Do Robots Dream of Explosive Sheep?


Ring, ring!

June 22, 2015

The silence of slumber is interrupted by the siren call of the telephone. A quick glance at the clock: it's that early morning hour when both the revellers and farmers are sleeping. "What's the status of the Vox Machinae case?", crackles the voice on the other end of the line. It's the Chief, and she sounds as tired as you are. Better have something good.

"Cheer up, Chief, we've networked the whole thing, and we've got multiple suspects at play simultaneously." you reply, still bleary-eyed. Visions of teams of robots squaring off against each other on hostile alien worlds flash through your mind. "And that means we'll be able to work cooperatively throughout the whole campaign with our remote operatives." The Chief lets out the kind of grunt that says "thanks for the mutton, what's for dessert?".

Explosive Multiplayer Action Network code for all features means competitive multiplayer and jolly cooperation in the campaign! Team-based mech battles ahoy!

"We got the Unity St. station upgraded to version 5; it's got a whole new physics system, ya know!", you continue. "Now we can walk around with a bit of lead in our shoes and we even have wheeled vehicles canvassing the mean streets of Topaz-07." Silence on the line.

Vehicles Are Fun to Blow Up The new physics system in Unity 5 forced us to rewrite the robot locomotion system for the better, and allows for wheeled vehicles.

Alright, time to bring out the sparklies. "There's cracking glass when you get damaged, detachment effects when limbs get blown off, jump jet flames, geometry explosions, upgraded weapon effects--" you rattle off a laundry list of improvements before realizing you've broken character.

Aiming is fun! The new projectile system is optimized to let us have lots of physically simulated projectiles of different types, without breaking online play.

"OK, Detective Bot, I get the picture. Lots of progress on the case.", says the Chief, breaking the awkward silence. "Just one thing, though." The bead of sweat hanging onto your brow for dear life starts losing its grip. "Can you hit anything with those missiles?" With a hand over the reciever, you breath a sigh of relief. "Yeah, Chief! We upgraded the projectile system to support a variety of weapons like accurate guided missiles and ballistic weapons that are even affected by gravity."

"That's enough for now, see you at the station. Oh and Detective Bot... get some sleep."

Hardware-accellerated shape-blending geometry explosions SAY WHAT!? It just got real.

Here we have a short propaganda piece promotional film showing a recent live demo of Vox Machinae at the Full Indie meetup in Vancouver.

See you next time!