_     _
  |_;___;_|
 .=:|.-.|:=.   _     _        ______             _        ________
 H  "'-'"  H  | |   | |       |  ___ \           | |     (_______/
[o]{/'"'\}[o] | |   | |____   | | _ | | ____ ____| | _      ____
   d     b    | |   | |  _ \  | || || |/ _  ) ___) || \    (___ \
  |M     M|   | |___| | | | | | || || ( (/ ( (___| | | |  _____) )
  O       O    \______|_| |_| |_||_||_|\____)____)_| |_| (______/
 .A.     .A.

Q&A by words from it's Creator & Designer Sake906

 Origins of UnMech3

What is this; 'Unity MechWarrior 3 project' Called?

That's pretty much it. "Unity MechWarrior 3" or "MechWarrior 3 Unity", though its nickname "UnMech3" has become quite popular and the preferred name, also very easy to write for everyone. It is also visually represented by a blue Mech3 icon, so keep an eye for that one!

Who are you

I'm a video game developer and animator, self taught on programming since the age of 17 back in the early 2000s. I'm known on the internet as Sake906 from the very beginning, a name I've been using since the early days of online gaming.

When did you start UnMech

Technically, the first bits of development using the Unity engine were programmed on September of 2020, after Zinder's Mech3Ax libraries were ready for the task. Historically, UnMech3 is a successor of AT1:BT (AssaultTech1:Battletech), a much older project I started codeveloping with the help of Wolf74 and a couple other folks from the MekTek forums way back in 2003, using the Blitz3D game engine. AT1 was later temporarily adopted by MekTek itself until the project was shelved, after the aforementioned team moved onto new things. The old student project got a fresh and way more polished restart, as soon as I rediscovered the Mech3 community and its reverse engineering group of developers, two important assets held together by the dedicated AncientXFreako for many, many years.

Why did you start UnMech

Among the hundreds I've played, there are only about three videogames that have immensely inspired me to pursue my career. MechWarrior 3 is one of them: a title notoriously hard and near impossible to modify and create new content for; a giant robot simulator with an attention to physics and weight so carefully put together for its time that no other game in the series has managed to equal. Lack of modding capabilities confined a beast of a game into a very limited number of worlds and available mechs, specially when compared to other titles that were already featuring all of that to some extent. Quake and Unreal Tournament featured readily-available user created content that helped keep their respective series alive for over a decade. My wish was to bring all that creative freedom into a renewed Mech3, where its players could bring new life into it, even perhaps incorporate more aspects of the vast and inspiring Battletech lore the series has to offer.

What was your aim with UnMech, how far do you think you will go

My primary goal is to modernize the game by reusing its original assets (3D models, animation and metadata), preserving its physics and overall feel as close as I can get it to the original, while implementing a couple of changes that a modern playerbase would normally expect on a multiplayer game: easy matchmaking, co-op missions and the absolute and permanent banishment of the infamous lag shooting skill, an abomination that crippled the game in the online scene and made it incredibly inaccessible to most newcomers. Another goal is to bring the game closer to Battletech lore, by filling in some bits and pieces that were left out during its original development. Also, focusing on providing an easy to mod environment that would allow players to create their own content with ease.

 Development

How do you develop UnMech

 

What tools do you use

 

How can people help with development

 Future

List some UnMech milestones already achieved

 

What are the next roadblocks

 

What is planned in the future