn't MechWarrior Online but hey I guess the first question is for folks in for to help the folks in chat out what's going on with this patch and then the follow-up question is how how have you sort of structured the studio to be able to keep working with warrior for at lunch yeah that's a good question because we've been really reminding ourselves of that too you know saying okay this is not McCoy or online because it takes a lot of takes a lot of reminders even for ourselves in that regard but quickly so the AHA fix that just went out this one is very small the patch notes will be on the discord Channel is they'll be pinned there somewhere for sure and this one in particular is just a few small fixes to some of the holdest controllers in particular there was a crash when if you

had your like hoteis joystick plugged in as well as having foot pedals plugged in all at the same time it would cause a crash and some other like related aspects so that was something one get out right away without waiting on anything else so that's what is in this ha fix now it's not as confirmed yet but there's there's a plan for there to be another hop fix on another one this week you know probably on Thursday possible could slip to Friday but I'm anticipating would be more like Thursday around this time and that one's a little bigger and a little more significant it's got several crash fixes some other I don't have the notes in front of me but the notes will be up on discord but that one it's even got its got some other fixes for the tutorial mission which some optimizations will call it as well as some crashes so the fairly significant and fixes first a billowy

wanted to get out into the game before the weekend hit so look for those past notes on Thursday so hopefully the you know the larger playing numbers of the weekend will have a you know a better time for us pushing out a couple ha fixes here before the weekend hits and then you know if everything holds there there's likely to be at least one more patch next week before we break for Christmas target around around midweek maybe as early as Tuesday that one is probably bigger than the other two combined but it basically just a number of up fixes we'll call it before we break for Christmas so be a total of three patches and obviously the goal here is to just make sure that you know the game is in this good a state as possible because it's been a long three years and we're all tired and we hope we can get a nice restful Christmas break between like December 20th and like about January 2nd so our plan is to not

be fixed in the game during that periods we want to be working well and as far as in general yeah we have to remind ourselves that you know this isn't Mecca rn9 so we're not looking to do you know schedule patches like every two weeks like we did for the first several years of micron line and then every month after that and and that comes down to every little tuning of every little bouncing because it was a PvP game this will live you know come the new year a little more like a traditional you know premium product we hope there will be you know the will be watching the sales we're like it were a little over 24 hours here so I don't think we know yet just how much of a DLC plan there will be you know kind of be dictated by how things go over here for the next few weeks and that's you know it's fair people don't understand that's probably the case and so we'll be we'll be watching and waiting and it would be you know designing and planning our DLC plan and so most of the updates will come through more a larger DLC type situation

but I'm sure there'll be several you know plan to free updates of course as well anything that's anything that's like a bug fix or whatever those are you know those are gonna be those are gonna be free updates of course yeah it's time about 1251 here this footage is only appears I will play a game so much before we got here so you know we got a we have time you listen to take your questions and talk more about the warrior um man I Russ I am going to pull one question from chat this is kind of granular but dude machine would like to know if there's anything we looked at as far as sensor ranges and enemy spawns being so close to play it what about enemies spawn and close to players if that's being looked into it all yeah well at the moment we're not looking into it it has been a matter that has gone through several iterations before we released it's not it's not

perfect so I think we would say we would continue to look at it basically you've got a challenging situation where we need enemies to you know spawn and for the action but also especially in these wave based mission types but also we're trying to account for the fact that we have up to three co-op players and it's like understanding exactly where all the co-op players are in which direction everyone's looking is kind of tricky to make sure we get our spawn so I think we have a system right now we're like you know like 90% of the time it works great and then every once in a while you're like oh wait a minute how did he get there that quickly like I was just looking that way then I turn around there he has 200 meters away so I think it's something that will definitely go through more fine-tuning so I think you can it's safe to say you can expect at least some more fine-tuning and systems like that right on and then one more question from jet grace through pastry chef I'd like to know if more mission types would be coming along to help that right to the

game I think so I think that probably you know just at first blush you know this early on is probably something that fits more into a DLC type environment where you know we might have a DLC pack and let's say it you don't add a number of things maybe another mini campaign and perhaps you know more mission types and then likely if that happens those new mission types potentially could just kind of proliferate you know throughout the Inner Sphere but those sort of things are non decided yet those are design decisions that we still have to make you know hopefully forgive us that we are we really haven't had a lot of time so I'll think about DLC yet I think you know the big studios the big companies you know they of course they'd have this dialed in 30 60 90 day and stuff and so being a small studio we need to be a little more reactionary than then some but hopefully it feels like we're we're very close you know within days of being able to really

sit back and go okay what's next and there have been some of those conversations happening already in the studio some of the artists on the designers just a lot of brainstorming a lot of whiteboarding a lot of but also there's still a lot of reactionary stuff for us to do like seeing what people are saying so we're just now like a day and a half into getting getting an idea of what you know the players feel like me the most you know desired things so we'll be making decisions over the next couple weeks and hopefully be there's no shortage of great ideas both internally and with the players so I'm sure if hopefully you know the game and the success justifies it because we I'm sure we had we could work on updates for this game for you know a very long time right follow up on that question with use talk in there about being a small company you've mentioned a few times you know being a seventy person team as a CEO I

