Total Extreme Wrestling 07: Developer's Journal

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 11th[/B] This is only a minor update, as I had other business to attend to yesterday. The modification made was in regard to [I]Road Agents[/I]. I felt that too many people were getting confused by the two sets of road agents (the five that you picked in the Staff section who you could talk to vs. the wrestlers you assigned the Road Agent push too). To fix that, the five "staff" road agents have been removed entirely, and instead you will automatically be talking to whoever has the Road Agent push when you enter the Talk To section.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 12th[/B] Coding work has temporarily stopped on the game, so there are no new features to announce today. The reason for the stoppage is that the game is rapidly approaching its final stages, and so testing is due to begin very soon. This means that the data files (which are currently nothing more than a direct conversion from TEW05 and WreSpi2) need to be worked on to provide a stable base for testing upon. My estimate is that it'll take until Sunday for this task to be completed, so the journal will be a little quiet for a few days (i'll still be updating on Friday and Monday, but it'll likely be with small posts). I can confirm that some initial testing was done yesterday, using the initial converted data, just to see how stable the game was. The positive news is that there wasn't a single error, everything appears to be running very well.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 12th[/B] Coding work has temporarily stopped on the game, so there are no new features to announce today. The reason for the stoppage is that the game is rapidly approaching its final stages, and so testing is due to begin very soon. This means that the data files (which are currently nothing more than a direct conversion from TEW05 and WreSpi2) need to be worked on to provide a stable base for testing upon. My estimate is that it'll take until Sunday for this task to be completed, so the journal will be a little quiet for a few days (i'll still be updating on Friday and Monday, but it'll likely be with small posts). I can confirm that some initial testing was done yesterday, using the initial converted data, just to see how stable the game was. The positive news is that there wasn't a single error, everything appears to be running very well.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 13th[/B] The data work mentioned in yesterday's journal entry is continuing, and is going pretty well. The primary work that went on yesterday was with the Worker and New Worker files. Of the 100+ New Workers that have pictures and are ready to be added, about 15 have been added so far - these 15 are primarily the children and relatives of existing characters in the CornellVerse. While making these additions I was using the Quick Worker Creation tool (mentioned in an earlier journal update), and decided that it wasn't working as well as it could be, so I spent a few hours upgrading it. It now provides a greater depth of options, and has been fine-tuned to give better results. With the Worker file, there were three main areas of change. The first was mainly admin work - a lot of the pictures that come with the game still have the same file name as in TEW2004, and so are quite out of date (for example, you would not be able to find DJ Reason's picture unless you knew that he was originally called Howard Martinez, as that's what his picture is called). These have now been updated. The second area of change was the "first wave" of data changes; the retirements of a few of the older wrestlers, biography changes for some wrestlers who have gained new pictures or gimmicks, corrections to spelling mistakes that were already existing, etc. This is basically the easy stuff that needs doing before the real changes begin. The third wave was the addition of some of the new workers who will be being added. These include people like Japanese legend Master Kitozon, who also has a column about him that will be on the CornellVerse web site when the game is launched. There are around 50 new wrestlers to be added, of which about half are "historical characters", about 15 have been added so far. I can confirm that the CornellVerse in TEW07 will be set in January 2007, just over six months after the events of WreSpi2. Technically it should be December 2006 for consistency, but I wasn't a big fan of only having one month of data before the End Of Year Awards, so I moved it forward a further month. The Worker and New Worker files will hopefully be finished over the weekend, together with the big changes to the Promotions (setting touring schedules and defining their Product values).

