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Game News BattleTech Kickstarter Update #32: Anniversary Recap

Infinitron

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Tags: BattleTech; Harebrained Schemes; Mike McCain

A year has passed since BattleTech launched on Kickstarter and became one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns for a turn-based game in recent memory. Harebrained Schemes have decided to mark the occasion by putting together a big anniversary Kickstarter update recapping the year's most important developments. There's a brief status report by Mike McCain about the game's current state and where it's going now. Last month, Harebrained put together a short BattleTech cinematic teaser for GenCon. It didn't seem important enough to post on its own, but I think it fits well here:



So, what’s the team been up to since GenCon? In a word, EVERYTHING. Seriously. Not only did we get right back to work on the combat experience - finishing up features like melee, MechWarrior abilities, airstrikes, and more - but we’ve been busy spinning up on ‘Mech production, environment art production, map design, multiplayer, story development, and last but not least, breaking ground on development on the “simulation game” (which is our internal term to describe all the fun aspects of managing your Mercenary outfit in-between combat missions).

Whew!

Our spring and summer summer were all about two things: 1) Turning our early combat prototype into a complete, fun, and robust combat experience, and 2) Getting all of our systems, pipelines and architecture in place for full content production on the game. Objective #1 was proven out by the #SuperPreAlpha (thanks again to everyone who watched the Backer video or was able to play it at GenCon and PAX!) Objective #2 has taken a little bit longer to solidify, but I’m pleased to report that we’re also turning that corner this month into content production in all areas of the game. This is one of the great challenges of game development - sometimes one team is furiously trying to finish building the car while other teams are simultaneously trying to paint and test drive it.

To continue with the weird car analogy, I really couldn’t be more proud of this team and feel like everyone is really firing on all cylinders. Jordan and Mitch and I would like to give a particular shoutout here to our engineering team though, they have been absolutely crushing it in their efforts to get a huge amount of features into the game quickly while maintaining a quality, scalable codebase.

We expect to be back with one more Kickstarter update towards the end of 2016 including another progress update and some Kickstarter Beta details. After that, expect our KS updates to slow down a bit as production ramps WAY up.

Heh, they weren't exactly releasing that many updates before, but that's Harebrained Schemes for you. They get shit done.
 

Elwro

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By the way, as part of my "1 supposedly good book / 1 book with seemingly little ambition" routine I did read two books from the Battletech line (between two novels by Henry James). The (I think) first one, "Decision at Thunder Rift", and "Wolves on the border". The former is a shitty romp which I think made my IQ drop a few points for some days. But the latter borders on real literature (it's by R. Charrette, whom you might know from Shadowrun novels). It helps that it uses some real-life concepts like bushido. I'd recommend it for those who were into Battletech years ago but just can't stomach really shitty books anymore.
 

Kev Inkline

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By the way, as part of my "1 supposedly good book / 1 book with seemingly little ambition" routine I did read two books from the Battletech line (between two novels by Henry James). The (I think) first one, "Decision at Thunder Rift", and "Wolves on the border". The former is a shitty romp which I think made my IQ drop a few points for some days. But the latter borders on real literature (it's by R. Charrette, whom you might know from Shadowrun novels). It helps that it uses some real-life concepts like bushido. I'd recommend it for those who were into Battletech years ago but just can't stomach really shitty books anymore.
Thanks. I started reading the first book in the BT literature, The Sword and the Dagger, but it was so horribad I gave up after 20 pages into it.

Perhaps the books written by Stackpole would make a good light reading as well?
 

Elwro

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Perhaps. But I had the urge to buy legal copies for my Kindle; I think Stackpole's Warrior Trilogy or whatever it's called is not available. (Pirating it is trivial.)

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/The_Sword_and_the_Dagger apparently this was actually the second Battletech novel. And, "According to [the author], "Walter Keith {sic}, author of the first novel" (apparently referring to William H. Keith, Jr.), was brought in to help her out in writing combat scenes that did not involve 'Mechs, because personal weapons were not covered in the available background material." :)
 
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I read a few BT books years ago but also almost stopped after trying The Sword and the Dagger, one of the worst books I've encountered. Funny thing is it appears first in all the chronological BT book lists so completionist types try it first, then probably get put off the BT books for life. I mean, you know what you're getting with a Stackpole book but at least the Warrior trilogy was readable and a reasonable introduction to the background lore of the franchise, Sword and Dagger would be embarrassing for a schoolkid turning it in as an assignment.
 

Septaryeth

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By the way, as part of my "1 supposedly good book / 1 book with seemingly little ambition" routine I did read two books from the Battletech line (between two novels by Henry James). The (I think) first one, "Decision at Thunder Rift", and "Wolves on the border". The former is a shitty romp which I think made my IQ drop a few points for some days. But the latter borders on real literature (it's by R. Charrette, whom you might know from Shadowrun novels). It helps that it uses some real-life concepts like bushido. I'd recommend it for those who were into Battletech years ago but just can't stomach really shitty books anymore.

I know this is a bit off topic, but is there any shadowrun books you can recommend? :bounce:
Or, if they are all shit, some BT books?
 

Elwro

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I know this is a bit off topic, but is there any shadowrun books you can recommend? :bounce:
Or, if they are all shit, some BT books?
I'm afraid I only read the Charrette trilogy... as a teenager. They were perfectly fine... for a teenager. I think they might make for some comfortable light reading. They were surely above the Forgotten Realms crap the other kids were reading at that time.

As for BT novels, I only read those two I mentioned. I have only recently learned that there even ARE BT novels :)

Speaking of the game, I can only reiterate my amazement that they are not going for 2d/hex.
 

Country_Gravy

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They don't release a lot of updates, but when they do I get more and more excited for this game. Has potential to be awesome!
 

Elwro

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(between two novels by Henry James).

Any tips on where to start with James?
One work that anyone should read is The Turn of the Screw. In my opinion it's a stunning work of literature; the less you know about it before reading it, the better. I'll just tell you that it's quite approachable. But it's not typical James.

Because usually James takes his time to describe the minute details of the smallest aspects of his characters' motivations. The effect is that they feel real and turn out to be firmly memorable. There are usually 4-5 characters and, uh, at most 10 'plot events' in each mammoth book of his. But there are moments when I think that I understand more about the motives and inner workings of the mind of Isabel Archer (Portrait of a Lady) than of my own mother.

So, apart from the Turn, I read The Europeans, The Bostoners, The Portrait of a Lady, and I'm now reading The Golden Bowl. Out of these four, I'd recommend starting with the Portrait and going straight to the Bowl.

Watch out: some editions contain James's own prefaces (from his own 'Selected works' edition), which spoil the plots completely.
 

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