guess like how does it feel you know to like be making keeping a mid-sized company alive in a float out there in today's world is there anything you think you've done right by your team for like making them want to stay there and work with you like making them you know not not scaling up to 200 people like like what have you sort of learned like as a small shop keeping keeping your doors open and stuff that's a big I'm sorry no it's okay no it's a good question I I'm sure it's a matter of opinion because I'm sure there's plenty of devs out there maybe that belonged to very small you know indie shops and they thinking wait a minute 70s on a small studio but from my perspective it really is you know I've been doing this 20 years now we have heard so December 20th is our launch party and also our 20 year anniversary as a studio so we've gone through all the years we were 12 to 15 into 30 to 40 to 60 to 70 and it's

interesting you know back when we were like 40 or 50 then or 30 and the big studios were 70 and now it's kind of the scaling of how much bigger things getting now and I would takes to create games and now that we're 70 we really haven't climbed out of that small to mid tier yet not because now this now those studios are 100 120 so I think we're still a small studio and I think the greatest accomplishment has been that we have kept an independent development studio open for 20 years that is not easy and if you think it is do me a favor go start a game studio and then you know have 70 staff and let me know in 20 years if you're still around it takes a it takes a lot to go right and a lot of hard work and we've managed to do it which is grateful so grateful for so that's the part I'm most proud of is tallying up just a number of months

and you know that I've been able to employ people and you know keep them employed and be able to make games that we all like so that's um that has been you know 20 year journey and I'm not sure where it ends yet but not yet you know we're gonna be around for a bit longer in the end we're gonna and we got a game to work on here so I guess that's that's all any independent developer can ask for right now we are about to close up but I'm gonna get one more question from Jack because it's just such a good one xiety one would like to know what was a big AHA with during development ooh I almost feel like this is gonna be like the other one it's like well we had about ten of them and every one of them felt like oh my gosh uh aha moment I'll take a little bit of a different look at this to answer it I'm probably gonna op the way I'll answer this I think is like when we had a moment where it was like

aha you know this thing is going to work you know this thing is it's going to happen like this game is coming together and it's it and I think it might even be pretty good and I think that probably came boy maybe even as late as six or so months ago when we put together this urban test environment city environment which finally for the first time it kind of brought everything together both Mex the met combat turrets the vehicles but most importantly should have a final garrison city garrison environment where all the tall buildings in the fully destructible city environment that you see in some of these urban settings and we're able to jump in there and we were able to play and I'm running around the city walking

right through buildings and chasing a light mech around the city and as I missed the bullets are obliterating the side of other buildings and I sat back had a big smile on my face and I was just like okay this is gonna work this is this is really fun and there's really nothing else out there like it and that was an aha moment for me to kind of give me a lot of confidence that there was still a ton of work to do but that we could bring it home right on and everyone in chat folks like a commissar Punk brownie Joe you're blood Marauder y'all are great y'all arrested some great questions I would ask them all for you if I have the time but I do not sadly time is a finite resource and you know wait that got a little dark okay we're gonna we're gonna walk away from that thread yeah Russ thank you so much for joining us today I can see we've had some new folks join us in the last part of the half at in sort of the last few minutes we would encourage you to go back and watch the earlier part of the stream we're gonna archive all this for you to get some other questions answered for folks likes

broke or just coming in because of the new patch Russ has already explained that those patch notes will be bill in the discord Russ is the discord also a place where people can provide feedback and ask some of the great questions that they're asking yeah there's a whole bunch of channels there's feedback channels bug report channels everything you'd expect yeah so I wish I wish had a link to that it's Courtney I could drop in chat but where's a place they can find a link fast oh boy I'm the worst at these sort of things all I know is the server name is McQuarrie 5 Mercer nice so yeah you'll find it I unfortunately cannot but yeah let me see yeah with that sorry for stumbling over my words there we are going to wrap things up for

today thank you all so much for joining us Russ if they've got any questions for you just like those Deb's you know we're from the vein questions we're so good place they can reach out to you about that best place is discord channel you'll see us listed there I don't know how your success rated beyond direct messaging but Tina is the community manager and usually being able to you know talk to her if there's she can come directly to us and say hey you know here's something I think it was not worthy I got this question from somebody and she can ask us right on I was able to drop the discord link in check for folks who do not have it yet and with that we are going to wrap things up for the day thank you all so much for watching and Russ thank you for joining us you're welcome I forgot to do more of my clothes and repeal because it's so focus I'm the discord like if you are yourself a game developer interesting game development this is GDC the gec twitch channel we are always here talking about the art and business of

making games if you happen to drop by on Friday we're gonna be doing a string with the folks behind Age of Empires 2 definitive edition so I'm just spending this week reliving my 90s childhood apparently with PC games if you join us in the new year we will have more streams from other great devs as we ramp up for GDC and March but your developer yourself we'd love to have you out the show and if you are sittin coming to the show scroll down and you can get some info on registration if you click the follow button on this channel you will get notifications when we go live and not only do we have those interviews I mentioned but we will have the game developers Choice Awards and IGF awards ceremonies live at the show and so hopefully some other cool stuff too with that I would like to wish everyone a happy Wednesday and that's it enjoy your mix you're blowing stuff up thank you