Welcome to Wrestling Gamers United Newsletter #287
1) One down, thousands more to go 2) Geek party! 3) Starman returns! 4) Link of the Week 5) Question of the Week
1) One down, thousands more to go ************************************
There's a new ritual at the studio and I'm not talking about the one involving Darrell and the pony tail. Nope, this ritual involves nothing more than a dry erase board and some ego. You see, in the past few weeks we've been working extra hard to focus our energy and stay on only the most important tasks to complete the first playable demo. So every Monday morning we gather 'round the old whiteboard and decide as a team which goals need to be reached next and then we assign each task to one or more crew members. The goal each week is to have every task on the whiteboard crossed out by Friday and then merge all of the improvements into the most recent working version of the game. What's interesting now is how everyone wants to be the one to cross off the tasks they've completed. I don't know, but I think there is just something satisfying in marching over to that board, seeing a problem on there staring at you, and crossing that bastard off. And hey why not? Like crew member Bill once said, "making a game is nothing more than solving daily changing list of problems. Once all of the problems are gone, you have a game." So it's very nice to look up at that board from my messy desk and see even the tiniest task crossed off. One step closer to that damn finished game.
Sometimes the tasks are small (widen balcony), sometimes they're big and ambiguous (fix animation system), and sometimes they're seemingly impossible without a hint of how the hell it can be done in this engine (break animation on collision). But without fail there hasn't been a goal we needed reached that the crew hasn't been able to handle. Rarely is it easy, most times it frustrating and hard, and I'd be lying if said there weren't regular heated discussions about what tasks were most important. But at the end of the week that f'n board is full of crossed out tasks and whatever the finish line ends up being there is no one in this studio who can deny were are many steps closer to reaching it.
2) Geek Party! **********************
Eric, our intrepid graphic designer and web guy who lives and works in Michigan, stopped by to visit the studio this week while he was vacationing in Vancouver. I was nervous. It's been years since Eric has been to Vancouver (the last time was before we even did the prototype!) and I imagined he had high expectations about where the playable demo was at after all this time. It reminded me of when Mel visited from Washington this spring. We had just switched engines and all we had to show after almost a year of development was a very sparse demo with no lighting, no shadows, no audio, only one working move and no striking. It was embarrassing to show anyone. This time we're miles ahead in every area, but still, you wonder how people are going to react y'know?
I don't want to speak for Eric (maybe he'll give his impressions in the next newsletter? wink wink) but I think he was pleasantly surprised. I think he was relieved to see he hadn't been devoting so much time and support to vaporware! He actually got to pick up a controller and play it. It may still be in a pretty early stage but...it's real, It works, and it doesn't look like unholy ass!
And to top it all off Eric dropped of a bunch reference video for us. Old ECW, WCW, FMW, RoH, CZW, and some of my latest crush. Lacey. Mmmmmm Lacey. Even Darrell commented afterwards that Eric and I sounded like we were having our own private Star Wars nerd convention but instead of debating the location of the exhaust vents on a Tie Bomber we were gushing over Jack Evans' indestructible botch-proof skull and...Lacey. Mmmmmm Lacey.
Screw Fire Pro Returns coming to North America. That's nothing compared to the news that Nintendo is planning to re-release the original Pro Wrestling NES on the Wii Virtual Console! I mean c'mon STARMAN IS COMING BACK!
Roms on a laptop just ain't the same...
4) Link of the Week ********************
Well well well, what have we here? I was always under the impression that the first 2D PC wrestling games by a solo indy developer were the old Mat Dickie games. But someone (ZIn5ki) on the PWX forums posted a link to some indy PC wrestling games that were released at least a few years prior to Mat Dickie's. I haven't played them (damn you Vista) but with 12 man Battle Royals, ladder matches, and apparently a Hell in a Cell match it's a wonder this guy even attempted to make such games. Good for him!
You can check them out for yourself here:
http://www.darkroar.com/
3) Question of the Week ************************
Thank you to everyone who responded to last week's question regarding old ECW footage. Thanks to you I've got a nice long hunting list that should keep me busy for a while!
Question this week: You're going to see some more changes to the Hammerlock level this Saturday on the PWX site update (will that level EVER stop changing?!) and I'd like to know what you think of it. Tim completely scrapped the old lighting models and did new ones from scratch. What do you think? Better? Worse?
Please email your answers to Dave@WrestlingGamersUnited.com and thanks for the support!
In the meantime and in-between time, that's it. Another edition of Wrestling Gamers United.
[quote][cite] dratsab:[/cite][quote][cite] MG:[/cite]I was playing the game I wanted to know. whats the B1 button on the keyboard.[/quote]
I had the same problem, and my game glitches up. Apparenly B1 = the insert key, the one by home, delet, end, etc.[/quote]
SO THATS WHAT THAT DAMN BUTTON IS!!!(I downloaded it few days ago and I ended up deleting the game (and the installer) because I couldn't get it to work...) Meh, the graphics really just turned me away from it though. How is the gameplay though? If it sounds good I might redownload.