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 13th[/B] The data work mentioned in yesterday's journal entry is continuing, and is going pretty well. The primary work that went on yesterday was with the Worker and New Worker files. Of the 100+ New Workers that have pictures and are ready to be added, about 15 have been added so far - these 15 are primarily the children and relatives of existing characters in the CornellVerse. While making these additions I was using the Quick Worker Creation tool (mentioned in an earlier journal update), and decided that it wasn't working as well as it could be, so I spent a few hours upgrading it. It now provides a greater depth of options, and has been fine-tuned to give better results. With the Worker file, there were three main areas of change. The first was mainly admin work - a lot of the pictures that come with the game still have the same file name as in TEW2004, and so are quite out of date (for example, you would not be able to find DJ Reason's picture unless you knew that he was originally called Howard Martinez, as that's what his picture is called). These have now been updated. The second area of change was the "first wave" of data changes; the retirements of a few of the older wrestlers, biography changes for some wrestlers who have gained new pictures or gimmicks, corrections to spelling mistakes that were already existing, etc. This is basically the easy stuff that needs doing before the real changes begin. The third wave was the addition of some of the new workers who will be being added. These include people like Japanese legend Master Kitozon, who also has a column about him that will be on the CornellVerse web site when the game is launched. There are around 50 new wrestlers to be added, of which about half are "historical characters", about 15 have been added so far. I can confirm that the CornellVerse in TEW07 will be set in January 2007, just over six months after the events of WreSpi2. Technically it should be December 2006 for consistency, but I wasn't a big fan of only having one month of data before the End Of Year Awards, so I moved it forward a further month. The Worker and New Worker files will hopefully be finished over the weekend, together with the big changes to the Promotions (setting touring schedules and defining their Product values).

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 16th[/B] The data work has continued at a rapid pace. A lot of new wrestlers have been added, and the process of updating existing wrestlers also began (modifying their stats to show progress, rewriting their biographies to take into account the new amount of space, etc). All the promotions have had their Product section completed, which was needed for testing purposes. Perhaps the biggest amount of work came in the pre-title histories; about half of the major titles have now had their data added to the game, and I am very pleased with the results; it does give a definite new dimension to the game when you head to Sam Strong's profile on the first day, and rather than seeing an empty title history you get a full list of everything he achieved in his career. As the updating is done via the game's editor, it means that this section is already technically under testing, by me. This has resulted in several modifications for ease of use. For example, originally in the Title Pre History section you had to type in the holder's name that would show in the game, and also select the worker it was relating to from a list. This has been improved by adding an Auto Name button that automatically fills in the name to be the same as the wrestler you picked from the list. It's a small touch, but when you are adding 500+ title histories, it saves a lot of work. There has also been a few minor changes to the match code, as using the new data I ran a DAVE show simply to get an initial look at how everything is working. Everything looked good, with the only changes being small modifications, such as to make the "vocal crowd" feature a little more refined. Yesterday I also got my first look at a draft of the new TEW07 interface, and it is very close to being ready. This is good news as it means it will soon be ready to add to the game, which means we are getting closer to being able to release some screen shots.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 16th[/B] The data work has continued at a rapid pace. A lot of new wrestlers have been added, and the process of updating existing wrestlers also began (modifying their stats to show progress, rewriting their biographies to take into account the new amount of space, etc). All the promotions have had their Product section completed, which was needed for testing purposes. Perhaps the biggest amount of work came in the pre-title histories; about half of the major titles have now had their data added to the game, and I am very pleased with the results; it does give a definite new dimension to the game when you head to Sam Strong's profile on the first day, and rather than seeing an empty title history you get a full list of everything he achieved in his career. As the updating is done via the game's editor, it means that this section is already technically under testing, by me. This has resulted in several modifications for ease of use. For example, originally in the Title Pre History section you had to type in the holder's name that would show in the game, and also select the worker it was relating to from a list. This has been improved by adding an Auto Name button that automatically fills in the name to be the same as the wrestler you picked from the list. It's a small touch, but when you are adding 500+ title histories, it saves a lot of work. There has also been a few minor changes to the match code, as using the new data I ran a DAVE show simply to get an initial look at how everything is working. Everything looked good, with the only changes being small modifications, such as to make the "vocal crowd" feature a little more refined. Yesterday I also got my first look at a draft of the new TEW07 interface, and it is very close to being ready. This is good news as it means it will soon be ready to add to the game, which means we are getting closer to being able to release some screen shots.