Besiege - the Kerbal Space Program of Medieval Siege Weapons

[tiny ogre]

Besiege



It's REALLY early for this game, I don't recommend buying it yet unless you're ok with not more than an hour or two of gameplay, but I bought the Alpha and had a lot of fun with it. I am looking forward to more levels and hopefully more parts. As it stands right now it's a great tech demo with a proof of concept game around it.

Basically you build medieval siege weapons with a voxel-y editor. Everything just snaps together. Then you put your machine to use solving some objectives specific to each level, like destroy 90% of everything, drive to certain spots (while things are shooting at you... should you go for speed or armor or try to kill the things?), pick up cargo and deliver it... and not very many more kinds of things yet. The editor feels good and the physics work pretty well. It also looks great. If they can deliver on the content they'll have a hit.

[jztemple2]

Just checked their web page, they say they are in alpha v0.01. I might wait a little bit

[Lordnine]

Nerd Cubed did a video on this one. Does a pretty good job of showing off the capabilities.

[jztemple2]

Couldn't resist getting this, not for $6.99, at least till Medieval Engineers comes out. It's fun in a bit of a rough sort of way. I made a video of my solution to one of the early challenges. The video is about seven minutes and apologies for the "Bandicam.com" banner at the top, I'm still using it as shareware till I decide whether I like it.

Here's the video; no narration, since I didn't want to ramble. Maybe now that I know what I'm doing I'll narrate the next one.

[jztemple2]

And here's another video. I did narrate this one, but it's mercifully short . It's an example of how some of the challenges don't require a weapon, just something that moves. This one is Zone 3, Old Howl Battlefield.

[jztemple2]

And yet another video. This is for the zone Perimeter Wall. I bypassed the construction phase so the video only shows the completed device and my two attempts to destroy the house and windmill behind the wall; the second attempt succeeds. No narration this time.

[jztemple2]

Just can't stop myself . This one is pretty short (less than twenty seconds) showing yet another Zone (The Queen's Fodder) and a pretty lazy solution .

A couple of observations. First, if you do not save your machine, it is lost when you quit the game!. Second, the fun of the game is not building the ultimate solution to the challenge, but rather being creative and trying all sorts of wacky solutions.

[jztemple2]

OK, another video. This is a short compilation video of my cheap, crude and yet successful solutions to beating five of the zones. Nothing elegant yet surprisingly satisfying.

[LordMortis]

jztemple, our very own pewdepie.

[jztemple2]

Not sure who that is , but what the heck, I'll take it as a complement.

I finished the fifteen Zones of the current Alpha of Besiege, it was a lot of fun. I then went off and looked at some Steam Guides and holy smokes, I wasn't even aware of all the possibilities of control in things like the Key Mapper. I replayed an early zone using a flame car that demonstrates the use of assigning the flame cannons on-board to three different key groups. And, as you might expect, I made a video of it. It's pretty short, I'm figuring that long videos aren't going to really be much fun to see here .

[jztemple2]

And I recorded these last night, my attempts at the last five zones. I put them together in one video. One attempt wasn't successful in the video, I forgot to film the successful attempt. Again, these are the bare bones, unimaginative approaches, so I'm not giving away any spoilers. I just wanted to show folks what the game looks like.

[jztemple2]

Good article on Kotaku, Ten of the Funniest Besiege Builds. It's amazing what some folks figure out can be made.

[Brian]

How did these not make it on the list?

Firebox

Wright Brothers

[jztemple2]

How did these not make it on the list?

Firebox

Wright Brothers

The airplane is really impressive. I've tried to make a couple of them, but flying them is so damn tricky.

[mori]

And I recorded these last night, my attempts at the last five zones. I put them together in one video. One attempt wasn't successful in the video, I forgot to film the successful attempt. Again, these are the bare bones, unimaginative approaches, so I'm not giving away any spoilers. I just wanted to show folks what the game looks like.

I am going to steal your wheel caster design. Your machine maneuverability is a lot better than anything I have come up with yet. My best moment was on the steal the woodpile level. I used my catapult design and made just a few changes to make it into a medieval crane. I was thrilled how nicely it worked.

[jztemple2]

New update for the game

Change log - V0.03

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

Added Half Pipe Block
Added Free Rotating Cog Block
Added Powered Cog Block
Add Heavy Boulder Block
Added Unpowered Wheel

IMPROVEMENTS

Made wood block have slightly higher break force
Key-Mapper can now switch blocks while open
Key-Mapper window can now be dragged around
Added piston speed slider
Added Toggle mode to Pistons
Added Blood Disable option
Made Ice altitude higher
Made flying panels freeze at high altitudes
Made undo button colliders larger

FIXES

Fixed hinges becoming rigid when saving
Fixed blocks being built whilst clicking on a UI element
Fixed grabber triggering out of bounds warning even though it is within bounds

CHANGES

Renamed 'Powered' tab to 'Mechanical'

I have to admit that I've kind of burned out on the game. Lots of folks are very creative, as I noted when I posted the link to the Ten of the Funniest Besiege Builds. Unfortunately, I'm really not the creative type, I have little interest in building something that's just cute or just a mechanical work of art. Maybe as they add new items I'll get inspired....

[Kasey Chang]

I was at the "kill 90%" level, and my creation was... the

SPINNER OF DEATH!

A figure-8 frame, armored, two wheels going at opposite directions... SIX metal blades

Only killed like 80%. Can't get at the archers. Kill all the infantry that came close, but they don't come any closer. Then the wheel fell off.

How how the heck do I kill the archers... then inspiration hit...

FLYING SPINNER OF DEATH!

Put 9 spinners on top, then 2 spinners toward the archers. Upon start, take off, fly toward the archiers... Drop the machine on top of them... start spinning. Muahahahahahaha!

