Metal Drift beta

[technoid]

Hi BlackJacket,
Good to know you used to be at Dynamix.  Were you based down at Eugene HQ, or somewhere else?  I live in the Portland area.  Did you also work on the Stellar 7 series tank game (PC version) some 2 decades ago, or was that before your time? I also played the C64 version (by Damon, circa 1983).  That was how I came about here, to Pandemic Battlezone(s), by playing earlier vehicle FPSes (including Atari BZ, of course).  I shall take a look at Metal Drift soon.

[cheesepuffly]

You worked at dynamix? You worked on tribes 2, did you work on Starsiege? (Just regular starsiege) Best game ever, second only to bz2. (barely XD)


I does actually look like a cool game. Art style is cool.

[BlackJacket]

Hey guys, yeah I worked at Dynamix on Tribes 2, not Starseige though.  There was an overlap in the dev teams so I got to work with some of the Starseige guys.  All great people.  My business partner, Weston worked on the original Tribes before moving on to LucasArts in the 90's.

I moved to Eugene because Tribes was my favorite game at the time and I had the opportunity to be on the team.  Stellar 7 was way before me, but I played it growing up and was part of the reason that I was excited to work at Dynamix - along with all the other great games they made that I played growing up.  I later met Damon - he's got his own studio now - http://www.madottergames.com.  Nice guy.

Thanks for the kind words, we've got some interesting design choices, and the game runs on rigs that are 4-5 years old, so you should check it out if you are interested.

Sign up for our forums and you can get a beta key for Steam to play the game!
http://www.blackjacketstudios.com/forum

[cheesepuffly]

Hey guys, yeah I worked at Dynamix on Tribes 2, not Starseige though.  There was an overlap in the dev teams so I got to work with some of the Starseige guys.  All great people.  My business partner, Weston worked on the original Tribes before moving on to LucasArts in the 90's.

I moved to Eugene because Tribes was my favorite game at the time and I had the opportunity to be on the team.  Stellar 7 was way before me, but I played it growing up and was part of the reason that I was excited to work at Dynamix - along with all the other great games they made that I played growing up.  I later met Damon - he's got his own studio now - http://www.madottergames.com.  Nice guy.

Thanks for the kind words, we've got some interesting design choices, and the game runs on rigs that are 4-5 years old, so you should check it out if you are interested.

Sign up for our forums and you can get a beta key for Steam to play the game!
http://www.blackjacketstudios.com/forum

Sweet, sweet, and sweet.

Gonna assume if you can run battlezone 2 you have a good chance of running this then. (but i can run far cry 2 on medium settings so i have nothing to worry about)

Final question, have you played Battlezone 2? Being that this is a Battlezone 2 forum.

[anomaly]

Do you know how open the game will be to modding?  The ability for players to add new content can really extend the lifetime of the game's community.

[BlackJacket]

Do you know how open the game will be to modding?  The ability for players to add new content can really extend the lifetime of the game's community.

Yeah, we are running a souped up version of the Tribes2 engine, so modding is a possibility in the future.

[Nielk1]

Yeah, we are running a souped up version of the Tribes2 engine, so modding is a possibility in the future.

Might I suggest, at least in the future as a patch, a system to ensure modded games mesh correctly online? My favoritism architecture is an addon folder system combined with a local files cache. So you join a server and it sends all the 'client' and 'shared' files in the compressed cached form to the user (keeping the 'server' files for itself). I like this because it is basically an extension of the way we mod BZ2, tying in preventative measures for 'bad asset' errors. (This is a complicated system I think, so it would NOT be anything in the release of a game not designed with this as a critical component in the first place, like Gmod.)

I might sign up for that Steam beta key... If I find I have to time to seriously test the game out for you. Actually my brother has a lot more time for games and he has a similar type of game already (heavily outdated, more DM, less fun looking) and seems to like it. He may be interested.

[BlackJacket]

Might I suggest, at least in the future as a patch, a system to ensure modded games mesh correctly online? My favoritism architecture is an addon folder system combined with a local files cache. So you join a server and it sends all the 'client' and 'shared' files in the compressed cached form to the user (keeping the 'server' files for itself). I like this because it is basically an extension of the way we mod BZ2, tying in preventative measures for 'bad asset' errors. (This is a complicated system I think, so it would NOT be anything in the release of a game not designed with this as a critical component in the first place, like Gmod.)

I might sign up for that Steam beta key... If I find I have to time to seriously test the game out for you. Actually my brother has a lot more time for games and he has a similar type of game already (heavily outdated, more DM, less fun looking) and seems to like it. He may be interested.

We're actually looking for people to come in and fill out the servers and stress test the game more than heavy feedback, so don't feel obligated to sit down and "work" on it.  Just go in and have fun.  If you have time to leave some 'general impressions' feedback, then all the better!