The Energon Pub

A new age has dawned for the Seibertron.com "Heavy Metal War" community. Fellow staff member Mogwai Prime will be taking over as the developer for the HMW game.

The development of this game will be starting from scratch. What you know currently as HMW will essentially be thrown out the window at some point to give Mogwai Prime the freedom to program HMW as he sees fit. No more legacy code and no more legacy data. We've had a few discussions via phone, email and instant message discussing the future of HMW, where I envision the game heading, my ultimate purpose for the game, and a very specific feature that I've wanted in the game for the past 5 years that will put the players in control of the game and really reinforce the whole "civil war" aspect that really intrigued me six years ago about HMW.

Mogwai Prime has already been hard at work beginning his development of the all-new Heavy Metal War. His work schedule seems to allow him the appropriate amount of time needed to invest into a project like this, which has been a major issue with previous programmers. For the record, it doesn't take a year to develop a game like HMW. It doesn't take multiple programmers to work on this game either (fyi ... the first version of HMW launched in 2003 was developed in less than 8 weeks by one dedicated programmer). We're expecting the new version of HMW to roll out before the end of the year, if not sooner.

We're still ironing out some of the details behind-the-scenes, so please be patient while we get everything into place and while Mogwai Prime becomes comfortable in his new role here on Seibertron.com. I think Mogwai Prime has a lot of potential to take HMW to the next level.

I'm sure you guys will have a lot of questions for him. Please keep this conversation civil, polite, and open-minded. Remember ... the glass is half full folks, not half empty.

So let's welcome aboard Mogwai Prime as the new HMW developer. We're happy to have you onboard.

I am looking forward to this role and have already begun programming on the new version. I know many of you will have numerous questions and look forward to answering them for you. This time it is no illusion. The new version will happen. I know many of you will have your doubts and your "I'll believe it when I see it" views. To those of you, I say that this is going to happen you have my word on it. I have 7 days off every 14 days to work on this and will be dedicating a good chunk of time to getting this going. I will provide more details a little later as to the games design.

Also, I understand that many of you will be asking for changes to the current version of the game. Just to be honest there will be no major changes or programming made to the current version so please don't ask.

All I ask for is some patience in letting me get this going.

And here I was thinking it was going to be someone interesting!

Hey hey Moggy!

Congrats man!

Thanks for stepping up and taking on this challenge.

Thanks guys I look forward to working with everyone on this. You have no idea how hard it was to keep my mouth shut till Seibs could announce it. And, no jokes about gremlins in the system

yay developer. is it too soon to start with the bribes?

I guess you will still be able to beta test it then

Symbiote Spiderman14 wrote:I guess you will still be able to beta test it then

Yes, yes I will .

On that note, and this is to everyone, please don't ask about being a tester. When the time comes I will open it up for testing and will request testers at that time.

Name_Violation wrote:yay developer. is it too soon to start with the bribes?

Tequila and Cranberry juice bribes will be accepted.

Welcome aboard to this new position!

HOLY CRAP! CB'S IN THE HMW FORUMS!
Doesn't mean i'm going to behave though. hehehe

congrats Mogwai.

Looking forward to the new version!

Wow 'Con gratz. Good luck!

Mogwai Prime wrote:

Name_Violation wrote:yay developer. is it too soon to start with the bribes?

Tequila and Cranberry juice bribes will be accepted.

What about late night snacks?Hey, it's not a gremlin in the system joke, just an overall one, haha.

Congrats Mogwai, look forward to seeing what you can do with it.

Congrats Mogwai!

So... no 3-5 missions?

congrats mogwai prime

Absolute Zero wrote:So... no 3-5 missions?

I thought the "no new programming" phrase was pretty self explanitory there AZ

Thanks for the welcome guys. As for missions. I am not going to promise anything one way or another. At the moment, no I will not be taking a look at missions. Why?

Two Reasons:

1. Any time spent not programming will only make the new game take that much longer. Since I had no hand dealing with the old programming, I honestly do not wish to look at it to figure it out.

2. I plan to have the new game up and running inside of 3 months. I am dedicated to making that happen. Once the new game is up it will detect levels of player's bots and create missions accordingly.

Good to see this was resolved in a timely manner. Good luck MP with the design. Now I have a reason to start playing again as well as keep playing in hopes of the "All New, All Different HMW"

Thanks for the welcome Fett.

Mogwai Prime wrote:Thanks for the welcome guys. As for missions. I am not going to promise anything one way or another. At the moment, no I will not be taking a look at missions. Why?

Two Reasons:

1. Any time spent not programming will only make the new game take that much longer. Since I had no hand dealing with the old programming, I honestly do not wish to look at it to figure it out.

2. I plan to have the new game up and running inside of 3 months. I am dedicated to making that happen. Once the new game is up it will detect levels of player's bots and create missions accordingly.

Tell us something we haven't heard before!

Burn wrote:

Mogwai Prime wrote:Thanks for the welcome guys. As for missions. I am not going to promise anything one way or another. At the moment, no I will not be taking a look at missions. Why?

Two Reasons:

1. Any time spent not programming will only make the new game take that much longer. Since I had no hand dealing with the old programming, I honestly do not wish to look at it to figure it out.

2. I plan to have the new game up and running inside of 3 months. I am dedicated to making that happen. Once the new game is up it will detect levels of player's bots and create missions accordingly.

Tell us something we haven't heard before!

How about hearing from me, publicly, that it doesn't take longer than 2 or 3 months of dedicated programming to get a game up-and-running like HMW. It just doesn't. If I can reprogram 90% of the code on this site, redesign the site, restructure the database, rebuild various admin sections, and launch a new version of Seibertron.com in less than three months, it most certainly (100%) doesn't take more than 3 months to program a new version of HMW. It just takes dedication and willingness to get the thing done in a timely fashion.

Bloodlust wrote:

Absolute Zero wrote:So... no 3-5 missions?

I thought the "no new programming" phrase was pretty self explanitory there AZ

I don't think it would take a whole bunch of new code to add the missions. Most of the text would be the description in the mission. Depending on how the code is, you could copy-paste-edit to get the missions. I'd just like to see some 3-5 missions, even if the new game comes up in 3 months.