The Energon Pub

[Bed Bugs]

Many of you have been wondering what has been going on lately, and here it is in a nutshell, as posted by our New Heavy Metal War Administrator, Mkall!

It's official. As of yesterday evening Omega Sentinel has tendered his resignation as programmer of HMW. It is a very sad time as he did more for this game in the 9 months as programmer as anyone has done in the past 5 years of its existence.

OS left for two reasons. The first was real life work has him working 60-80 hours a week and add on HMW coding, he found it difficult to spend time with his wife and friends. The other reason was that he wasn't used to the community here, and the drama that can be generated on here from time to time killed the fun that he saw in this game. We are sad to see you leave OS, but you're always welcome to come back.

But like everything, life goes on. HMW isn't in a state where it can be left to be self-sufficient, so I've volunteered to pick up the code and Ryan has agreed to do so. So as of tonight, I'll be the new HMW programmer.

First off, my qualifications: I have a Bachelor of Computer Science and am familiar with several computer languages: Pascal, Java, C, UNIX Shell, C++ and VisualBasic.NET. At this point, I'm just beginning to learn PHP, but it seems that it's very similar to Java so I should pick that up all right. I'm not a programmer by trade, and have picked this up out of a) a desire to further contribute, b) a chance to learn and c) out of necessity. I don't want v2 to be a pipe dream; I want it to be a reality.

My life isn't as hectic as Glyph's or OS's. I work on a 4 day on/4 day off schedule, which means that every 8 days, I should have some progress made. After I finally get into the swing of things, I'll most likely start a blog on site somewhere so you guys aren't kept in the dark as to what's going on.

As for various things that I'm going to do:
--For the most part, I'll be keeping OS's vision of v2; a warmap with 4 factions fighting for dominance. There are some details that I'll change, but for the most part things will be as OS intended.
--First thing I want to do is give love to the maximals and predacons. This means setting them up with missions, altmodes and give new players the ability to choose those factions upon startup
--Get the HMW admin panel fully finished and functional, and then figure out how to outsource parts of it to other non-staff members (mission creation, mini games, front page advertising etc.)
--Minicons will return, as will Quintessons and maybe some other NPC missions.
--I didn't like the idea of robot modes boosting stats. I'll work on restoring them, but there will be no benefit to them at this time. They'll be purely eye candy.
--Subfactions: I'm not keen of turning HMW into a purely clan-based game, but I'm not going to marginalize those that exist either. I'm not sure yet what I want to do, but I'll think of something, after getting input from all subfactions of course. Naturally I'll make sure that your forums will actually work in phpbv3.
--I want to add features right: Triplechangers for example should allow a player to choose between two of ANY altmodes that they have available, not be set in stone as previously previewed. Yes this means that they may take some time to figure out but I would hope that the results will be worth it.
--Sure, I'll bring back Goribus, just as soon as I get access and figure out how.
--I like Glyph's idea of victory points, and will look into adding Lucky's and Glyph's Ranks/Awards. Of course this means I'll have to find someone willing to make some for the Maxs/Preds, but that'll come in time.

Since I'm just starting out, I will be ignoring most of the PMs that come in requesting side changes, extra xp, etc. If there's a real glitch with your team, I'll check it out. Please don't pester me on MSN/YIM/email about them either as the end result will be the same. The more of my time you waste tending to your personal wants, the less time I'll have working towards the betterment of the game as a whole.

The bottom line is this: I'm not leaving. I won't be as fast as OS so please don't expect change to come overnight. Rest assured that I want v2 here as much as every one of you so it will come.

To discuss this news, click here to view the original thread.

[Prowl Pants]

Good Luck Mkall!!!!!!!!

[UltraPrimal]

Yeah, good luck. I haven't played HMW in a long time, but with all these new updates, I may have to start playing again.

[Windracer]

Wow, I turn my back for a day and this happens.

Sad to see you go, OS, but you did so many great things for this game and I know I'm sure as heck thankful for that.

As for Mkall... Good luck, and congrats on becoming the head programmer! I know the game will be in great hands with you.

[Mechabreaker]

Wow, it's sad to see OS go, but at least we have someone just as good take his place! I hope to see v2 up and running sometime soon ,sounds like it will be a blasty blast!

[zemper]

wow. sad to see OS go. in the short time i've been been playing HMW, there's been lotsa good changes and i attribute it to his persistence and hard work. hope you could return in a less stressful situation someday OS.

and best of wishes to Mkall! bring on V2 dagnabbit!

