I spend a disturbing amount of time thinking about video games and their evolution. Since I heard about PWX, I thought about how great it will be to have a game like the one Dave and crew are proposing. I thought about how fun it will be to have a game that will pick up the "No Mercy" ball WWE dropped and run a little further with it. But then I also started thinking past that: Where are wrestling games headed in the next 5 years? What will be the next BIG step in the wrestling game genre? So, I started to think about the latest gaming engine technologies being utilized in all genres right now, and then thought about how they might apply to the wrestling genre.
1) DMM - Digital Molecular Matter This is a technology that's going to be in the next Lucas Arts games (Indiana Jones and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed) and I assume will soon find it's way into most games. The whole idea is that this technology allows objects in the game to react as they would in the real world based on what material that object is made of. Metal bends and dents under extreme force, wood splinters and breaks, and glass cracks and shatters. Imagine this technology in a wrestling game. Right now games use a canned table break animation that doen't take into account the weight or force being applied to the table. The table goes from being together to being broken the exact same way no matter how someone is put through it or who that someone is. Now imagine a table that utilizes DMM. Every time someone is put through a table is unique and different. If it's Rey Mysterio's being put through, the table might splinter and slump, but it doesn't even break all the way. If somone is put through the table closer to one of the ends, instead of the middle, the table has that awkward break near the end instead of a clean break right down the middle. Now imagine a chair with DMM that dents depending on how hard someone is hit with it, or can be unfolded and have people slammed or dropped on it and it bends accordingly. All the big death match fans could see glass break and shatter depending on how and who is being put through it. Foreign objects would take on a life of their own.
2) Euphoria This is a technology for animating 3D characters on-the-fly "based on a full simulation of the 3D character, including body, muscles and motor nervous system". Instead of using canned animations, the characters' actions and reactions are synthesized in real-time; which means that they are different every time even when replaying the same scene. While traditional physics engines used so-called ragdolls for animations generated on the fly, Euphoria employs a more complex method to animate the entirety of physically-bound objects within the game environment. In this forum, there was a discussion on the importance of "selling" animations and how they should appropriately represent the move the player just received. The subject of "animations" in general is always a hot topic on this forum. Imagine a wrestling game with Euphoria. Instead of selling animations, you and your oponent react to the the impact of the move based on how hard you're hitting the ground and what position you are in when you hit the ground. With this technology, if a player is taking a back bump (powerbomb, back drop, etc.) they can put their hands out and take the bump like a real person, and then bounce off the mat depending on how hard or from how high up they hit the mat. If you superplex a guy to the mat, he's going to bounce more then if he was body slammed, and he's going to react and take damage differently. On top of that, if you suplex somebody to the outside, they'll have less of a bounce. Wrestling games have needed rag doll phsyics for some time to show more vicous bumps and give some gravity to moves. Euphoria would take it to the next level by having wrestlers take the bumps as the would in real life, and still have a more controlled, dynamic "rad doll" reaction to the bump.
3) Analog stick controls By my count, EA's Fight Night was the first game to realize the analog sticks could be used for more then movement. And, by my count, EA's Skate was the first game to realize that, if done right, analog stick controls could revolutionize a genre. Wrestling games now are following the obsolete "Tony Hawk" scheme. Press a directional button and a face button and watch the animation. In Tony Hawk, you hold left on the d-pad and press square, and your player does a kickflip. In No Mercy, you grapple with a guy, press left and B, and your player does a powerbomb. You press a button combination, and at that point you lose control, and watch an animation play out. EA's Skate revolutionized this forumla. In Skate, to do a kicklip, you have to pull down on the right analog stick, then flick the stick up and to the right (this mirrors the way your foot would move on a skateboard to peform this trick). The actual kickflip is generated dynamicly. How low you crouched before flicking up determines the height. How long you hold the stick up and to the right after flicking determines how many rotations the board does. While doing this, you can move the left analog stick left or right so your player's body will rotate that way on screen. You control the move from before it begins all the way until you land. There's never a loss of control and the animation is generated dynamically. Now imagine this type of analog stick system integrated into a wrestling game. You grapple with your oppenent. You hit B and tuck his head between your legs. You decide to try a pile driver. You push up on the right analog stick and your player lifts your oponent up into the piledriver postion. If you flick down on the right analog stick, you'd do a simple piledriver. You decide to put a little extra flare on it. You push down on the left analog stick then flick up and your player jumps into the air. You flick the right analog stick down right before hitting the mat and becuase you timed the impact right, your opponent bounces slightly off the mat from your perfectly executed jumping piledriver. Had you pressed left on the left analog stick after jumping, it would've been a spinning jumping piledriver. Had you held the left trigger button after lifting your opponent into the air, you would've done a cradle piledriver. Had you done a half cirlce up on the right analog stick instead of just pressing up, you would've lifted your opponent into the powerbomb position instead of the pile driver position. You have COMPLETE control of the move you're performing from before it's even performed, all the way through till the impact.