[Kasey Chang]

At the dual kill level... I got a weird approach. The "Sacrificial sidecar" approach.

Basically, my machine consists of TWO separate pieces. The front piece is a plow attached to a frame and two powered wheels (no steering). It's job is merely go straight ahead and trigger the mine/bomb. The tricky part is in the main machine, which is behind the "minesweeper"... That one has regular 4 wheels steering, and a flamethrower. So after destruction of the wall, it drives around what's left of the wall, crashes the house, then flame toasts the windmill.

[jztemple2]

New major update for the game:

Hello everyone!

We’ve just published our latest Major update, V0.10, and we also have some news about Besiege’s Development.

Basically, we have begun the process of expanding the game’s development team.

Introducing the new members of the team to the project will take time and may see the content of updates diminish slightly as we get them situated. For this we apologise. There’s a lot of organisational stuff we’ve got to sort out related to this and it's something we’ve never done before.

In the short term we will be moving to a monthly update schedule to allow us the flexibility we need for dealing with these new challenges.

However, in the long term expanding the team will allow us to pursue more crazy and exciting features for the project, as well as an increase in production speed!
Again, we greatly appreciate your patience as we find our feet.

Right, on to the more exciting stuff!

Steam Workshop
You can now quickly and easily share war machines with other members of the Steam community.

To download someone’s machine all you need to do is browse the workshop for a machine you like and then click subscribe. This will automatically download the machine and place it in your saved machines folder.

Uploading your own machines to the workshop can be done in the load menu. Simply click the small Steam logo in the bottom corner of your machine’s thumbnail, select the appropriate tags and press upload.
You can also update machines that you’ve already uploaded by clicking the update option. This will then sync to everyone who has downloaded your machine updating it in their game to show your latest improvements.

[em2nought]

This looks kind of fun. It's $5.35 right now too.

[jztemple2]

For those still interested in the game, it is finally out of Early Access and is 50% off on Steam for the next week.

[jztemple2]

Also, if you want to reset your progression in the game and start out fresh with no beaten levels or saved machines, here's how I figured out how to do it, as I posted over on the Steam Discussion forum:

I was doing some digging and figured it out. This approach is for Windows.

1. Turn off Steam Cloud sync for the game.
2. Go to <path-to-game>\Besiege_Data\ and edit the CompletedLevels.txt file, changing all the "1" to "0" and be sure to save the file.
3. Go to <path-to-game>\Besiege_Data\SavedMachines\ and delete all the .bsg files, and in the Thumbnails subfolder, delete all the .png files.

This *should* work. If it doesn't first time (it didn't for me), make sure Steam Cloud sync is off and try again. It worked for me on the second try, but I might have messed up the first time.

[jztemple2]

I forgot how much fun this game can be, just designing the hell out of stuff.

[Archinerd]

That's a lot bloodier than I remember.

[jztemple2]

That's a lot bloodier than I remember.

If you look above, back in the early alpha I posted some videos. Things were just as bloody . It is possible to turn off blood in the options.

Yeah, it's been five years since I last played the game. That's a long time in Early Access

[Kasey Chang]

One of those games I played for a little but had to put aside for time reasons. It's a huge time-sucker (just one more variation...)

[jztemple2]

One of those games I played for a little but had to put aside for time reasons. It's a huge time-sucker (just one more variation...)

Yup, since I re-installed it on Tuesday I've put in eleven hours on it .

I play this the same way I play Hitman. What ever I can beat a level, I'll just do that. I'm not the creative type and I don't care if my machine is pretty or even coherent. As long as it achieves the goal for the level that's fine, and then I'm done with it and on to the next.

Never could get a liking for the Hitman process...

Fine, you've killed the bad guy. Now go back on a Tuesday wearing a clown suit and kill him again, this time with a salami.

.

[Isgrimnur]

Agreed.

[LawBeefaroni]

Reinstalled this a few weeks ago. Too bloody for a 3-year-old once you're facing soldiers but we had a lot of fun replaying the first few levels making crazy machines to take out the structures.

[jztemple2]

Reinstalled this a few weeks ago. Too bloody for a 3-year-old once you're facing soldiers but we had a lot of fun replaying the first few levels making crazy machines to take out the structures.

I don't know if you are aware, but you can turn off the blood in the options. Also there are three sandbox areas and one is just a big empty space, a good location for creative building.

[Lordnine]

I think I won the game... Or completely broke it, depending on how you look at it...

My siege engine is unkillable.

[Lordnine]

OK, now I have finished the game for real, or at-least all of the missions. The design I made above really was too good. It allowed me to complete about 80% of the missions in the game with very minor adjustments. Still a very cool physics sandbox and the things some people have created with it are just amazing. I highly recommend checking out some of the builds on the Reddit subreddit.

[jztemple2]

Besiege: The Splintered Sea - Coming May 24th

Today we’re excited to announce The Splintered Sea expansion for Besiege, coming to Steam May 24th this year! The expansion adds water to Besiege for the first time, a 10-level ocean themed campaign, 8 new aquatic blocks and an ocean themed sandbox environment.



Adding water to Besiege has been a huge technical challenge, one that’s been years in the making, with countless hours of experimenting and tweaking to get things just right.

The Splintered Sea’s water system employs elements of hydrodynamics to produce an interactive, immersive and challenging new machine-building experience, for both new players and veterans alike.

Water will also be available in both Multiplayer and the Level Editor, if you own the expansion. Everything you can do in Besiege, you can now do in water as well!

In the run up to The Splintered Sea’s release we’ll be dropping weekly community posts, providing a deeper dive into the expansion, its contents & features.

[em2nought]

The naval aspect looks like fun even if a bit too busy for me.

Makes me think of this in a way

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3319 ... f_Procyon/