BATTLETECH

---

Project Info

I joined the team at Harebrained Schemes after the closing of their successful Kickstarter project for BATTLETECH. This was a dream project for me: I’ve been infatuated with the BattleTech universe for at least half my lifetime, and the MechCommander series of strategy PC games was a particular high note in my gaming history. Working on this project allowed me to lead across feature areas and disciplines, and explore new challenges and interesting solutions.

During the course of the project I worked within many areas. My primary contributions consisted of combat gameplay design and supporting content, progression and economy design, and UI/UX design.

Combat Design

As the dedicated designer focused on the combat systems of our missions experience, I worked closely with the game director, UX lead, and principle gameplay engineer to prototype, test, and iterate on the fundamental mechanics of tactical gameplay. Building from an established initiative system, I helped to define critical elements such as weapon heat behaviors, overheating and shutdown, stability, morale gauge and impacts, visibility, movement and facing, and more.

ABOVE: A screengrab of combat gameplay and its associated HUD/interface, showing off a few of the systems I worked to design such as unit states and counters, terrain behaviors, buffs and debuffs, and special abilities.

BELOW: A shot of the development board used by our combat systems striketeam. This shows an example of our targeted areas and discussions midway through iterations on various core mechanics and features.

A fundamental area of effort involve tuning our movement system to strike a balance between providing tactical detail in positioning while still allowing for speedy parsing of viable choices and decision-making. The movement and terrain effect systems developed were then documented and communicated to the map designers and environmental art team so that they could be used to establish best practices for their content creation processes.

BELOW: A planning sheet establishing different gameplay mechanics for each of the various biomes we planned to support.

Content, Progression & Economy Design

As the combat systems began to solidify, I lead in the creation of weapons and equipment that used those systems in interesting ways to create different tactics and strategies. Likewise, I was the primary designer for the MechWarrior skill trees and combat abilities which I took special care to create in such a way that it forced players to choose specializations and feel a sense of progression and anticipation of promoting their pilots. A particular goal I had was to have each skill tree feel useful in aggregate and to avoid any sense of wasted points needed along a given path.

ABOVE: Visual planning spreadsheet showing one iteration of the MechWarrior skill trees; this served as the reference point for eventual implementation.

I managed the majority of our content planning and balancing spreadsheets, including weapons, mechs, equipment, vehicles, and premade MechWarriors. In addition to the design of the behaviors of these content pieces I was tasked with attempting to unify the notion of economic value with combat power. Successful mercenary company management hinged on money while combat efficacy was dependent on access to good gear and competent pilots, so these two areas were very tightly intertwined.

Weapons are nearly as important as the mechs that carry them, and a metric I’d established for successful design was that all weapons should be useful and ideally allow for player preference in their desired loadouts – players should be able to debate if any given weapon was “good” or not and have a variety of points and counterpoints that could be made based on gameplay situations, mech restrictions, cost, availability, etc.

ABOVE: An example spreadsheet showing the vast amount of data involved for the creation of a given content item – weapons in this case. Various underlying formulas generate an aggregate combat value which is then transmuted into the baseline monetary cost represented in-game.

BELOW: The “meta” sheet of BattleMechs with values derived from the respective loadout of a given mech, defined via a series of cross-connections with other sheets containing weapons, equipment, etc. This allowed a high level view of combat efficacy and the ability to get a general read on the overall ecosystem of balance and abilities.

I also worked closely with a tools engineer to enable direct export from content sheets into the JSON files which are used to drive runtime content within the game. I also developed a calculation and debug tool that allowed me to dive into the specifics of given mech and do comparisons between it and another selection – this was very useful for tuning the attributes of a given mech or making changes to the underlying formulas so that the outcomes matched gameplay intent.

ABOVE: The mech comparison tool I developed, driven by content spreadsheets as databases.

For supporting our multiplayer and standalone skirmish modes, I defined the combat value brackets that matches operated within and developed a construction tool to quickly build squads of mechs to fit within those thresholds along with associated pilot assignments.

BELOW: A “lance builder” spreadsheet tool I developed for quickly created predefined mech squads.

UI / UX Design & Implementation

In addition to the significant work above on systems and content design, I also contributed roughly half of the overall UI/X design working under our UX lead. A fundamental part of this was establishing a style guide for our various UI elements and typography to ensure presentational standards and a unified player experience across the numerous screens and interfaces the game possessed.

ABOVE: A gallery sample from some of the style guide layouts I created.

Splitting the work with our UX lead, I owned the concepting and development of a number of major screens and workflows including:

• Barracks + Mechwarrior Promotion / Skill Selection
• Mission Selection & Configuration
• Event Modals & Popups
• Ship Upgrades & Financial Report
• Stores + Inventory
• Mech Bay + Mech Configuration
• Squad (Lance) Setup
• Mission Summary Report + Loot

ABOVE: A few example wireframes that I created to aid in early development discussions on flow, needed info, and interactions.

BELOW: A sampling of some of the multitude of high-fidelity mockups I created as development progressed. These served as visual guides for the creation of the various screens and widgets in Unity, and as a reference for intended states.

I also spearheaded the tooltip interface system’s implementation and visual design; I also authored most of the template text shown which was derived from the various content sources described above. I also implemented most of my work directly in-engine (Unity) as widgets/prefabs for UI engineers to then integrate the relevant data and controls.

I had the unique honor of designing the mech configuration environment – the MechLab – which arguably is one of the most important parts of the entire game, as customizing a mech is a critical part of the BattleTech experience. It has been rewarding to see this interface shared in forums, let’s plays, streams, and social media as the main method by which players show off their configurations and debate the efficacy of various designs.

Here’s a video of a developer Q&A session I cohosted where I got to speak about the mech and lance customization process using the gameplay systems and interface I helped develop:

Lastly, here’s a brief interview with me by the Harebrained Schemes studio director where I talk about my background and what I did on BattleTech:

This game has been a highlight of my career, and I was really fortunate to have had the opportunity to use my skills in so many different aspects of its development and to been able to leave a significant mark on an entry for one of my favorite IPs.