4) A truly Dynamic engine If these three technologies were combined into one wrestling game, you'd have a truly dynamic engine. One where the moves, the reactions, and the matter the moves were performed on were all dynamic. Skate had two out of these three engines (a rag-doll engine and analog controls) and it revolutionized the skating genre. In the old system of skating games, you hit a button and watched your player grind on a rail and it was the same everytime. In the revolutionized system, you had to approach the rail at the right angle, ollie the right height, and land on the rail... and no two attempts are ever the same. This sort of technology would revolutionize wrestling games in the same way. In the current engines, you set up a table, hit a button, and watching your player do a move through that table and it's the same animation and result every time you do it. In a revolutionized engine, you set up the table, and decide which move you want to do on-the-fly, the table reacts differently depending where you land on it, how heavy the wrestlers are, and how hard the impact is, and the players react differntly based on those same things... and no two attempts are ever the same. This is the type of environment that games are moving to: being completely dynamic so even if you try to do the same thing over and over no experience is completely the same. It allows for maximum creativity and at the same time maximum realism. It allows for people to create spots. And really, isn't that the essence of wrestling games? Trying to create a cool spot? With a truly dynamic engine, this would be possible on the highest level.
Now, I am in NO WAY suggesting that PWX can attain any of this in their first or even second full release. This is something I don't see as a realistic possibility for even WWE or TNA for a couple of years. What I'm suggesting... hell, what I'm hoping... is that PWX gets enough momentum from it's first release to do a second game. This second game hopefully is a legit competitor to WWE and TNA's games and makes them enough money to incorporate these technologies into their third game, and it's that game that revolutionizes the wrestling game genre. WWE and TNA have the finances to pull this off this year if they wanted, but they've proven time and time again that they don't really know what the fans want out of a game, let alone what the fans don't even know they want yet out out of a game. I think if, once they got the funding, PWX went in this direction, they would take the wrestling gaming world by storm. Phew... I'm spent.
That would require serious engine build (re-build in this case), time and money which PWX lacks currently. If there is hopefully a PWX 2 - it should fully integrate every single feature in the game. But for now - we just want a good PC wrestling game which isn't made for money, but for play time...
"Now, I am in NO WAY suggesting that PWX can attain any of this in their first or even second full release."
"I think if, once they got the funding, PWX went in this direction, they would take the wrestling gaming world by storm."
Yeah, I know Dave and crew aren't thinking this far down the road cause they're still focusing on getting uprising out, but hopefully he sees an idea or two to start building towards WAAAAYYYY down the line.
I also think they will own the wrestling gaming with this. If their competition is THQ - they can't lose. Really - sane fans know how much this game just isn't that good...
Like the first bit, not sure on the second (still don't think ragdoll physics can apply to a body that isn't actually ragdolling, its moving to be in place for the next move), and the analog thing I see as a gimmick. Yes, it works perfectly for Skate, where the movement of two sticks is the movement of board and body. But as much as your simple example sounds good, how do I do a Stunner, or a Rock Bottom, or any other move that isn't done from a simple 'head between legs' or 'suplex setup' position (do i make a figure 4 to do a figure 4?)? More and more complicated directional pushes which leaves us with...
It seems to me like the setup position could dictate what moves are available. It wouldn't have to start as complicated as the piledriver example, but using the right analog stick and breaking the animations up would open up the way the game is played so that there is less "wait and watch the animation run" during a game.