| [ goodies | dev diary | chapter eight ] |
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| #8 |
Shaping up |
It was a bit inevitable really, given that everything seemed to be going so well (we are too experienced
to know that the development cycle never usually runs so smooth!) During early February we faced a fairly
testing period and the details of this will be covered in a later diary since we are unable to comment
about things at the moment.
Fortunately the issues weren't with the Worms 3D project itself and work on the game has continued apace.
Obviously this doesn't give too much away so eyes peeled for announcements in future diaries and on the
[ Forum ]
The game has really been shaping up the last few weeks and is starting to look the business as more
weapons, features, incidentals and tweaks are done. We're also fast approaching the stage where some
members of the team become 'free' of their scheduled work so that they can spend time implementing
extras and making good/fixing stuff for the better. This period of development tends to see the game
leap forward in overall quality as the small touches get done - this is vital if the game is going to
set the standards we're aiming for.
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Tweaking
(movement/jumps) |
We've been talking recently that the game feels a little too 'rigid' in that there's not enough flexibility
in the worm's movement and it perhaps needs to be a little more direct. As a consequence the design team
(Kel mainly) has been tweaking the movements and how the jumps work.
In Worms 3D, the backward flip has also been changed to a forward flip since this seems to make more sense,
but there's still time for this to change as we continue to play around with the mechanics.
We're going to add some auto-hopping for some of the little jumps, or at least look to make moving around
a little more intuitive as well as potentially put a little give into jumps so that you can move the worm
whilst it's in the air, we'll see how that goes.
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| Weapon add-ins |
The weapons continue to fly in, with Fire-jump, Mad Cow and Old Woman going in. The latter two being fairly
spectacular as they are huge when the Worm pulls them out. Andy (Luther) has been busy adding incidental
animations when the Worm isn't doing anything with the weapon and some of these look really great - it's
something to watch for in the final game. Fire weapons aren't too far away and these will be married with
the new particle system soon enough. Some of the earlier weapons have been improved in detail too, these
will be noticeable in later shots.
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Press/Media
Feedback |
We've been lucky to have some tremendously positive feedback since the initial batch of shots were released
and it appears that most people have been taken aback at how the game looks considering how they thought
Worms 3D might look! The release of the mission pictures also surprised a few people since they had
got pretty used to the idea of just Islands!!
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| Rope re-design |
One of the major areas of consideration and re-design has been the rope, which we know is close to many people's
hearts. It's very evident that it simply can't work the way it did in 2D, for a lot of reasons, most of which is
to do with the camera and what you need to do. We are currently wrapping up on a 2nd generation design which we
believe will allow intuitive control in 3D and also be skilful to perform. The new system will feel different but
that's absolutely inevitable, but there are other ways to get around now, including the fabulous Jet Pac.
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| FMV |
We're also planning a series of small movies for the game which we will now produce internally (these were going
to be out of house) and you'll have to wait and play the game to see those, but they should be a lot of fun. We hope
to keep them short and sharp, with traditional Worms humour - there will be plenty of them too, so they shouldn't
repeat too often. We also plan a special gallery where you can view unlocked sequences.
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| Wormsong |
Bjorn has been busy producing a 5.1 digital surround edition of the Wormsong 03 remix (working title) and we've been
busy re-writing the lyrics. There are a [ number of Wormsong threads ] in the Worms 3D section of the forum, so why not have
a look and have your say!
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