Thanks, Madhed!

We recently brought in a new animator, German Gaussmann, who's just done incredible work for us. I'm really excited to see his new work as well!

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to quickly show off a couple of the menu screens we’ve been working on for Diesel Tactics and see what you guys think of them!

This is the current main menu screen, with the options menu popped out. The background is greyed out slightly to bring focus to the menu.

We’ve tried to keep all buttons one tap away to make everything easy to get to, and the pop out options menu allows us to keep the screen uncluttered when it’s tucked away.

This is our leaderboard which shows users stats across all platforms, so we’re using our own custom leaderboards rather than Apple’s or Google’s. It is currently filled with nonsense!

This is our player profile screen (showing off my wonderfully original username ‘A’) which will display achievements players have completed (and the players progress to achieving ones that they haven’t completed), their current rating (we’re using an Elo score), their avatar, and their title (‘Lancer’ in this case).

One cool thing we’re doing is allowing players to select their title based on ones that they’ve unlocked by completing achievements and attaining ratings. This means that you can actually show off your achievements since your cool title instantly lets people know what you’ve done!

This is the players army list where they can choose to create or edit their armies.

Players will have a limited number of slots per Nation (which are like teams in games like Hero Academy, which we’ll have 2 of at launch) to build their custom armies in.

Similar to building a deck in a collectible card game or an army in a tabletop game like Warhammer, players in Diesel Tactics will be able to customize their armies to suit their gameplay style.

This is where you’ll actually be creating your specific armies to take out onto the battlefield. You can name your army, select it’s colours, see the stats and info about the units (the text boxes are obviously incomplete, unless of course you guys like plain text overlapping the UI!), and of course select the specific units that you want to include in that army.

Finally, this is our store screen. We’ll be offering new colours to customize your armies, new skins to completely change the look of your units, extra game slots (you can only have so many simultaneous games being played, and this allows you to increase that cap), and finally new nations, though we won’t have any available at launch since we’re still making the 2 that will ship with the game!

One important thing that I want to mention here is that no store purchase will give a player an advantage in the game. Colours and skin packs are purely aesthetic, game slots just let you play more games, and new nations give you variety but all nations are going to be balanced as perfectly as we can. We don’t want anyone to be able to buy an advantage.

I also wanted to mention that we’ll be offering players the ability to play as many simultaneous games as other asynchronous games do (something like 40-50) without players paying anything. The game slots item will really just be for the most hardcore players!

So, that’s it for now. Thanks for taking the time to check out our game and let me know what you guys think!

Hey guys,

One of the cool things we're doing in Diesel Tactics with achievements is that they unlock titles for you to use which your opponent will see when they're playing against you. It's another way to customize your persona in addition to your avatar. For example, as soon as you hit the 1800 mark for your Elo rating, you unlock the title 'Major'. So, if you wanted to use that title and your username was "Malaise" your name would display to other users as "General Malaise"!

There are essentially two ways to unlock titles: reaching a given Elo rating and completing achievements. Your Elo rating works similarly to Go, Chess, or League of Legends, where the more skilled the opponent you beat, the more your rating moves up and vice versa. Attaining certain ratings permanently unlocks titles for you to use, so you can intimidate opponents with titles only available to skilled players!

Aside from your rating, achievements that you unlock also provide you with a new title that you can use if you want. Here's some of the achievements that we're looking at using as of right now, though this list is subject to change!

The format is: "Achievement Name" - What you need to do to get the achievement - "Title unlocked"

“First Blood” - Win a game - "Ring Knocker"

"Bug Out" - Surrender a game - "Général" (is that offensive?)

"Grease Monkey" - Field and win with an all vehicle army - "Grease Monkey"

“For the Fatherland!” - Win 5 games with Kaiserreich Nation - "Alleyman"

We're going to have a ton of achievements and titles, so I think everyone should be able to find a title that they like!

If you've got any thoughts or suggestions we'd love to hear them, so let us know!

Hey everyone,

Our awesome animator, Germán Gaussmann, found that having the Usonian nation's 'Conveyable Matter Liquefier Specialist' (flamethrower!) unit pull out a knife for their close combat attack looked sort of awkward while holding their flamethrower, so he went ahead and made this awesome spring loaded bayonet for them!

It may not have made them deadlier (they're already plenty deadly!), but it does make them even cooler!

[video]https:

Not sure what's up with the weird pink in the preview image!

Hey everyone,

Germán Gaussmann, the amazing animator for Diesel Tactics, has put together a sweet animation reel for the Conveyable Matter Liquefier Specialists unit from the Usonian army and I’m showing it off today!

These guys are a particularly devastating offensive unit against other infantry squads because their flamethrower attack hits all members of the enemy unit! Most units have 3 squad members, and generally when a unit makes an attack they get just the one attack, but these soldiers get one attack per enemy squad member!