[Blackstreak]

Good luck Mkall! Its sad to see OS leave but I understand the reasons. I'd get burned out w/ all the griping, whining, and whatever else that goes on. And then again, if things in real life kept me from my family (if I had one of my own) I'd ditch too because thats more important.

[Sabrblade]

I never even got to play HMW. Could somebody please describe to me what it was like? Was it really a game? What kind of game was it? How was it played? What happened in the game? What characters were playable? Etc.

[Overloaded]

Good luck Mkall

[Burn]

I never even got to play HMW. Could somebody please describe to me what it was like? Was it really a game? What kind of game was it? How was it played? What happened in the game? What characters were playable? Etc.

You could always just play the game yourself and find out ....

[Venomous Prime]

All hail the Great Mkhali

[Archanubis]

Good luck with your new position, Mkall
God knows you're gonna need it :p

[Tammuz]

i might be being dyslexic again but where's the bit about balancing what we have now?

Balancing the game(9)
additional staff who can do stuff(4)
multiple-sided battles(2)
Increased Roster limits(2)
Gestalts!!(2)
Clan System
More Tactics
alt stealing
Wierd minicon effects
Gimmicks
Dual weilding
Comprehensive mission lists for all factions
Multi team member missions

a third of the people who bothered to post what they wanted most in the game wanted what we have at the moment balanced over new stuff, that twice as many as other single thing wanted.

and it's probably the easiest thing to do as well as it doesn't require any real programming just the adjusting a few values.

let your inner DM through mkall!

[imotron]

Interesting, indeed

[City Commander]

Mkall, I am behind you every step of the way. Good luck!

It's sad to see OS go, but I can see how the drama could've drained his enthusiasm. It was awfully messy indeed.


And yays to Gor! He'll be happy to hear that I am sure.



Saberblade- It'll draw you in. Getting playing. Be a con. We're wicked-cool

But don't just play the game. The heavy metal war is also fought in the forums!

[Jeep?]

Congrats on the new post, big guy!

[Cheetron]

Congrats and good luck.

Not to speak ill of the departed but if OS couldn't take the people on here, why was he here at all? I mean it's like this on most sites on the internet. It's probably just me.

[Ultra Magnus]

Mkall, Thanks for your dedication. I am not a programmer at all, and it's nice to see that someone with skills is picking up the pieces. Much Love from Alpha Team, Mkall!

[cocuutje]

great to hear Mkall is continuing HMW.... Now let's hope it will be up and running soon (again )

[megatenoh]

It's one of those times when i wish i would have been wrong,like the others i am sad to see OS go,hope he will be back when his life gets a bit easier in that respect.
As for Mkall,a good choice in my opinion and capable one, which also knows the crowd here.I wish him luck and cant wait to see what he cooks up in here.I see he was already at work when i first wanted to post this the site went down and now only games is down so he sure is willing and started on this.My hat is off to that!
Like Wrath said,hopefully he will on our side so Cons can rule the Cybertron!

[Talon523]

Sounds good to me! I quit playin V1 since I thought V2 was close. I guess I can wait longer. There is no need to rush out something that will crash or have many bugs.

Good Luck and I hope V2 is a great success.

[Dr. Caelus]

Not to speak ill of the departed but if OS couldn't take the people on here, why was he here at all? I mean it's like this on most sites on the internet. It's probably just me.

He was here as a game programmer. AFAIK, no one told him that being able to tolerate ungrateful/hostile malcontents and fanatics was a prerquisite for writing a computer program, or at least, if they did, he thought they were kidding.

And also, Seibertron has always struck me as being a bit better than "most sites on the internet".

But I guess regression toward the mean is hard to fight in the end.

[City Commander]

Not to speak ill of the departed but if OS couldn't take the people on here, why was he here at all? I mean it's like this on most sites on the internet. It's probably just me.

He was here as a game programmer. AFAIK, no one told him that being able to tolerate ungrateful/hostile malcontents and fanatics was a prerquisite for writing a computer program, or at least, if they did, he thought they were kidding.

And also, Seibertron has always struck me as being a bit better than "most sites on the internet".

But I guess regression toward the mean is hard to fight in the end.

hehe, yeah...

You sure do get more than you bargain for with Seibertron.com

[Luzac]

Does I have understand that the "New M Order" has blocked my ability to post in the Predacon forum without the moderator approvment

Good Luck Mkall! Hope that first changes happen as quick as possible.

[City Commander]

Post approval? Nah, that's a kink from the upgrade. So far the only fix seems to be uploading a backup version of the forum, and deleting the current one.