welcome to our 101st development status update.

We would like to show you what has been done during past months and what is still left to do before the 1.2.0 patch release.


Tank Merging

One of the biggest tasks of this patch was to throw away the need to create two separate tank prefabs. We were using prefab for Workshop (repairing) and for Test Drive (with support for Proving Grounds). What is prefab? We store every informations about every each tank or vehicle in prefabs. Prefab contain all needed visuals like references to models, materials, textures, animations and of course all logic - configurations to make it all works. We have also finalized all of the new systems that are required for the new damage system to work correctly.

Each tank is now being merged, to be up to the task, that means fixing all bugs that have been reported up to now by you guys. Mostly issues with wrong configurations and other minor stuff/errors. We are also extending the tank models a bit. We plan to rework old tank models completely later next year. For example adding more details to the interiors so old ones will be as good as the new ones coming.

For example, here is M4A3E8 Sherman with little modification that was required to add the ammo:





And tank flamable elements are also now configured to be able to explode or start fire:



Additionally, we take a look at each tank's suspension settings, drive speed and other factors for Test Drive are reworked and fixed - according to your suggestions. Most of the time the biggest problem was wrong setup of forces/joints that were too weak and the tank just "sat" down immidiately.

As last note, each tank has now configuration of it's armour - angles and depth are in millimetres. With this feature the calculations for damage system on Extraction missions are correct. Each damage generated has to be consistent with the period of battlefront on which given tank was used. For example PzKpfw II Ausf. C won't be destroyed by M26 Pershing or IS-2.

Here are few screens how does it look for PzKpfw III Ausf. M:








Tank Creator

Development of Tank Creator Editor package enters into pre-final stage. Currently, after subscribing Test Tank from Steam Workshop, custom model is available for contracts, and it can be interacted in many ways in Workshop like assembly, disassembly of the elements, de-rusting, painting etc. At this moment, we are working with implementation of Test Drive module for custom tanks made.





Tank Warehouse

We were working on creating new room for tanks and vehicle as a storage place. We will add the possibility to unlock this room up to 100 times. Each room will store up to 6 vehicles. We are yet to decide if we will allow customizing this room. One customization shared across all the Tank Warehouses or customization per each of the room instance.

Tank Warehouse room will be accessible by radial menu or by new UI in PC/Tablet(SystemDG) that we will add there - Tank Manager Panel. Each Tank Warehouse will have doors to next and previous room - if they are unlocked.

Here is work in progress of how it will look:



Tank Manager Panel

This UI menu will be accessible through in-game PC/Tablet (only in Workshop scene). The menu will list all rooms, then each room will have its tank slots listed. Each slot will then have information about tank stationed there (empty or tank name/id). When player clicks on any tank on this list it will expand showing very basic informations about vehicle will be presented to the player with options to sell or replace.

Sell is self explanatory, but replace will allow to move the tank between slots without the need to physical approach the vehicle - opening radial menu and then do the standard repositioning method.  But of course it will be also available. Also, through this menu player will be able to move between rooms without need to click through the doors.

Welder

We can pick the welder up, and after picking it up we will add the mask appear in front of the player vision with different post process to also simulate having the mask on and well, you guess - welding :) The welder will work as simple as other tools, when aiming at the hole from a damage the game will detect the correct collision, and start shrinking the hole. We will show this in next Development Status.



The damage itself, if not repaired, will not allow to assemble any part in it is range, so there won't be situations when there is a hole from a damage on tank hull, and tank part would hover over the hole.

We have been thinking that we will not make the welder as a unlockable tool, it will be accessible by default in the game. If we would make it unlockable, then players after getting their tank from graveyard or from extraction would have to grind to get enough reputation to unlock the grinder and their tank would be unrepairable by then - here we would like to ask you about your opinion on this, do you think it would be correct to make the tool unlockable instead of always available?

