WreSpi3 Developer's Journal

[Adam Ryland]

July 4th: Warm Up Period

 

Another of the optional features that can be applied to matches to improve the experience is Warm Up Periods. These can be set between 1 and 5 minutes and occur right at the start of a match. If the warm up period is in effect, all moves during that time are capped so that their maximum chance of hitting is 800 out of 1000, not 990 out of 1000 as it is normally.

 

The effect of this is that it makes it very difficult for one wrestler to dominate the first few minutes and build up a lot of momentum simply by repeatedly going for extremely easy-to-hit moves like headlocks, punches and arm wringers. With the cap down to 800, it means that although you can string together lots of low level moves, the probability is that the opponent will get a chance to fight back within four or five attacks. This therefore leads to a more realistic and balanced opening, with less chance of exploits.

[Adam Ryland]

July 5th: Progress

 

With more graphics being added, the game is starting to look the part now; it's a very clean, light interface that I think will be quite popular.

 

In terms of coding, the game is starting to approach a finished state. Currently I'm starting on adding all the Search filters into the game; this is always one of the latter tasks, and unfortunately is also one of the most boring (but necessary) pieces of coding in any project, so the next week is likely to be quite tedious!

[Adam Ryland]

July 8th: Interviews

 

Interviews happen before some key matches during career mode, and are broken down into two parts.

 

In the first stage, the user simply has to pick a style of interview to deliver, ranging from Intimidation and Psyche Up to Rage and Underdog; the selection depends on the character's disposition. Each type of interview has its own potential pros and cons depending on whether the user succeeds or not - these can be starting momentum shifts, temporary attributes or special bonus conditions.

 

The second stage is the interview itself, which is essentially a mini-match; the user has a selection of approaches (including things like Catchphrase, Threaten and Make Joke - the selection depends on the style of interview chosen) each of which has a Chance Of Success, a value for how much it will raise or lower the user's progress bar, and the number of seconds it takes to deliver. The user simply has to fill his progress bar before the time runs out to succeed, otherwise the opponent(s) win.

 

Once the interview is over, the appropriate pros and cons are applied and the match begins.

 

Not all companies use interview segments.

[Adam Ryland]

July 9th: Run Ins

 

Run Ins can happen during career mode storylines; as discussed earlier, one of the advantages of scripted storylines is that it means that the wrestler(s) running in can be chosen in context, so they should always make sense.

 

Unlike WreSpi2, when run ins happen the interferer will actually examine his move set and try and use an appropriate move on his target where possible; i.e. in a real world mod, if you had Kane run in he would likely use the Choke Slam as his weapon of choice. Wrestlers will only go for the generic chair attack if no appropriate move was found.

 

A lot of work has also been put in to making sure the run ins happen at appropriate times; where possible, the wrestler running in will hold off until there's a referee bump or for a similar crucial time rather than just popping up randomly.

 

Run ins are one of the editable options for companies, and so can be turned off if required.

[Adam Ryland]

July 10th: Match Ratings

 

The way match ratings are calculated has been altered for WreSpi3.

 

In previous games, a significant weight was placed on the "wow factor" and stiffness of moves. These are now removed entirely, and the rating is instead calculated by looking at how dramatic the match was - concentrating on things like near falls, how competitive the match was, etc.

 

The advantage of this is that it makes things both more realistic and more challenging. A spot monkey with a million impressive flips on every move is not going to automatically get high ratings just because of his arsenal, while on the flip side two "old school" workers can quite happily produce an engrossing and well-rated match just using relatively simple moves if the match is full of drama and back-and-forth action.

 

This also means that even if the user is playing as a wrestler with a pretty limited move set, that does not preclude him from achieving high ratings.

[Adam Ryland]

July 11th: The Legend

 

During career mode you will have access to The Legend section; this is similar to a 'trophies' screen, in that it gives various criteria that you need to accomplish to be considered a legend. Although primarily cosmetic, it does add an extra accomplishment for the player to chase.