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 17th[/B] Very small update today, as I was away from home for most of yesterday. Work has continued on the database with a lot of new biographies and title history entries being added. The title histories should be fully finished by the end of the week. The data is almost ready for testing now, and so work will re-start on coding over the next few days, with several minor issues that have come up during the data editing process being the next step.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 17th[/B] Very small update today, as I was away from home for most of yesterday. Work has continued on the database with a lot of new biographies and title history entries being added. The title histories should be fully finished by the end of the week. The data is almost ready for testing now, and so work will re-start on coding over the next few days, with several minor issues that have come up during the data editing process being the next step.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 18th[/B] An upgrade to an existing feature was made yesterday, with the [I]Extreme Eye[/I] being given new powers. To make it more useful, you can now double click on any of its notes and it will take you directly to the relevant profile. For example, if you double clicked on "Runaway Train has entered the final month of his contract and can now be negotiated with", you would get taken straight to his profile. This should help speed up the game from the player's point of view. Data work has also continued. With a huge amount of pictures available for future workers, there will be at least one new worker joining the database every month for the first five years of game time; with this in mind, I have changed the default setting in the game so that the Random Worker Generation is turned off. This is because it would make no sense to be having random faceless workers entering when you have a good supply of new people appearing anyway. For people who will be using databases that don't have Future Workers, you can always simply turn the Random Generator back on via the Options screen.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 18th[/B] An upgrade to an existing feature was made yesterday, with the [I]Extreme Eye[/I] being given new powers. To make it more useful, you can now double click on any of its notes and it will take you directly to the relevant profile. For example, if you double clicked on "Runaway Train has entered the final month of his contract and can now be negotiated with", you would get taken straight to his profile. This should help speed up the game from the player's point of view. Data work has also continued. With a huge amount of pictures available for future workers, there will be at least one new worker joining the database every month for the first five years of game time; with this in mind, I have changed the default setting in the game so that the Random Worker Generation is turned off. This is because it would make no sense to be having random faceless workers entering when you have a good supply of new people appearing anyway. For people who will be using databases that don't have Future Workers, you can always simply turn the Random Generator back on via the Options screen.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 19th[/B] The progress on the data work continues; the title histories are now entirely finished, and quite a few wrestlers have had their biographies re-written to take into consideration the new space available. The first set of graphics for the game arrived a few days ago, and have started to be added to the game. About half of the editor is now in "TEW07 style", and it's looking quite good - the new design leaves more screen space than in the previous game, and so some screens benefit a lot from not being so squashed. It won't be added to main part of the game yet though, as a quick test on the Other Workers screen showed that a light area of the screen was actually bright enough to make text difficult to read, so I am waiting for a fix to be made to it. The Extreme Eye has been upgraded to include new warnings, including when TV shows are in their final season.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 19th[/B] The progress on the data work continues; the title histories are now entirely finished, and quite a few wrestlers have had their biographies re-written to take into consideration the new space available. The first set of graphics for the game arrived a few days ago, and have started to be added to the game. About half of the editor is now in "TEW07 style", and it's looking quite good - the new design leaves more screen space than in the previous game, and so some screens benefit a lot from not being so squashed. It won't be added to main part of the game yet though, as a quick test on the Other Workers screen showed that a light area of the screen was actually bright enough to make text difficult to read, so I am waiting for a fix to be made to it. The Extreme Eye has been upgraded to include new warnings, including when TV shows are in their final season.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 20th[/B] Yesterday was spent continuing the process of upgrading the interface from 05 style to 07 style. The entire editor and about 30% of the rest of the game now have the new background. However, it is only the main play area that has been upgraded, as the new taskbar has not arrived yet. Until that arrives there will be no screen shots, as the top section does not currently match the bottom. One big change that has happened due to this is the combining of the Overview and User screens (those are the two sections in the main game to the far left of the taskbar, represented by a magnifying glass and a hand). Now together in one screen, it forms a sort of "control center", where you can get most of your day-to-day stuff done. In the menu bar you have access to your useful tools like e-mail, diary, pending decisions, etc, and in the main area you get the news ticker and your personal controls (user profile, user log, etc). There is also the addition of two handy features - Quick Worker Find and Quick Promotion Find. These are just dropdown menus; you select the item you want, and one click of a button and you go directly to the profile in question. This is basically purely for ease of use, as it means you don't always have to go to the Other Workers \ Other Promotions section whenever you want to look something up. Basically this new combined screen reduces the amount of clicking you need to do, as the screen contains so much functionality.