BattleTech: 25 Years of Heavy Metal Mayhem.

Era Report: 2750 Print/PDF Pre-Order & Tactical Operations Corrected Reprint Available

ranbills — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:43:39 +0000

Catalyst Game Labs announces Era Report: 2750 PDF/Print Pre-order and Tactical Operations corrected reprint are now available.

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MechWarrior Online BattleMech 10: Cicada

ranbills — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:11:40 +0000

“She’s reached that state – where you know things are occuring but can not think about them. Even at 129 km/h, the world blurring around her, she is utterly focussed, nothing escapes her gaze. Even before she sees it she feels it – on the other side of that hill. Self-preservation trained out of her, she whips around the corner. Her shoulders hunch forward as the enemy ‘Mech slides into view. She triggers the Medium lasers without thinking, a line grows from right arm across its back. A glorious hit! She abruptly halts, allowing herself a half second to line up another shot, dead centre of the Catapult (C1, she notes with a smirk) and – Yes! Beautiful hit, armour pours down as she adds her Small Laser to the mix. The Catapult pilot, realising she is seconds away from killing him, abruptly jump jets straight up, twisting his four medium lasers towards her.”

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MechWarrior Online BattleMech 9: Raven

ranbills — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:04:27 +0000

McDoomswinger hated this place. His Awesome – The Shatterer – could barely get any firing angles. Everywhere he looked there were more hills. Far at the rear of his company atop the highest hill, he scanned for easy targets ahead; his three PPC’s gave him ample hitting power past 500 metres.

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Catalyst Game Labs Announces New BattleTech PDFs Available

ranbills — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:02:37 +0000

Catalyst Game Labs announces The Wars of Reaving Supplement and Historical Turning Points: Luzerne PDFs are now available.

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MechWarrior Online Developer Interview 6: Dion Linaker, Colin Huang, Stephen Andrusyszyn

ranbills — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:49:08 +0000

MechWarrior® Online™: First things first – give us a quick auto-biography.

[DION LINAKER] I have been designing interfaces in the games industry for the past 10 years at Electronic Arts, Bioware, Radical Entertainment, and Disney. I have always been interested in how the interface can influence and enhance the player’s experience. I find games offer unique challenges in designing user experiences in regards to UI because not only does the design of the interface need to communicate information intuitively but, it must also help support a level of immersion provided by the game play.

[COLIN HUANG] I joined Piranha Games as Database Administrator six months ago. Before this job I had been working on database design and maintenance for 15 years in several industries including online gambling (Bodog), engineering (MDA Corporation) and telecommunications (Pacific Bell).

[STEPHEN ANDRUSYSZYN] I was born and raised in upstate New York, then spent 20 years in the medical field before becoming a game programmer. I have for the last 12 years worked as a generalist programmer. Major games that I have worked on include Ghostbusters, Army of TWO, 40th day and Duke Nukem Forever.

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MechWarrior Online Dev Blog 6 – MechLab

ranbills — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:01:34 +0000

As per usual, the features described in this blog are susceptible to change and are not necessarily final.

MechLab is a game interface which allows players to customize their BattleMech loadouts and visual representations. Due to the number of customizations found in BattleTech, MechLab is very robust and has a lot of features that will be covered here.

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Catalyst Game Labs Announced New April Street Dates

ranbills — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:28:22 +0000

Catalyst Game Labs announces Street Dates for Historical: Liberation of Terra, Volume 1, Warfare Kit and Tactical Kit.

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MechWarrior Online: BattleMech 8 – Awesome

ranbills — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:08:57 +0000

“While it was somewhat rare to go from Recon to Assault, it was not unheard of. Her last mission was still being talked about – facing a Centurion head-on with a Commando was a big deal apparently. But this new ‘Mech… She knew she sat astride Death-at-Range, but it still felt… odd.”

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MechWarrior Online: GDC Interview

ranbills — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:11:47 +0000

Participants:

Dennis deKoning – Art Director

Matt Craig – Technical Director

Russ Bullock – President of Piranha Games

Bryan Ekman – Creative Director

Matt Newman – Production

Garth Erlam – Editor

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MechWarriorn Online: Developer Interview 5: Evan Halim, Enrique Barahona Ramos, Thomas Dziegielewski

ranbills — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:14:29 +0000

MechWarrior® Online™: First things first, give us a quick biography.

[THOMAS DZIEGIELEWSKI] Started working for Piranha straight out of school, which was 8 years ago.

[EVAN HALIM] I’ve been a character artist in the game industry for about 7 years. Started my career as a character artist at Electronic Arts, working on sports title such as FIFA and NHL. Joined PGI in 2008 and worked on much more exciting title such as Transformers: Revenge of the fallen, Duke Nukem Forever, and now Mechwarrior: Online. So I have experience working on a variety of different types of characters from humans, to robots, and creatures.

[ENRIQUE BARAHONA RAMOS] I’ve been working in the games industry for nearly 12 years now, first as character concept artist, then as character modeler, etc., until I started specializing in animation. I’m currently Senior Animator at Piranha Games.

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