 

It should be noted that this is from the point that the player takes over; i.e. if you were playing a real world mod and played as Ric Flair, you don't start with all his world title reigns and memorable matches counting toward this - it's a measure of your performance as a player.

 

There are eight criteria:

 

- To have 3 'legendary' main event title runs in a large company

- To produce 25 MOTYC matches while working for large companies

- To win Wrestler Of The Year 3 times

- To succeed in 100 storylines in a large company

- To succeed in 5 special 'iconic' storylines

- To produce 100 five-star rated matches while working large companies

- To win 10 main event level titles while in a large company

- To win 500 matches in total while working for large companies

 

Completing all eight criteria qualifies you as an official Legend.

[Adam Ryland]

July 12th: Progress

 

The game still remains on course for a release later this year. Graphics are now starting to become more prevalent, and the process of continuing to add storylines continues too.

 

The filters are now starting to be added in (and as a change to previous games, this year filters will remain active until you change them - i.e. once you've set up a filter on a screen, it remains using those choices until you decide to reset or alter them, regardless of how much time has passed or what other screens you've visited) which is always a sign that we're in the home stretch.

 

So far we're using a converted TEW2013 database that has had a converted WreSpi2 move set imported across - hopefully the database will be finalised and a proper WreSpi3 database started by the end of August. One of the tasks will be adding in all the moves that have been popularised since WreSpi2 came out, such as The Punt and Code Breaker, and a lot of MMA-related moves.

[Adam Ryland]

July 15th: Warrior Spirit

 

Another new concept in the game is Warrior Spirit; this can be enabled or disabled on a company-by-company basis.

 

Wrestlers with over 700 in their Overall Skill will automatically get one or more Warrior Spirit points at the start of the match. These are essentially "get out of jail free cards"; whenever the wrestler is about to lose (whether by pinfall, submission, count out, etc) he will automatically try his Warrior Spirit points; each one gives a 50% chance of a dramatic last-second escape. The wrestler will continue to try and use them until one works or he runs out.

 

These points serve two main purposes; firstly they give high level wrestlers a little edge over their lesser colleagues, and secondly they add realistic drama to matches; especially when it comes to two superstars battling it out, there can often be two, three or even more moments where there are dramatic "false finishes" toward the end of the match.

 

More Warrior Spirit points can be earned via interviews or via attributes.

[Adam Ryland]

July 16th: Tag Team Points

 

A close cousin of Warrior Spirit, Tag Team points are automatically awarded to teams with high experience at the start of each match.

 

These follow the same concept as Warrior Spirit - they are automatically activated to try and escape certain finishes - but with some slight differences; the chance of success alters depending on how good the partner in question is at making saves, points are only lost after a successful use, and only one point can be activated per pinfall \ submission \ etc.

 

As with Warrior Spirit, this helps to make matches more realistic and to reward high-level teams.

[Adam Ryland]

July 17th: Alter Egos

 

The Alter Egos feature from the TEW series will also be in the Wrestling Spirit series as of WreSpi3.

 

For those not familiar with this, it allows the database maker to allocate alternate identities that wrestlers can take on when they sign for a new company. The feature is a direct port and so works in an identical way to TEW.

[Adam Ryland]

July 18th: Agers

 

As with yesterday's entry, Agers are a feature from TEW that is being ported over to WreSpi3.

 

Agers are very simply a link to a wrestler with an age and a new picture; when the wrestler reaches that age, his picture is updated. This allows aging to be simulated.

[Adam Ryland]

July 19th: Progress

 

With the development process starting to head into the final phase, most of this week has been about finalising aspects of the game; in particular, the long-winded but useful process of putting all the "?" buttons in the game (like TEW2013, WreSpi3's primary source of help will be on-screen help buttons given that it seemed an almost universally popular idea last time around), plus finishing up more graphics for the match engine.