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 20th[/B] Yesterday was spent continuing the process of upgrading the interface from 05 style to 07 style. The entire editor and about 30% of the rest of the game now have the new background. However, it is only the main play area that has been upgraded, as the new taskbar has not arrived yet. Until that arrives there will be no screen shots, as the top section does not currently match the bottom. One big change that has happened due to this is the combining of the Overview and User screens (those are the two sections in the main game to the far left of the taskbar, represented by a magnifying glass and a hand). Now together in one screen, it forms a sort of "control center", where you can get most of your day-to-day stuff done. In the menu bar you have access to your useful tools like e-mail, diary, pending decisions, etc, and in the main area you get the news ticker and your personal controls (user profile, user log, etc). There is also the addition of two handy features - Quick Worker Find and Quick Promotion Find. These are just dropdown menus; you select the item you want, and one click of a button and you go directly to the profile in question. This is basically purely for ease of use, as it means you don't always have to go to the Other Workers \ Other Promotions section whenever you want to look something up. Basically this new combined screen reduces the amount of clicking you need to do, as the screen contains so much functionality.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 23rd[/B] After the weekend's work, all but one of the screens have now been updated to the new style; I personally think it's a big improvement, everything looks neater and less cramped. Once the new taskbars have arrived we will be able to put together some screen shots. Other than the change mentioned in the last entry, where the Overview and User screens have been combined, the other big obvious change is in the Media screen. I decided that the information you get shown by default in 05 - last night's TV ratings and the annual PPV ratings - aren't actually that useful, at least not to the extent of being something you need to see all the time. Therefore, both of them are now accessible via a button in the Media section. Replacing them as the default information is the Internet section, as I think that will be a very popular and often-used feature (and therefore having it as the default information reduces the amount of clicks to get to it). Other than data work (which continues to go well), the other main piece of work done at the weekend was an extended simulation. This is something I like to do once a week during testing, and involves playing as Unemployed and letting the game world evolve over the course of a few months. This is useful as it means silly bugs get picked up quite easily, features that aren't quite working usually show themselves, and the AI can be fine tuned. Four months were completed this time around, and it was quite successful; the Internet section in particular is working very well, and a lot of the new features (like promotion loyalty and tours) look solid.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 23rd[/B] After the weekend's work, all but one of the screens have now been updated to the new style; I personally think it's a big improvement, everything looks neater and less cramped. Once the new taskbars have arrived we will be able to put together some screen shots. Other than the change mentioned in the last entry, where the Overview and User screens have been combined, the other big obvious change is in the Media screen. I decided that the information you get shown by default in 05 - last night's TV ratings and the annual PPV ratings - aren't actually that useful, at least not to the extent of being something you need to see all the time. Therefore, both of them are now accessible via a button in the Media section. Replacing them as the default information is the Internet section, as I think that will be a very popular and often-used feature (and therefore having it as the default information reduces the amount of clicks to get to it). Other than data work (which continues to go well), the other main piece of work done at the weekend was an extended simulation. This is something I like to do once a week during testing, and involves playing as Unemployed and letting the game world evolve over the course of a few months. This is useful as it means silly bugs get picked up quite easily, features that aren't quite working usually show themselves, and the AI can be fine tuned. Four months were completed this time around, and it was quite successful; the Internet section in particular is working very well, and a lot of the new features (like promotion loyalty and tours) look solid.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 24th[/B] The final screen has been given its new look, so with the exception of the game still using the TEW05 taskbar, most of the graphics are now done. This also has the added bonus of reducing the amount of graphics in the Screens folder. This both reduces the size of the download, and makes it far easier for people who wish to make their own mods for the backgrounds in the game. I have also asked that Jason Warholic (the artist who worked on TEW05, and is now working on TEW07) to provide more "grade" graphics - the idea is that grades D, E and F will be split into nine (i.e. D-, D, D+, etc), giving more accuracy when dealing with lower level values. NB: Unlike everything mentioned so far in this journal, this has not yet been programmed, and so is not guaranteed to happen. The rest of Monday was spent on data work. The different owner and head booker personalities have been assigned to the database, new tag teams have been formed, and all the title belts now have the champions who will be starting the game with the belt. All the promotions now have updated biographies too.