MATT HASTINGSHOMEFRONT END PHILOSOPHYPROJECTSTHREE HAMMERS
Gameplay · Sep 25, 2026

Thirty seconds of each

Two short clips from the first mission, straight off the engine: the hold's yard at work, and the company fighting through the trogg camp.

Two short clips from the first mission, how they were recorded from the engine window, and the mouse bug that ruined the first takes.

Two clips today, both from a single scripted playthrough of The Empty Mine, recorded from the engine window at true speed. No editing beyond a trim and a mask over the message line.

Base building

The hold's yard early in the mission: workers running gold from the mine and wood from the tree line, and a guard finishing training partway through. Twenty-seven seconds.

This is the quiet part of an RTS mission, which is most of it. The Hall sits in the middle of its dirt yard, the mine is at the left edge of frame, and the workers keep their loop going. One honest note: nothing is under construction in this window. The dwelling the script orders was already finished before the clip starts, and the next take will aim earlier so you can watch a frame go up.

Battle

The company at the trogg camp near the end of the mission. The camera follows where the damage is.

This is the densest fight the first mission produces: guards and bowmen pushing along the palisade into the camp, rock-throwers answering from behind the burrows. The camera is not a person. A small read-only "director" script inside the engine watches which units are losing hit points, averages their positions, and glides the view toward that point a tile at a time.

What went wrong, briefly

The first clean takes had a jitter that nobody could explain from the recording side. The cause was the mouse: the engine scrolls the map whenever the pointer touches the edge of its window, focused or not, and every time a cursor crossed the recording window the view lurched and the director dragged it back. The fix is a two-line config change for the next take. The lesson is the usual one on this project: the tool that records the evidence needs its own evidence.