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@HBS_Super - Living up to your name, eh? Super job, and very enlightening to read. The city map is looking really good, and the insight into how y'all combined all those elements is just phenomenal!

I also noticed a couple of trucks mixed in there - never saw any of those in the prior pictures of videos, and they even have different cargo loads! ! ! Very nice :)

Now someone needs to make them an Asset for a 'Convoy' mission :D

So very excited to see this come out - KUDOS to you and the whole HBS team!
 
hey @HBS_Super / Dave, thank you for the incredible work you have done for the Mechwarrior and Mechcommander games throughout the years! The Mechcommander intro was really great and the urban maps in MW4 were also a nice way to mix things up in the campaign.

I really appreciate the hard work that you and the team has put into this upcoming DLC - the city looks amazing and the destruction animation is mind-blowing.
 
Great post and from what I have seen in stills and game footage on the streams, the urban environments look fantastic. If I have one nitpick it is that there seems to be too many civilian vehicles littering the streets during the streams. I understand the desire to make it look as if there was a panic driven exodus but the vehicles still seem to be too prevalent, IMO. Maybe the presence of vehicles was ramped up for effect in the streams?

I am really glad that you finally got the opportunity to make your dream a reality. Maybe you could sneak across the border and help PGI get lifelike Urban environments into their live action MW5 now? ;)
 
Surprising to me after all these years how many folks can quote that piece. Excellent Job!

:D

Thanks, but I can't take full credit for doing an excellent job. I did check the intro to see if I quoted it right, and I found my memory was a bit off, so I did tweak it a bit before posting :).

As a side note. I do hope someone remembered to track Hardcase, and that they picked him up eventually. :)
 
Buildings in a particular map will appear the same each time you play. [...] One of the things that we've observed as we got deeper into playing in these spaces is that a lot of encounters are resolved within the space of a few city blocks. So the tactical battleground these cities represent is actually huge and being able to learn it through consistent landmarks after multiple engagements was something we believed was important.

Indeed!

If there's one thing that Avalon Hill's Squad Leader taught me way back when, it's that you can use the same four map boards and play out a multitude of scenarios on them, just by changing silly things like players' starting positions and/or objectives. Even if the buildings look the same, it can easily transform cover into obstacle or relegate something from being the center of players' attention to the dustbin of obscurity.

Now, the big question is, will buildings collapse if I have too heavy a 'mech on them?

Cheers,

-- OTB
 
So with the signage and advertising being used to liven up the cityscape, I have to wonder if anybody at HBS took this opportunity to sneak in some references to Shadowrun or other HBS games?

'Cause if I see any buildings with the Aztechnology name or logo on them, they're likely to get caught by "incidental" fire.
 
'Cause if I see any buildings with the Aztechnology name or logo on them, they're likely to get caught by "incidental" fire.

Now now, just because they do blood magic doesn't mean that "Project: Bloodlines" thing is anything to worry about . . . right?
 
This looks stunning. Sparse or not, I have some very fond memories of fighting my way through those cities in MechWarrior 4. Huge Battletech fan here, can't wait to play. :)
 
Now now, just because they do blood magic doesn't mean that "Project: Bloodlines" thing is anything to worry about . . . right?
I'll take vampires over Aztechnology any time. At least vampires aren't going for the whole "world domination" thing - even Clockwork and Plan 9 wouldn't buy into those conspiracies.

Reading over the OP one more time, a couple things jumped out at me:

* DeLorean-style gull-wing doors seem to be a popular option for the civilian motorist of the 31st century. ;)

* One of the things I'm going to appreciate about the urban map is that it gives not only an appreciable scale to the size of the mechs, but to the destructiveness of their weaponry. BattleTech has long described mechs as having enough firepower to level whole city blocks, but not many games give that impression, especially when it takes multiple salvos just to punch through the armor of some mechs, or missed shots simply make a hard thud into the ground. But civilian buildings aren't made of solid earth or plated in military-grade armor now, are they?
 
* One of the things I'm going to appreciate about the urban map is that it gives not only an appreciable scale to the size of the mechs, but to the destructiveness of their weaponry. BattleTech has long described mechs as having enough firepower to level whole city blocks, but not many games give that impression, especially when it takes multiple salvos just to punch through the armor of some mechs, or missed shots simply make a hard thud into the ground. But civilian buildings aren't made of solid earth or plated in military-grade armor now, are they?
Silly as it may seem, one of the things I am most looking forward to in UW is the building destruction - just for the reason that I've been told since the eighties that that's what's supposed to happen when 'Mechs fight in built-up areas.
 
Silly as it may seem, one of the things I am most looking forward to in UW is the building destruction - just for the reason that I've been told since the eighties that that's what's supposed to happen when 'Mechs fight in built-up areas.

Remember, there's totally no civilian casualties this time. Absolutely none. (At least according to Darius' intel.)
 
This looks stunning. Sparse or not, I have some very fond memories of fighting my way through those cities in MechWarrior 4. Huge Battletech fan here, can't wait to play. :)
Thanks. It was pretty cool. But I can't take credit for the art on that project. On that shift I was doing game design. Heinz Schuller as I recall was the AD on all that stuff.
 
I'll take vampires over Aztechnology any time. At least vampires aren't going for the whole "world domination" thing - even Clockwork and Plan 9 wouldn't buy into those conspiracies.

Reading over the OP one more time, a couple things jumped out at me:

* DeLorean-style gull-wing doors seem to be a popular option for the civilian motorist of the 31st century. ;)

* One of the things I'm going to appreciate about the urban map is that it gives not only an appreciable scale to the size of the mechs, but to the destructiveness of their weaponry. BattleTech has long described mechs as having enough firepower to level whole city blocks, but not many games give that impression, especially when it takes multiple salvos just to punch through the armor of some mechs, or missed shots simply make a hard thud into the ground. But civilian buildings aren't made of solid earth or plated in military-grade armor now, are they?
The destructive power of 'Mechs definitely comes through when you play. It was something Mitch in particular was very excited about delivering.
 
The destructive power of 'Mechs definitely comes through when you play. It was something Mitch in particular was very excited about delivering.

Oh, and the future is supposed to be cool. Gull wing doors are cool. So naturally in the future, there are more gull wing doors. It's only logical

[Mod edit: Fixed broken quote tag]
 
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Oh, and the future is supposed to be cool. Gull wing doors are cool. So naturally in the future, there are more gull wing doors. It's only logical

But this is the BattleTech future, where technology has fallen into the dark ages. We're lucky the doors aren't scissor-fold gates on the side of cars with plastic tarps for windows.

. . . what? It's the edge of the Inner Sphere and/or the Periphery. They still have telephone poles made of wood!
 
But this is the BattleTech future, where technology has fallen into the dark ages. We're lucky the doors aren't scissor-fold gates on the side of cars with plastic tarps for windows.

. . . what? It's the edge of the Inner Sphere and/or the Periphery. They still have telephone poles made of wood!
Well, the doors look cool. But they don't work very well. That's why so many of them are stuck open
 
Well, the doors look cool. But they don't work very well. That's why so many of them are stuck open

"Mister Ford, I don't work so well."

(I'm not sorry.)
 
If I was responsible for making all those cars (really any of that city detail), I'd really have to try and hold back my urge to put in an Easter Egg somewhere. Like maybe placing a certain special time traveling DeLorean somewhere :).