As Heavy Gear II uses Microsoft's proprietary Direct3D API for graphical rendering, Loki had to port this to OpenGL in order for it to run on Linux.
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The Linux port took Loki Software approximately 6 months to complete, and was described by Loki as "their most challenging product to date". In October 1999, it was announced that Loki Software would be porting Heavy Gear II across to Linux. The Dark Side engine would be used again in Activision's Interstate '82, released later that year. This slippage also had a negative impact on the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. When the game was released in June 1999, it had missed the intended ship date by approximately nine months. The team underestimated the work needed to produce a demo, and did not factor in costs involved with employee turnover into their original schedule. The missions designed for the planned co-op mode were however, saved for the standalone single-player "Historic Missions" in the final game.ĭespite the experience of the team, Heavy Gear II did not adhere to the intended schedule. Although co-operative multiplayer was also planned, this feature had to be dropped, as it proved impossible to populate the game with enough enemy units to make the game challenging. Multiplayer was an important element in the game, and it was implemented using an internal Activision networking SDK early in development, before even the single-player portion of the game. Enemy units may split off into separate fireteams, call upon reinforcements or order artillery strikes against the player. Enemy units have a tactical awareness on the battlefield, and will keep track of the successes and failures of different approaches against the player character, varying their tactics depending on the situation. This reduced the need for individually scripted actions, and enforced a consistent feel across all missions.
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The approach to AI was to go for a high level "autopilot" system, whereby non-player characters could decide for themselves what objectives to achieve and how to go about it. Offloading the visual rendering to dedicated video cards allowed for CPU cycles to be freed up for other uses such as AI systems. By targeting only video card equipped machines, Heavy Gear II could feature more units on screen and greater environmental detail. This allowed the team to focus on delivering a single high quality product, saving the team from having to replicate in-game assets at lower level of details for lower specification machines, cutting time in production and testing.
By adopting a modular approach to their engine design, developers could easily switch in and out different systems as they experimented during the development process.Īlthough there were debates within the team regarding the issue, it was concluded that software rendering was insufficient to deliver on the teams' visual goals, and so support was dropped from the engine, making video cards a necessity to run Heavy Gear II. Built in C++, the first priority for the engine was stability, with a focus on memory management and leak tracking, allowing developers to spot memory leaks as soon as they occurred, rather than later on in a test cycle. Work began on a new game engine, named Dark Side, to power the title. The design team wanted to move away from the larger BattleMech style gears as found in the original Heavy Gear, and to smaller, more agile gears, staying truer the Heavy Gear universe and allowing for faster paced and more diverse gameplay. The Heavy Gear II team was a newly formed group within Activision, composed of some of the best and brightest employees that the firm had available, each of whom had experience working on several 3D games previously. Heavy Gear II incorporates third-person and stealth elements.ĭevelopment of Heavy Gear II began during the autumn of 1997 with an aggressive 13 month schedule which aimed to ship the game in autumn 1998. A team of elite Special-Ops pilots from across the planet, equipped with advanced prototype Gears and a newly unveiled intersystem assault shuttle, are sent through the interstellar Tannhauser gate to the planet Caprice, the nearest NEC base, to find out more and strike back at the enemy. It is a sequel to the 1997 video game Heavy Gear.Īn atrocity caused by the New Earth Concordat (NEC) - the destruction of the Badlands city of Peace River by an antimatter bomb - leads to a formal cease-fire between the Northern and Southern Leagues. Set in Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear universe, the game was developed and published by Activision in 1999 for Microsoft Windows, it was ported to Linux in 2000 by Loki Software. Heavy Gear II is a mecha based first-person shooter video game.
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