Now that we have most of the important items fixed or improved in H&D Arcade Edition, we’re starting work on D-Day. We’ll continue to make improvements and enhancements to AE but most of these will be the result of work going into D-Day being back ported into AE.

One of the big changes with D-Day will be the addition of vehicles. We’re going to have tanks, half tracks, jeeps, and even planes. If not done correctly, vehicles can ruin multiplayer so we really want to try and get this right. One of the things we don’t want to have happen is for vehicles to unbalance the game so that infantry are fodder. The other thing we want to avoid is having inexperienced players hop in a vehicle and run out and get the vehicle destroyed.

To keep infantry from being fodder, we’re going to make it so the tanks are a little more realistic. When you hop in one, you won’t have a 3rd person view where you can see everything around you. Since this is a VR game, you’ll be inside the tank looking out a small hole just as a real driver would. This will give infantry a better chance since they won’t be as easy to spot and track. This will also encourage team play as a driver will need a commander sitting on top to help navigate. We also plan to make tanks more durable so they won’t just require a few shots from a rocket launcher to destroy. We’ll also take into account angle of attack so glancing shots won’t do as much damage as straight on hits. If we do it right, we should make tanks so they’re not real effective by themselves against infantry but are more useful against structures and vehicles and make spearheading an attack the best use of them. They will also be much more effective when protected by infantry. Engineers will be able to repair damaged tracks and damage to the engines.

We haven’t fully worked out the details yet on vehicle assignment but we want to allow players to earn points which they can use to purchase game assets. A player who has ranked up substantially would be able to purchase a tank which they could use in a match. The current plan (subject to change) is to allow the player to bring their tank (or other vehicle) into the match once and when it’s destroyed, it’s gone until the next match. Players will own their vehicle and other players can ride in it but can’t take control of it so you won’t have to worry about someone grabbing your tank and doing something stupid with it. Players will also be able to give their friends permission to drive their vehicles as well. This would allow clans to bring in their vehicles to a match and have their players all able to use the clan’s vehicles. We’ll probably also have a few vehicles spawn in that are free for anyone to use so if no one has earned a vehicle yet, the team will still have some.

For the problem of inexperienced players destroying the general use vehicles, we plan to implement a driver’s license type system where you have to learn to drive a vehicle before you can use it in a match. There will be an offline practice area where players will have to be able to successfully navigate a course in a vehicle to get a permit to drive one. This will hopefully keep vehicles from being wasted by players who don’t know what they’re doing with them.

As always, let us know your thoughts on things!