 

I've also been doing 3 or 4 random matches each day, just to playtest the match engine and tweak it as best I can. I'm extremely pleased with how it's working at present; even without any attributes yet active and everyone using auto-generated move sets, the little features that have been added already put the game at a huge step up from WreSpi2. In particular the "Calculation" button that explains exactly what happened each turn in terms of rolls, bonuses and penalties is a really interesting new part, and hopefully will stop so many people going on about the game "cheating" every time they lose

 

Please note that there will be no journal entries next week as I'm on holiday. We will restart on the 29th.

[Adam Ryland]

July 29th: Blocking

 

Using the Block counter has been given a mild makeover in WreSpi3 to give it a more useful and tactical role within the game.

 

As before, Block is the most powerful counter in terms of how much it reduces the chance of the opponent succeeding, but has the downside that it requires two successive successful blocks to gain control. The alterations are that it now has an even more powerful reduction than in previous games, and also has an added bonus; after one successful block, the next counter the wrestler uses (even if it isn't Block) will automatically get a 10% bonus to simulate the fact that he's already disrupted the opponent significantly.

 

These changes make Block a more attractive option overall, especially as the opponent can no longer use a "loophole" approach by using a non-Blockable move for the second attempt, as the 10% bonus will still be in play.

[Adam Ryland]

July 30th: New Move Types

 

There are two new move types that have been added to WreSpi3 (all the old ones are still in the game too):

 

Pop-Up Top Rope Impact: This is for moves where the attacker is in the ring and the opponent is on the top rope, where the attacker "runs up" the turnbuckles to deliver a move such as a an arm drag or a rana.

 

Pop-Up Top Rope Pinfall: This is the same as above, except that it's for moves that end directly into a pinfall, such as a belly to belly suplex.

[Adam Ryland]

July 31st: New Match Types

 

WreSpi2 had 19 in-built matches. WreSpi3 substantially increases that number, featuring 74 unique match types.

 

Amongst the gimmick match types are Iron Man, First Blood, Last Man Standing, Submission and a special European match that simulates the World Of Sport Era (with rounds and two falls to a finish). There is also a special Lucha version of the six man match, in which defeating the captain of the team ends the match immediately.

 

The number of competitors has also increased, with a full compliment of 5 vs 5 matches available, raised from 4 vs 4 in previous games.

 

There are also some special types that are only available in Exhibition mode or via unique storylines; these include Winner Stays On bouts and Generation X bouts (one wrestler takes on a sequence of opponents in order in an elimination bout).

[Adam Ryland]

August 1st: Realistic Submissions

 

Another change to aid realism is the addition of more realistic submissions. The way this works is that by targeting a specific area of the body you can weaken it; this both makes it progressively easier to apply submissions to that location, and also makes the likelihood of a tap out increase too. This allows better simulation of the classic "pick a body part and work on it" strategy.

 

There is also a related reason for targeting a body part, in that this will allow you to significantly decrease the opponent's stats. For example, working the arms will not only set you up for more effective armbars, arm locks, etc, but will also - over time - wear down the opponent's strength and therefore his ability to utilise power moves, strength-based blocks, etc. This means that a clever submission artist or technician can, in a single strategy, both maximise his own advantages while simultaneously exploiting or creating his opponent's weaknesses.

[Adam Ryland]

August 2nd: Progress

 

Storylines have been the main focus this week. Primarily I've been working on simply adding to the in-built collection so that there's lots of choice, but I've also been adding in extra features to help keep them interesting - an example is that some storylines now have all the matches happen back-to-back, meaning the user doesn't get any recovery time between bouts, making for a much harder challenge. There's also a lot of new size-exclusive and style-exclusive storylines (i.e. there's a Giant Killer storyline that is only available if your character is a Lightweight or below).

 

As most of the new features have now been announced and the game is almost is its final testing stage, from next week on the journal will switch to a more organic style; rather than talking about a specific feature each day, I'll instead be doing an ongoing progress report \ daily ramble, where I just talk about what's currently going on.

[Adam Ryland]

August 5th

 

A lot of focus is now on adding in the interface, so that has taken up most of the time recently, but a new set of storylines also found their way into the game over the weekend; we're now closing in on the 100 mark in total.

