The previous Featured Vehicles theme was Skids, and there were not a lot of entries (less than 20 IIRC), so I chose a theme for June that would be a bit more straight-forward and hopefully gain more attention from the community. The change in theme worked better than I expected, and there were 98 tanks to look through by the time I collected some of the stray tanks created over the last month.
Due to the number of entries, the bar for both Featured Vehicles and Honorable Mentions was quite a bit higher than previously. This meant that both style and usability were quite important, and some vehicles that would normally have merited some mention were left off the lists. I don't have a strict 1-entry-per-person policy, but it did end up this time that no one got 2 vehicles onto the main Featured Vehicles section, though a few people had vehicles making both lists. Let's take a look at the lists first, then a little more discussion about what stood out:
FEATURED VEHICLES
- Walking Tank 777 - Pyroteknikid
- Railgun Tank - pephoro
- Not a Guntank - Kozuel
- Lasifyer - surgexs123
- SST Rail - Iro_art_
- Starwars Droid Snail Tank - Dangospark117
- Bridge Tank - Astronaut
- H-377 Peacekeeper - Neo_Runner
- Comfortable Laser Tank
- Cylontknight Scanner Tank - wc4513
- World Shaker Minigun Tank - Kaijp
- Rocket Tank - TheUsualSuspect
- CSL-26 Croiseur Terreste - StRaNgEr
- Raider Tank - ZyberFairy
- Tornado - FiniX
- Salutaris - detaal
HONORABLE MENTIONS
- Railgun Tank ARMAGEDDON
- Tonk!
- First Huge Tank
- U.H.T - Goliath
- False Screw Tank (Fire)
- Walking Tank
- MANTIS Missile Tank
- Scorpi-Tank 3.0
- Saw Runner Ultima V2
- S0519-Lux.Rad-Tank
- Samurai Tank
- Tiny Tank
- Iron Warden
- Realistic Tank
- Realistic Tank (big)
- M5 Armageddon
- Heavy Armored Tank
- Twin Tanks + Control Car
- Pulsar Reactor
- AZL1 Strike Tank mk.2
- Illuminati Pyramid Tank
- Tank Dozer
- STUG
- Rototo X3000
- Imperial Wall Breacher
- The Futuristic Tank
- The Rhino Tank
- Smash A Whirl XL
[If someone wants to create a version of the list with the creator names of the Honorable Mentions, I'll update the list above so it has them listed. Steam doesn't make it quick/easy to see creator names in the search results.]
There were a lot of very impressive custom-built treads among the entries, but unfortunately most of them really bogged down my fairly-decent PC, while others just had trouble sticking together with the default physics settings (turning up joint stabilizer would just kill the framerate more in most cases). There were also a number of large cannons/weapons that happened to have treads as a means of propulsion, and only a few of those made either list. I tended to favor vehicles that were more tank-like, as well as those that were relatively easy to use effectively. So some more stylish vehicles that could barely turn/aim or were very difficult to utilize correctly didn't rank as high as they would have otherwise.
Either way, I really appreciate the collective efforts that were put into this Featured Vehicle theme. The creativity and engineering used in these vehicles is inspiring, and I'm happy to spend the time trying out all the entries each month.
JULY'S THEME: TREBUCHETS + CATAPULTS
The theme for July's Featured Vehicles is Trebuchets + Catapults. The deadline will be July 20th for entries, which is exactly 4 weeks from today. The intended island to use is Test Island. If your vehicle is intended to be used on a different island (such as Sandbox Resort), please mention that in the 3-line description.
The "vehicles" this time don't need to move in any particular way. Whether they need to be attached to the ground or not is up to you (using attachers), but the objective is to damage/destroy the large building at the center of Test Island with a vertically swung/tossed projectile. The projectile(s) can be explosive. [Note that we'll have a separate ballista/crossbow-like theme later, so save those kinds of ideas/designs for later.]
Rockets/magnets/etc are allowed as part of the throwing mechanisms, but preferably not used on the projectile (unless used creatively). Using physics/gravity/ropes rather than powered parts will probably give you an edge in the final judging, as will having a limited number of buttons needed, but sometimes complex machines can be surprisingly effective/cool, so I don't want to rule anything out as long as it's tossing the projectile using a swinging motion of some kind (underhand or overhand is preferred to side-arm). Really looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with for this theme!
CAMPAIGN FOCUS
There's been a lot of focus on advanced user features and new parts over the first few months of Early Access, but not a lot on the main campaign. There are some other advanced features I want to get to sooner than later (multi-select in vehicle building, and angular/rotated blocks), but I think I've neglected the campaign for too long, so I'm going to be focusing on improving the existing islands/missions as well as adding new islands for a while. I want the first hour of the game to be more enjoyable for new players, do a better job of introducing parts over time, and give the game a bit more meat for those who want objectives/goals to aim for rather than sandbox-focused building.
The vehicle building learning curve is also pretty steep, so I need to figure out some way of smoothing it out a bit more. The built-in (showcase) vehicle list also could use some updating. I'll need to think about these things a bit more, but either way, expect some changes/additions to Play mode in the next few weeks.
WHERE'S THE VIDEO?
This post was supposed to have a video along with it, but when I went to export the finished version from Davinci Resolve, it refused to export. So I saved the project and restarted. That's when I discovered the project file itself was somehow corrupted. All but the first 15 minutes of work on the video was gone. Around 8 hours of editing/etc was lost to a bug of some kind. Definitely one of the worst feelings when you create digital work. Not sure saving to a backup project would have helped, but I'll be more cautious with the program in the future.
I still have all the raw footage from the testing, and hope to have a video created by sometime next week. Redoing work is usually faster the second time through, or I may get someone to help out with the editing process. Sorry for the delay.