For example, if an enemy unit has a full complement of 3 soldiers, and the Conveyable Matter Liquefier Specialists have all 3 members alive as well, they would make 9 attacks against their opponent!

We’re considering changing this system a little though, and any feedback you guys might have would be great!

Okay here’s what we’re currently doing: squad of 3 attacks squad of 3 results in 9 attacks, just like I described above.

What we’re thinking of doing: squad of 3 attacks squad of 3 results in 3 attacks on each enemy squad member individually. What I mean here is that we don’t just pool the attacks and remove that number of enemies, but instead check to see if any given member is killed.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: if you use the current system and make 9 attacks and the last 3 attacks result in a kill, then all three enemies are killed. If you divide up the attacks and the last 3 attacks result in a kill, then only one enemy is killed since those attacks were all specifically against the last enemy squad member.

To show the difference, let’s say each attack has 25% chance to kill enemy squad member.

Version 1 with 9 attacks results in 2.25 deaths on average.

Version 2 has a 64% chance of killing any 1 enemy unit member.

The odds of killing exactly 1 would be about 25%, the odds of killing exactly 2 would be roughly 44%, and the odds of killing all 3 would be 26.2%.

Finally, the odds of killing no one would be about 4.66%.

The math:

Odds of killing any given enemy: (1/4) + (3/4)*(1/4) + (13/16)*(1/4) = ~64%

Odds of killing no one: 0.36^3 = ~4.66%

Odds of killing exactly 1: (3!/(2!*1!)*(0.64*0.36*0.36) = ~25%

Odds of killing exactly 2: (3!/(2!*1!)*(0.64*0.64*0.36) = ~44%

Odds of killing all 3: 0.64^3 = ~26.2%

What do you guys think?

Whatever we go with, these guys are going to be incredibly dangerous when they get close to the enemy!

[video]https:

Hey everyone,

We’ve got another unit animation video reel from our animator Germán Gaussmann for you guys today!

This time the video is of the Clockwork Wasp vehicle from the Usonian army. This helicopter (or sometimes called ‘heliclawpter’ due to it’s hanging claw that snatches units up from the battlefield!) can zoom around the battlefield ignoring terrain effects and enemy units to engage whatever target it pleases!

Armed with twin-linked heavy machine guns, this unit is simply devastating to enemy infantry! In close combat it’s also capable of fighting back with it’s massive claw that can pick up and crush hostile soldiers in it’s pincers!

Mobility and firepower, these machines are available in limited quantities, but effective use of them can determine the outcome of an engagement!

Check out the Clockwork Wasp in action!

[video]https:

We've put together some images of the units from Diesel Tactics on a gridded board to give you an idea of the scale of the units compared to one another and roughly compared to the board.

Here's our first take at the scales:

Based on feedback from social media and forums we slightly increased the size of the Jagdpanzer "Wolfsspinne" (the Spider Tank) and slightly reduced the scale of the Streitwagen-Kommando (motorcycle) units. Note that in both images the motorcycle rider and passenger have not actually been positioned, so that's why it looks slightly odd!

Here's the updated scales:

I think these guys looking great and the scale seems just about right to me. What do you guys think of all the units?

We’ve finished up the last of the unit animations today and here’s the animation reel of our final unit, the Jagdpanzer "Wolfsspinne" (aka The Spider Tank)!

[VIDEO]https:

We’re working on the backgrounds and cover elements now, which are thankfully static elements so they shouldn’t take us as long to do!

We have some more smaller things to do art-wise (like mission objectives and weapon effects), but we’re getting very close to having a pretty looking game!

We’re very close to being in beta now, with the game being playable but not quite all the game elements in place, so I’m hoping we can have some in game videos soon! I just don’t want to show the game off with so much placeholder art!

All of the animation reels we’ve made for the units can be seen here!

For a while now we've been implementing and testing Diesel Tactics combat on a featureless grid board, seemingly floating in a sea of grey nothingness. Now, as awesome as the gameplay itself is, it can be a little off putting to see these unit models looking better and better while the world they live in remains the same strange, barren battlefield! Well, technically we have been using plain cylinders of differing heights to represent different terrain types, but even that fails to spice up the battle screen!

Finally, we've had time to get to work on the game's backgrounds and terrain objects, and a lot of it already looks really good! It adds a lot to the game to get a feeling of where you are fighting and what you are fighting for, so it's great to start seeing the world that I've been picturing in my head for these many months finally come to life!

You can see the everything that we've made so far in the Diesel Tactics Maps WIP Gallery, though as the name suggests everything is still a work in progress.

Here's a couple samples for you to check out:

Cityscape WIP

Factory Terrain Objects WIP