 

This week is also the final one before the database becomes finalised; that's an important landmark as once that happens, I can start working on upgrading our current data - a converted TEW2013 database with WreSpi2 moves - into a proper WreSpi3 one.

 

New attributes continue to be added too; there's no a range of long and short term injuries, such as bum knee, which can be acquired during career mode to simulate damage - these have, in turn, opened up the possibility of "bounty" or "softening up" stages to storylines where opponents can look to give you injuries to make your matches against their "bosses" tougher.

[Adam Ryland]

August 7th

 

I'm mostly working on graphics and playtesting at the moment, so there's not much to report. I have, however, added a minor new thing, which is illegal submissions. The idea behind these is that the moves are technically against the rules and so the referee will break them if you apply them, but, are perfectly valid in matches where there's no such rules. The reason this addition has been made is that it allows moves like Tajiri's Tarantula, ring post figure four, or dragon sleeper while the opponent is trapped in the ropes to be accurately simulated.

[Adam Ryland]

August 15th

 

There's not much to report at the moment, but I wanted to keep people updated on progress. Currently work on the game itself is paused, with all the focus now on creating the first draft of the final database; this is a lengthy and time consuming process as there are a lot of items (notably the new Culture and Category settings for moves and wrestlers) that could not be automatically created (as there is no data in previous games to base the values on) and so have to be done by hand.

 

There is also the large task of taking all the named finishers that were added in TEW2013 and adding them into WreSpi3 - this is particularly time consuming as in most cases this also involves figuring out an appropriate move to go with the name of the finisher and the wrestler in question, so it's a lot more than mechanically having to fill in stats.

 

I estimate that this process will probably take at least until the end of next week, so journal entries will probably be spare until then.

[Adam Ryland]

August 24th

 

Just a quick update today.

 

I'm coming to the end of updating the database of moves; as well as adding a ton of new attacks that have become popular since WreSpi2 was released, I've also taken a lot of time to better standardise the naming and stats of moves so it should result in a smoother gameplay experience.

 

The next step will be doing the wrestlers and companies themselves, which thankfully is a much easier task. Once that's out of the way, hopefully by early September, we'll be finishing off the graphics and the game will start final testing.

[Adam Ryland]

September 7th

 

Well, the end is finally in sight!

 

It's taken a ridiculous amount of time and effort, but the database is almost in a completed state now; each and every character, move, etc, has been updated to utilise the new stats and features, so it should make for a pretty cool game world to experience.

 

In terms of the game itself, not only are almost all the features done, we now have quite a large percentage finished in terms of graphics too.

 

By my estimate, there's still about six or seven weeks' work to cover - finishing off features, increasing the number of storylines, etc - before we get into final testing, so hopefully we'll be looking at a release in either late November or early December.

[Adam Ryland]

October 2nd

 

The database work took a lot longer than expected but is finally just about finished, so proper testing on the game is commencing. The inclusion of Attributes has really opened up a whole new level of strategy that I'm really pleased with, and the addition of transparency (i.e so that the player can see all 'rolls' and stats) definitely helps in a number of ways.

 

In terms of career mode, we've yet to really test it, but I've had a few quick play-throughs and am very pleased with how it's working. It's definitely an out-of-the-box approach and I suspect it'll be a feature that people either love or hate due to how idiosyncratic it is, but I think it's vastly better than previous versions and has many advantages if the player is willing to take the time to understand the system.

 

I imagine we'll be announcing a release date late this month. As usual, we'll be doing a demo the week before the retail release (I don't know what the restrictions will be as of yet), and probably releasing the editor before that so that mod makers can make a start on things.

[Adam Ryland]

October 25th

 

Almost done

 

The game is almost entirely finished now, we're just polishing up some of the trickier areas and adding in more and more storylines. A couple of the final big tasks took a lot longer than I'd expected, but the release data and accompanying information should be being announced next week.