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 24th[/B] The final screen has been given its new look, so with the exception of the game still using the TEW05 taskbar, most of the graphics are now done. This also has the added bonus of reducing the amount of graphics in the Screens folder. This both reduces the size of the download, and makes it far easier for people who wish to make their own mods for the backgrounds in the game. I have also asked that Jason Warholic (the artist who worked on TEW05, and is now working on TEW07) to provide more "grade" graphics - the idea is that grades D, E and F will be split into nine (i.e. D-, D, D+, etc), giving more accuracy when dealing with lower level values. NB: Unlike everything mentioned so far in this journal, this has not yet been programmed, and so is not guaranteed to happen. The rest of Monday was spent on data work. The different owner and head booker personalities have been assigned to the database, new tag teams have been formed, and all the title belts now have the champions who will be starting the game with the belt. All the promotions now have updated biographies too.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 25th[/B] Yesterday was a short day of work, as I spent the afternoon getting the game prepared for testing to begin. The development work that was done was split into two. The first half was bug fixing; these were all minor bugs that were hardly even noticeable, but needing addressing all the same. The second half was spent on data work; more biographies have been updated, over half of the New Workers have now been added to the database, and a series of alterations were made to help the game world run better. NB: There will be no update tomorrow, as I am out of town.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 25th[/B] Yesterday was a short day of work, as I spent the afternoon getting the game prepared for testing to begin. The development work that was done was split into two. The first half was bug fixing; these were all minor bugs that were hardly even noticeable, but needing addressing all the same. The second half was spent on data work; more biographies have been updated, over half of the New Workers have now been added to the database, and a series of alterations were made to help the game world run better. NB: There will be no update tomorrow, as I am out of town.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 27th[/B] Due to me being out of town all yesterday there is very little to report today. Testing has begun, and the feedback has thus far been very positive, with only a couple of errors reported so far. The idea is that the initial testing will be done solely with the CornellVerse, but afterwards we may convert some of the public-created real world mods to TEW07 and use them, purely so that we can check that the CornellVerse isn't set up in a way that blocks certain errors from happening (for example, as none of the CV promotions have brand splits it is often easier to import a real world mod and check that that works correctly, as obviously the WWE would have a brand split in effect).

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 27th[/B] Due to me being out of town all yesterday there is very little to report today. Testing has begun, and the feedback has thus far been very positive, with only a couple of errors reported so far. The idea is that the initial testing will be done solely with the CornellVerse, but afterwards we may convert some of the public-created real world mods to TEW07 and use them, purely so that we can check that the CornellVerse isn't set up in a way that blocks certain errors from happening (for example, as none of the CV promotions have brand splits it is often easier to import a real world mod and check that that works correctly, as obviously the WWE would have a brand split in effect).

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 30th[/B] Testing is now in full swing. Currently I'm am testing the long term AI \ game world evolution by simming through a career as an unemployed character and watching what happens elsewhere. I have completed 18 months so far. A few minor bugs have been fixed, and a few additions have come in to make things easier (such as adding a View Profile button to the End Of Year Top 100 list). I've also made several changes to the AI, the biggest one being to the hiring AI to make it more likely that talented rookies who have little or no overness have more chance of being picked up and developed by companies. The testing team is concentrating on playing as employed characters, and so far the feedback has been positive, with only a few small bugs reported (and fixed). Existing workers continue to have their biographies expanded and update, and their statistics modified to represent their evolution \ devolution over time (as a lot of them haven't had stat changes since TEW04). The Future Workers also continue to be added. Currently the game begins in January 2007, and you will see at least one new wrestler enter the game world every month until January 2011. There are still quite a lot of people waiting to be added, so it is likely that by the time of release there will be a new worker every month until 2014 or 2015.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 30th[/B] Testing is now in full swing. Currently I'm am testing the long term AI \ game world evolution by simming through a career as an unemployed character and watching what happens elsewhere. I have completed 18 months so far. A few minor bugs have been fixed, and a few additions have come in to make things easier (such as adding a View Profile button to the End Of Year Top 100 list). I've also made several changes to the AI, the biggest one being to the hiring AI to make it more likely that talented rookies who have little or no overness have more chance of being picked up and developed by companies. The testing team is concentrating on playing as employed characters, and so far the feedback has been positive, with only a few small bugs reported (and fixed). Existing workers continue to have their biographies expanded and update, and their statistics modified to represent their evolution \ devolution over time (as a lot of them haven't had stat changes since TEW04). The Future Workers also continue to be added. Currently the game begins in January 2007, and you will see at least one new wrestler enter the game world every month until January 2011. There are still quite a lot of people waiting to be added, so it is likely that by the time of release there will be a new worker every month until 2014 or 2015.