With the mid point of 2022 fast approaching, I thought I'd share with you what I've been up to since January. The development of Pin's Mod v5: Nations Assault has taken up near enough every waking moment of my year thus far, and to be honest its been great. Its fun planning and making videos on Hogs, but having my own large scale side project where I don't end up burning out after 2 months - now thats even better!
Ok, so why is everything taking so long to make? Surely the mod should be out by now, right? Well technically yes it would be.. if it was just the mod itself that was being released. In order to tell more of a story in Nations Assault - I needed an add-on to be released alongside the modded ISO. The original Hogs of War can only change so much, new characters, maps, vehicles and all the other fun stuff can't be added to the game because of the lack of memory space. Not to mention the spaghetti monster that is navigating the original games code. So I started to think outside the box a little. At first I wanted to create a ton of animation videos like I did before in v4, but that soon led me to burn out pretty fast. So I figured why not build something? Why not look to extend the hogs story & universe in this new mod through the creation of an entirely new game space. And so, Pin's Mod v5: Back to Base! was born.
Built in Unity as its own separate but related game, Back to Base will act as a sort of 'central hub' for Nations Assault, telling all of the story that the ISO cannot. Now we all know that the original Hogs is a third person turn based shooter, but you see Back to Base looks to change things up a bit, being that of a third person free-roaming shooter. The game world, as the name implies, will be the base your hogs return to after completing each island of Saustralasia.
The game will feature 7 levels, each progressing you & the story hand in hand with the completion of the singleplayer missions in Nations Assault. You'll be able to meet new and existing Hogs characters and classes, drive vehicles likes jeeps, cars and tanks, fly planes and explore the world for all its secrets! The main focus here is storytelling and world building, and less so on combat (however there will be plenty of that!).
Now I'm no fancy programmer, so don't be expecting a fully fledged triple A gaming experience. What I can say is that I'm putting all my passion for Hogs of War into this project, to the point where the actual ISO mod has become secondary to the Unity game, but thats for good reason. Its always been a dream of mine to take the Hogs universe and expand it in any way possible, and this new mod & expansion have given me the perfect opportunity to do just that.
You might also be wondering what the hell happened to my previous Unity project involving pigs in biplanes. Well, I've taken the best bits from my previous dogfighting project and combined it into this one. I've already mentioned being able to fly around in planes, which will also includes the ability to explore other nearby locations alongside the main base, but ultimately I'm hoping to get some form of aerial combat in there as well (even if its minimal).
My provisional release date is set for October/November of this year, but all I can say for now is don't be surprised if that changes going forward! I'm trying not to make this project too much to handle, otherwise it risks ending up becoming another unfinished project in the pile of 'what could have been'. Pin's Mod v5 is going to be different, its going to open the door for me to continue working on & building the game's universe through future projects, so much so that I already know exactly what my next Hogs game is going to be about.. but we'll get to that at a later point! For now I hope you guys are as excited as I am to get stuck into my next mod, as always I'll try to make it best it can possibly be. A big thank you to my Patrons over on Patreon and my YouTube Channel members, these guys have essentially helped to fund this project, I could not do it without you!
In the meantime - if you haven't played my other mods yet and want to give them a try then feel free to check them out here! >> WORKSHOP