Thank you for playing again! I'm always surprised when I hear people are still playing this short demo so many months since the last update. Sorry there still hasn't been a new release, but the progress report I'm working on will show why.
- endless mode
simply put, you fight waves after waves of enemies, each wave harder than the last. however, while the arena is quite large, the terrain shifts between waves. maybe this could be added as a training room for crawler pilots? unrelated note, since we are speaking of terrain,
Yeah, a "simulator" room back at the base you're in with just a sandbox and endless waves of stuff coming at you can be done, or some challenges. It'd be sort of like the VR missions in Metal Gear 1 and 2.
- actual terrain in missions. considering mars has quite a lot of craters, riverbeds, sand dunes and more, it makes some sense that there could be places where the terrain has multiple parts with different elevation. this could make for some good fortresses, especially with minotaurs and turrets in a crater holding an objective, though i dont exactly know if the game engine would allow it.
Elevation is kind of a problem in this engine, I'm afraid. I don't really think it's possible with the current setup unfortunately, both with the way buildings are drawn and the way in general the game has been laid out. I do want more varied environments though, and there'll be a lot more foliage added in the future.
moving onto the crawlers themselves, it might just be me, but the crawlers do look like tank turrets on legs. maybe it makes sense lorewise that they have either a multi-crewed variant for co-op play, or one made for troop/item transport? after all, APCs and IFVs do exist, so maybe they can be enemies?
For sure. There will be more than a few massive crawlers that are multi-crewed, some will be like mini-bosses and others full on main bosses that the stage are centered around. I can't share too much, but you'll hopefully get a glimpse in the next progress post.
last but not least, a new secondary weapon could be fun. - the air/orbital strike by launching a marker, the air force or navy would be alerted to call in support either by conventional bombing or kinetic bombardment. for obvious reasons it wouldn't work underground, but above ground this could be very capable of damaging any static enemy. for balancing, the enemies could either move out of the way or attempt interception of the projectiles, possibly shooting down the jets outright as well.
I've been working on a variety of new secondary weapon options that I'll be showing very soon. If you check the last progress report I put out, there's actually cruise missile air strikes for the tertiary/grenade slot which I've been playing around with. They function pretty close to that:
edit: i reread the intel of the MBTs in game, and it appears that they are significantly larger modern MBTs. how big are they compared to modern tanks?
Probably twice as big at least, especially if on Mars. It varies though.
regarding the co-op idea, i should probably clarify, the driver can operate the weapons normally in singleplayer, but more often than not the driver does get distracted by combat and can get stuck in terrain, resulting in hits that otherwise could be avoided. also, maybe add some reward for S-ranking a mission?
I've since made some changes to what can be destroyed and increased the movement of the player. You'll be able to run over the larger trees in the next update. Some rewards for completing certain objectives and getting good or bad ranks are planned, but I can't promise anything at the moment.
edit 3:out of sheer boredom, is there a chance you will add modding support in the future? i have some ideas for missions and weapons to test
I would love for people to be able to mod the game, but it's difficult for me to say how it would be set up. I will need to look into it more. Right now however, I am working on a level editor tool to create maps and missions, and that will definitely make it into the game at the very least.
Thank you again!