Welcome to Wrestling Gamers United Newsletter #457
1) 1000 Tiny Cuts 2) Tight Fit 3) But but but
1) 1000 Tiny Cuts ********** My poor baby. I want this game to be perfect so bad. But I'm told by my lead programmer that I may have to loosen my grip on certain things if I want to ship this game any time soon. So little animations that are maybe off by one degree for only a frame may find their way into Uprising in some cases when the fix isn't practical. I guess when you think about it we're still totally in line with our "gameplay over graphics" mantra. I just want the game to look as pretty as possible, y'know? It may not matter to most wrestling gamers but I'd hate to lose even one potential customer because a double arm DDT may be off by one frame. GAH!!! I want this to be perfect so bad! We've finally got everything working properly and to fix every one of these tiny little visual things would require a few more months and a total art content overhaul. We've done as well as we can with the art we have. It's a miracle really. But enough of that. It's not "bad" art per se it's just that the animators weren't told exactly where to place some animations and it meant we had to fix a lot of position stuff in the game code. Not the best solution but it's a solution that works. Pretty much. We have someone with experience fixing these types of things but with almost a thousand of them to be done we'll wait until after Uprising to tackle it.
2) Tight Fit ********* How many other game developers tell you everything that's WRONG with their game as it leads up to release? Here's another graphics issue with a a fix that we don't want to address until after Uprising because, again, it doesn't affect gameplay: damn ring apron is too narrow. So some of the apron grapple moves to the outside (powerbomb to floor, tiger driver to floor, etc.) show the wrestlers' feet standing in mid air off the edge of the apron. It's never both feet at a time but it still looks goofy at times. We could give it a simple fix by making the ring apron wider but then we'd have to redo all of the climbing in/out of the ring animations. Guess who can't afford an animator right now? Poop. But, again, it doesn't affect gameplay as it is.
3) But but but *********** Hey it's not all pessimistic nitpicking. Our frame rates are still rock solid, the camera is smooth like butter, submissions work better than they ever did before, there were no glitches or bugs uncovered this week that we didn't immediately have an answer and a fix for. It's come along way in recent months and I'm a happy guy!
In the meantime and in between time, that's it, another edition of Wrestling Gamers United. Thank you for your support, Dave Wishnowski
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