Movable Stairs

We have returned to this feature again. Stairs will become movable and here is how it is going to work:

• Player clicks on stairs
  
• Stairs are attached to player, and become transparent
• If the colour of the stairs is:
  • Red - player cannot put the stairs where is aiming at. If player uses right click the stairs get back to their original position (if available, it can be that the player is standing at the stairs original position)
    
  • Green - player can place the stairs where is aiming at
• When re-entering the room the stairs should keep their position and rotation, but here's question for design - what if player moved the stairs very close to the tank, and then changed stationed tank to a bigger one, for example from PzKpfw III Ausf. M to PzKpfw VIII Maus? Should the stairs reposition themselves into safety automatically?

Thanks for all the support and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals

We are proud to announce that we are taking part in the Steam Awards Nominations event, and you can vote for our game! Tank Mechanic SImulator is also 45% off for the duration of Steam Autumn Sale!

We would also like to suggest the Sit Back & Relax award, as we have many times received feedback, that our game helps to calm your nerves :D (of course when it is not making you nervous of all the bugs).



Thanks for all your support, and have a good one,
DeGenerals

On the occasion of the Autumn Steam Sale, our game also start with discount set to be -45% and it iwll last till 01.12.2020 10:05 PST time. Grab it when you can ;)



Thanks and have a good one,

DeGenerals

welcome to our 100th anniversary development status update.

This week as always we will show the progress of our work, but also want to celebrate with you our journey to achieving our 100th development status.


We thought for a long time what to prepare and write for the upcoming 100th production status. We decided to make a small summary of all previous dev statuses in visual way.




Of course we are not stopping and will continue reporting what we are doing and what is going to be added and improved in the Tank Mechanic Simulator in future updates. Thank you our dear community for following our posts!

New year will bring new things to go play with tinymce.emotions_dlg.smile


This week we have finally finished adding visual effects to the new damage system that we are adding to the game. Tanks now have visible holes in it, that later will be repairable by using the welder tool. Check out below following screens of how the system looks right now:




Next week we will try to save the damage info and bring it correctly with the tank to the workshop, so the tank has the exact same state.

After that, it will be time to add the more movement to the player when taking a crew position. We would like also to implement movable stairs and welder tool. Wish us luck tinymce.emotions_dlg.wink




We have a surprise for you this week, a new vehicle that we are working on right now. This is a challenge, as this one has no tracks, and our game was not prepared for such vehicles. Fortunately the changes required were not big, and here it is:







Thanks for all the support and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals

welcome to our ninety-ninth development status update.

This week we would like to present our plans for the 1.2.0 patch. We would like to show the list of all planned features, where we are currently and what is yet ahead of us.


The main plan for this patch was to add the ability to use custom tanks and collectables through Steam Workshop, as well as adding new damage system, that will allow to make the extraction tanks have a real damage, repairable by player (but not required, player might leave the destruction and still repair the other part of the tank, if that is possible).

A list of main features, to have them clearly stated:

• Custom tanks
  
• Custom collectables
  
• Damage system
  
• Welder (to fix damage)
  
• Collectable shop
  
• Second tank on extraction
  
• Movable stairs
  
• Tank Warehouse (parking for tanks)
  
• Ammo in tanks
  
• Merging workshop and test-drive tank models
  
• All the new tanks shown in previous dev statuses

When starting to work on the new stuff, after releasing last patch in June 2020, we've made a big mistake. We did not begin working on the new stuff on a separate branch of the project. Instead, we kept working on the production/standard main branch of the project repositorium, and the amount of work required to finish the patch caused to severly prolong the planned release date. It is November and we have yet lot of work ahead of us, instead of steadily sending out smaller patches, to bug fix the game, as you guys had reported us lot of times. It is my fault, by not thinking ahead, and now we are paying the price. We can only keep working on.




We have reworked how the game handles the tanks, instead of hardcoding everything, it now dynamicly loads tanks and collectables and ammo models from files, and actually can handle them.
Oonly thing left is to add the mechanic, to delete information about the tank/collectable when player unsubscribes from it from Steam Workshop, and the game needs to handle it correctly (like some of you suggested, just erase the information from the next save at all about that missing tank or collectable).

Also, we are working on allowing the player to enter the tank on extraction, and be able to pick up ammo from inside. When adding this logic I found it very hard to navigate inside the tank, when the player has taken a crew slot - so we want to add some ability to crouch/lean when player is inside the tank as crewman - we will see how this folds out.

When all this is done, we can start working on adding mechanics to fix the damages, and add the collectable shop.


