Welcome to Wrestling Gamers United Newsletter #298
1) "Just ship it in debug" 2) Fire Pro Returns, good news? 3) We got Mod 4) Link of the Week 5) Question of the Week
1) "Just ship it in debug" **************************
*nerd alert-development talk ahead*
So a few things re-designed this week. We way underestimated the complexity of our irish whip design. Ideally we wanted to give you the ability to irish whip in any direction. We had it working so that you could but quickly realized that we needed more irish whip animations to blend between depending on which direction you were going to whip your opponent. We also needed to add the ability to rotate while in a grapple so the position could be set during the irish whip animation. If we didn't do that the opponent would suddenly adjust his direction after leaving the irish whip and entering his running animation. It worked, but looked funny as all hell. So what we decided was that for now you could whip your opponent in one direction which would be directly behind you. It looks the most natural. The whip would auto target the nearest rope or turnbuckle angle in that direction and rotate subtly during the irish whip so that as soon as the opponent was running on his own he would be facing the exact intended direction. If you want to aim your irish whip, just rotate while in the grapple before hitting the irish whip button (which is also the run button). This solution is the best functioning and best looking one for the time being. What we'd like to do next is add all the required animations to allow you to irish whip in any direction without rotating in the grapple first. That would take about two weeks of R&D and animation to get it working perfectly. Four weeks at most depending on if irish whipping would be possible from all grapple positions or not. And for those wondering, irish whips use the same targeting mechanic as running in that while in the ring you will target either the ropes or turnbuckle depending on your direction input. While outside the ring you target either parallel to the ring aprons or diagonally. You don't target the ring posts while outside the ring. Also, as per everyone's input you simply drop the weapon you are holding if you press run.
We're also looking at whether or not we want to get fancy with our springboard and diving through/over ropes flying moves. We have a flying system working perfectly but it requires that the animations be chopped up so you can target the distance and rotation of your opponent. However, for a move like a plancha to the outside we don't want the attacker to rotate and change direction once clearing the ropes, that would be odd. But do we want the attacker to adjust his distance to target an opponent on the floor? We thought we did but then we looked at a few different games. Fire Pro takes the harshest stance it seems and your opponent has to be in just the right spot or you'll miss. Same with No Mercy. You'll fly right over an opponent if he's standing too close to the ring. It seems the distance in these moves is part of the animation and there is no distance tracking at all. I wonder if that's the way we should do it or not? We've been asking some people to take a look at some Uprising gameplay footage and one concern that popped up was that our flying moves using the auto tracking system don't always look natural if the opponent is too far from the perfect spot in either direction. This is something we want to address when we get the chance. Personally, I would rather have auto tracking flying moves that looked a little bit unnatural at times than hardcode the distance for flying moves just so they looked perfect every time at the expense of rarely landing them. But that's my opinion.
Yesterday we worked out the grapple system some more. We looked hard at how we want apron grapples to work. The way our grappling works now it requires an initiate animation from the attacker and defender and it just isn't giving us the results we want. It seems the only way to make it work the way we want it to is to blend the defender up to the grapple loop animation if the grapple is successful. It means a bit of sliding will occur if the
defender is at the outer limit of the acceptable range but it the action will flow much smoother. Today we'll know for sure if we're on the right track. We're tweaking the apron grapples and if I see a perfectly executed powerbomb from the apron to floor I think we'll apply the new grapple system across the board to every situation. Fingers crossed...
So I'm happy that we've even made it to the point where most critical game mechanics are solved and we're throwing in content. What we need to do in the next few weeks is compose a roadmap of where we want to take development from here. This something I know other people would like to see so there is total clarity with regard to the future of PWX.
Who knew it would take this much time and effort to get this far? I'm not complaining because the truth of the matter is we made it this far regardless. And where we are is a pretty sweet foundation. It definitely wasn't a straight or uninterrupted line from point A to point B though. It reminds me of a saying my daughter learned in school this week:
"You can't control which way the wind blows, but you can adjust your sails."
2) Fire Pro Returns, good news? ********************************
Fire Pro Returns has hit the shelves (in most places) and early numbers show it doing upwards of 5000 units sold in it's first week. This is good! The Fire Pro Returns board on Gamefaqs is also in the number two spot (as of today) and that shows a huge amount of support for an alternative to the WWE games. Nice! We're watching Fire Pro Returns' progress closely because it's success or lack of it will play a big role in how PWX moves forward. I'll be honest, if PWX only sold 5,000 copies we'd be bankrupt. I'm really hoping Fire Pro Returns can crack the 50,000 unit mark. If it doesn't its going to be pretty hard to sell publishers and investors on PWX. Fire Pro is miles ahead of the core PWX so far in terms of AI and character customization (for now) so if it can't sell a respectable amount of units at a budget price on one of the most popular consoles in history...we'll need some serious new strategy for PWX to have a chance. From what I hear Smackdown vs. Raw 2008 on PS2 has sold something like 200,000 units so Fire Pro Returns is doing at least 2% in comparison which is actually pretty respectable for a game with no license, zero marketing, 2D graphics, etc. Then again, that first week of sales is actually including all of the pre orders since they became available so it's not likely indicative of what next week's numbers will be. You could debate the significance of the numbers all day but in the end we just have to wait and see.
Go Fire Pro...go Fire Pro...don't make Dave look stupid...er...
3) We got Mod **************
Moderating a forum is a time consuming and thankless job. So we don't want to do it anymore! Ha! Luckily, we got an offer from a great guy to help mod the forum for us and we expect to have him set up and running mad with power before long.
This week's question asks how you think certain flying moves should work. Auto target or no auto target? This is you chance to affect a critical game mechanic so let us know what you think!
[quote][cite] Exor:[/cite] We way underestimated the complexity of our irish whip design. Ideally we wanted to give you the ability to irish whip in any direction. We had it working so that you could but quickly realized that we needed more irish whip animations to blend between depending on which direction you were going to whip your opponent. We also needed to add the ability to rotate while in a grapple so the position could be set during the irish whip animation[/quote]
No mention irish whips outside of a grapple. I'm not going to pay a penny for another AKI game.
No mention of it just because we don't have it working yet. Once we've got a basic irish whip from grapple working perfectly then we can experiment with no no-grapple version.