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| [ goodies | dev diary | chapter ten ] |
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| #10 |
Tweak-Tastic March! |
A warm welcome to dev diary 10, where we'll be giving a brief round up of the project as a whole,
which is really beginning to take shape now. Many core aspects of the game are now well advanced and
there are excellent facilities to adjust and balance many aspects of the game. There's still plenty
of work to do, but it's moving at a great pace.
Pretty much all of the (very many!) game variables for cameras, balancing, movement, strengths,
weapons and much more have now been opened up to the designers for tweaking. This can be done pretty
much in real-time and without any programmer intervention, meaning that adjustments can be made and
tested very quickly indeed. The designers often find themselves asking for more input variables and
things to support their script work for the missions, but generally it's quite amazing what we can
do now.
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Controling - Literally
a leap forward |
For some time we've been concerned at the amount of jumping around which was involved, which made
things a bit of a pain. This however, is a thing of the past now, since routines have been added to
make our Worms auto-hop small jumps whilst keeping movement fluid.
There was some concern beforehand if it would work and feel good, but the consensus here appears
very positive. This, in addition with changes to the camera system to allow more flexible viewing of
the land (without the need to enter a 1st person perspective) and quicker Worm movement over the
environment has resulted in a much more lively, fluid feel.
In addition to this, the jump controls have been optimized and moved onto a single control button to
perform everything, rather than a couple of buttons as before. Most of this is to rationalize the
interface for console games and open up the movement possibilities. The jumps also feature a slight
'after-touch' steering effect, which whilst initially there was some resistance to, has generally
been very warmly received as the game felt a bit too rigid beforehand.
The PC controls have also started to go in. They took some time since we develop the game with
console (Dual-Shock2's) controllers so that the game interface is made as simple and intuitive as
possible. The most uplifting aspect of this was the mouse-look feature in 3rd person and it feels
great. We're adding more controls now and hope to refine these over the coming months.
All these tweaks and additions have resulted into a far looser, fluid feel to the game which really
freshens it up and everyone was very much buoyed by the builds when all this stuff came together.
It's not perfect yet, but we're pleased with the way things are progressing. One of the reasons for
having a forum focus test (see later) is to see how Worms fans feel about the things we've done -
we're sure they'll love it too, but it will be nice to get 'outside' feedback.
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| forum focus group |
We decided a while back to invite a number of (lucky?) forum members into the building for a day to
feedback on where we're at. This will be happening in April and is part of our ongoing assessment of
the game as we prepare for its first public appearance at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles in May. By the
time this diary goes live, we will already ahve selected the group, but watch this website for a
special feature on the day sometime in April. We hope to get feedback specifically on the camera and
controls, as well as the feel of the game and hear people's views on how well they believe the game
has translated from its 2D origins.
[ forum focus Testing discussion ]
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team expansion as
pressure mounts |
In order to ensure that we meet our deadlines in a couple of key areas, we've further expanded the
team in areas relating to A.I. and networking, easing the load on the sometimes beleaguered lead
programmer (who generally helps out all over the place). The team is well over 30 people now, not
including our QA staff!
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| spit... |
One thing that the guys have been going to town on recently are the special effects and particles,
which make a dramatic difference to the environment and look really cool! Smoke, fire, splashes,
clouds, fireworks, dust, steam, flies, bats and more besides... Watch out for some pretty clever
effects all told - and we've maybe got a few tricks up our sleeves regarding the space
levels...
The random level generator tool has been coming on nicely and is currently being integrated with the
menu system (which is also coming on really well). What's cool about the generator is the levels it
creates seem much more meaningful and playable than a lot of the 2D ones (it's done in a very
different way). Read more about this in our ABOUT | TECHNOLOGY section!
[ spotlight on random terrains ]
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| ...and polish |
A number of FMV tests have been completed for the mission reward system and they look great! However
we will not be showing much, if any of it on this site, leaving it as a nice surprise when you play
the game. Most of the sequences are short and raise a smile or two - even better is that some of the
sequences are slightly different at the end, so it always pays to watch them!
The team is also getting ready to start considering a build and video for the up & coming E3 in May,
which isn't too far away now. This will be the first public airing of the title and we look forward
to hearing what people have to say!
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| [ goodies | dev diary ] |
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| Development Diaries |
We plan diaries right up until the end of the project and they will
appear every week or two, so keep popping back for updates. The great
thing about the diary is that so much just isn't written yet!
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| overview |
The graphics and images shown in the diaries so far don't come anywhere
close to where we are currently in terms of visual style.
The first few chapters merely serve to bring us 'up to date' to how we got
where we are. It's envisaged that we will catch up with current progress
by Christmas and the diaries will then mirror recent developments rather
than things from the distant past.
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.avi(divx) animations
'Idle' Worm
'Smug' Worm
Sheep Jump test
right/option-click and
'save target as'
Decompress using
Winzip/Stuffit or similar.
View using DivX
Player/Codec or similar.
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