We think that most probable date is late January 2021 - after good testing (probably through the new Steam Testing tool, we will see if we can do it this way, or the standard way of sending the patch to the Unstable version).

And of course, there is the need of adding the new tanks, which are coming in from our artists. We will soon show them implemented in game, these will also require good testing.

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Thanks for all the support and have a good day,
DeGenerals

Tank Mechanic Simulator is set to be on -40% sale, till 2th of November 10:05AM PST time. Grab it when you can ;)



Happy Halloween!

Thanks and have a good one!

DeGenerals

welcome to our ninety-eighth development status update.

We are steadily progressing with task of adding the modding support/tools. This week we have reached another milestone, that allows the game to load custom collectable objects - this will come in handy when a custom tank requires some machine gun or props from a country that our game not yet has officially added.

The game now has all of its collectables as external files, located in StreamingAssets folder, called MetalObjects. Here players will be able to put their own models that they want to gather during Extraction missions.

Below is example of how a folder with one of the collectables look like and its items:

• .json file with the config for the object, so the game can correctly understand what this object is and what are its properties
  
• .png file for the texture/icon that will be shown in various places ingame, for instance in collectables shop
  
• .bundle file for the loadable object itself, in UnityEngine called prefab. This gets loaded when the game demands it, only when it needs to be spawned (no reason to keep this loaded at all times, as our game already takes too much memory in our opinion :( )

In next dev statuswe will show the same system/framework but focused for the ammuniton for tanks, so modders that want to add their tanks can also use their ammunition models, and the game will know how to handle them (load when required, put it into tank ammo storage etc.).





This week we have an update regarding the IS-2 development. Grab few screenshots from our modeller, shout out to him, nice work!




We will keep you updated, as we are coming to a point where all our effort is starting to be connected, and will be soon put to internal tests.

Thanks for all the support and have a good day,
DeGenerals

welcome to our ninety-seventh development status update.


We are making slow progress with custom tanks support, here's the report:



New features in Tank Creator Editor brings functionalities related with data export/import. Generated object has logic internally stored in fragments of code, called scripts.
Every script has special settings, called public fields. Editor automatically fills field values, depends on options selected by user from tool window.



Generated data is made from three files - two configuration files, and bundle file, which contains object data.

Tank loaded into game:





We would like to present another tank we are working in the meantime. This is the second british tank coming to the game. First one showed was first british prototype tank proposed by you - community to have it in game - Little Willie. A quick update reagarding Little Willie, we are still implementing this vehicle to the game. Be patient, we are working on it :)



The second tank we are going to introduce to the game is the Mk IV Churchill tank, or in fact its version - AVRE. This was special version of tank with Besa 7,92 caliber machine gun and with 290 mm Petard mortar. Created to be able to quickly destroy opponent fortifications and also to be used to transport specialistic sapper equipment.

More information and progress from the work as always now every Friday. See you next week!
Thanks for all the support and have a good day,

DeGenerals

we would like to announce, that our game is now available to buy for macOS users here, on Steam. It has been asked/suggested many times, and now here it is.

The version that the macOS users can now download and play, is 1.1.0 (a stable version from May 2020n).

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Additionally, the game is set to be on -40% sale, for 14 days. Grab it when you can ;)

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Thanks and have a good one,

DeGenerals

welcome to our ninety-sixth development status update.

As you well know from our previous updates we are working on new tanks. In this status we would like to introduce you to the quality we aim at with the new models. Here are work-in-progress renders of Maybach HL230 from PzKpfw VI Ausf. B Tiger II (H) “King Tiger" tank.




The heart of every vehicle is the engine. That's why we want to make the disassembling of engines even more fun and a treat for enthusiasts. Additional elements such as movable / animated pistons in cylinders, fully modelled crankshafts. This is something we do and want to have in the game.






The current tanks are in for a kind of "renovation". We are going to review every vehicle in the game and adjust them to the "new standard" described earlier. At this point, there is already some work in progress. We are collecting even more references, also thanks to you! And making corrections e.g. in the part names.



More information and progress from the work as always now every Friday. See you next week!

Thanks for all the support and have a good day,

DeGenerals