Stumbled on this on Steam....looks very interesting.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1674170/Sprocket/
Wow. Good find! With as much time as I spend looking through new releases on steam, I'm at a loss as to how I missed this.
Wow!
Lordy. The hours I'd drop into such a thing.
It does look super cool. I hope infantry and MGs are added.
Rule the Treads?
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on August 28, 2021, 04:45:28 PM
Wow. Good find! With as much time as I spend looking through new releases on steam, I'm at a loss as to how I missed this.
I only occasionally peruse the Steam Discovery queue and normally don't see much that I'm not already aware of/interested in. This was actually the first time it showed me something that made me go whoa/stop.
Great find! I put it on my wish list.
Looks and sounds good...I couldn't resist...
Don't have time to play with it today... But did fire it up for a hot second. It seems like a solo dev using Unity.
Unity, maybe more than other game engines, has democratized game development in a great way. Add in Steam for a way to self publish, and the game market really opens up for small devs with a dream.
Hope this game is good. The description hit all of the right buttons...I hope gameplay is firing on all cylinders as well.
Quote from: ArizonaTank on August 30, 2021, 12:22:34 AM
...I hope gameplay is firing on all cylinders as well.
Maybe you'll be able to make yourself?
Actually I was wondering: in the review video the guy seemed to be focussed on recreating historical tanks, but for me the draw would seeing if you could make an improvement on those given the technology available at the time.
Quote from: Father Ted on August 30, 2021, 04:56:20 PM
Actually I was wondering: in the review video the guy seemed to be focussed on recreating historical tanks, but for me the draw would seeing if you could make an improvement on those given the technology available at the time.
+1
I'm quite weary of Unity engine games, some are quite clever but the majority are fiddly garbage.
Played around with this a little bit.
There are some great ideas in Sprocket, but the game is still not ready and needs some more tweaking. Also some sort of campaign to tie everything together.
I'd say for tank nerds, Sprocket offers an interesting diversion in its current state. It does a decent job in depicting some of the real choices that tank designers had in the early 20th century.
I could list a dozen things that would make the game much better...and hopefully these are on the roadmap.
In its current state it reminds me of "Hellish Quart", a great sword fighting game that needs to give the player a reason to fight those excellently done sword fights (BTW, I understand that Hellish Quart is working on a story mode...so it is going in the right direction). I hope Sprocket moves in that direction as well.
But for those who don't spend their days watching the YouTube's Chieftain go into an eloquent narration on the joys of M4 Sherman track tensioning, its probably better to hold off while Sprocket cooks a little more.
Quote from: ArizonaTank on August 31, 2021, 04:05:11 PM
Played around with this a little bit.
There are some great ideas in Sprocket, but the game is still not ready and needs some more tweaking. Also some sort of campaign to tie everything together.
I'd say for tank nerds, Sprocket offers an interesting diversion in its current state. It does a decent job in depicting some of the real choices that tank designers had in the early 20th century.
I could list a dozen things that would make the game much better...and hopefully these are on the roadmap.
In its current state it reminds me of "Hellish Quart", a great sword fighting game that needs to give the player a reason to fight those excellently done sword fights (BTW, I understand that Hellish Quart is working on a story mode...so it is going in the right direction). I hope Sprocket moves in that direction as well.
But for those who don't spend their days watching the YouTube's Chieftain go into an eloquent narration on the joys of M4 Sherman track tensioning, its probably better to hold off while Sprocket cooks a little more.
You should post your thoughts in the steam forum and hope that the developer sees them.
Surely all the good designers keep an eye on Groheads. I mean, we rock!
Somehow missed this thread the first time, but saw "Sprocket" (somehow) was available today -- not out of Early Access yet -- so I came here to post the Steam link, and found the thread after a preliminary search.
Currently, the main design problem has still not been addressed, and from the developer may never be addressed due to (code) performance issues: the track is only decorative, not functional. The road wheels are the only points of simulated ground contact, which ironically means the actual 'sprocket' for driving the tank (via the treads) has no real functionality.
Putting it another way, every tank in the game functions like the Soviet Bistro Tanks (BT series) from WW2, in that the road wheels are the primary intended way to move the tank, not the tread which was designed to be shed (thus often by accident!) as soon as possible, like a parachute upon delivering the vehicle to its intended locations. Except the real BT series tanks had the advantage of
still having a functional sprocket/tread system!
There was an in-depth negative review on this last year (which acknowledged the game was fun for its purpose otherwise.) The most recent review to mention the problem indicates it still exists (with a positive review) more summarized, thus:
QuoteA fun and original game. Understand that the game IS the building of the tanks at this time (not fighting elaborate battles, etc.). That is not likely to change much in 2023. There is enough there to sort of test your designs. Good for WW2 designs but pretty much all WW1 designs get stuck doing the most basic things that were often their design intent (such as crossing trenches). Realistic sized roadwheels on a WW1 tank always get stuck crossing trenches. The power and traction come ONLY from roadwheels, meaning that if a sprocket or idler touch the ground, it takes it as hull, and you get stuck. If you raise the front idler so that it doesn't touch, it unrealistically pushes the track until it touches the front hull and... you get stuck. This destroys climbing ability of really any realistic vehicle in the game. It needs to be addressed, but it's not even on the roadmap. This is more of a simulator (not arcade style even slightly, which is good), but it can't simulate proper tracked vehicle driving mechanics. It's *almost* game breaking for me.
As such tech reviews note, in MOST cases it happens not to matter that the treads are only decorative art, although avoiding the related physical problems sometimes requires weird designs in other ways. But I thought I should alert potential buyers.
I've wish listed this for a while, mainly to buy it for my son who would love games like this. He spends hours designing ships in dreadnoughts. It never really goes on sale so I never end up pulling the trigger.