Total Extreme Wrestling 07: Developer's Journal

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 31st[/B] Yesterday saw a continuation of my long-term simulation test, plus quite a few tweaks to the game to make it more realistic. One feature that has been added after a suggestion from a tester is the use of ratings to replace exact viewer numbers on TV and PPV reports. They are measured by something called an International Viewership Rating (IVR), which is very similar to the well known real-life Nielson rating system, except that this version works all across the world, not just in North America. It works by giving one rating point for every 50,000 viewers achieved. So 65,500 viewers would be a 1.31 rating. This allows for easier comparison between companies in different game areas. A lot of work has gone into the AI, especially the movement of wrestlers from company to company. This ties in well with the Internet section, where you can see "failed" attempts to hire people, which is something that existed in previous game but was always unseen.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]October 31st[/B] Yesterday saw a continuation of my long-term simulation test, plus quite a few tweaks to the game to make it more realistic. One feature that has been added after a suggestion from a tester is the use of ratings to replace exact viewer numbers on TV and PPV reports. They are measured by something called an International Viewership Rating (IVR), which is very similar to the well known real-life Nielson rating system, except that this version works all across the world, not just in North America. It works by giving one rating point for every 50,000 viewers achieved. So 65,500 viewers would be a 1.31 rating. This allows for easier comparison between companies in different game areas. A lot of work has gone into the AI, especially the movement of wrestlers from company to company. This ties in well with the Internet section, where you can see "failed" attempts to hire people, which is something that existed in previous game but was always unseen.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 1st[/B] My test, in which I'm playing as unemployed to judge the way the game world evolves, reached its two year mark yesterday. I'm very pleased with the results so far, a number of the features that have been added since 2005 are working very well, and in my opinion have really improved the game as a whole. One part of the updated AI that i'm particularly pleased with is the better use of low-level wrestlers; a worker who had virtually no overness tended to get overlooked in 05, even if he had a lot of talent, but that has been rectified in 07, and plenty of workers have risen from nothing to become midcard workers for major feds. As well as the testing, a lot of work yesterday went into the database. As well as updating the wrestlers, a lot of new relationships have been added. This is to take advantage of the more realistic handling of relationships in the game, as I quite like seeing how they can take different paths from game to game.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 1st[/B] My test, in which I'm playing as unemployed to judge the way the game world evolves, reached its two year mark yesterday. I'm very pleased with the results so far, a number of the features that have been added since 2005 are working very well, and in my opinion have really improved the game as a whole. One part of the updated AI that i'm particularly pleased with is the better use of low-level wrestlers; a worker who had virtually no overness tended to get overlooked in 05, even if he had a lot of talent, but that has been rectified in 07, and plenty of workers have risen from nothing to become midcard workers for major feds. As well as the testing, a lot of work yesterday went into the database. As well as updating the wrestlers, a lot of new relationships have been added. This is to take advantage of the more realistic handling of relationships in the game, as I quite like seeing how they can take different paths from game to game.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 2nd[/B] I can now confirm that there will definitely be an change to the way grades are done in TEW07 from TEW05. The obvious change is that the three grades D, E and F have now been expanded into nine; F-, F, F+, E-, E, E+, D-, D and D+. The second change is that due to the increased number of grades, the entire system has been realigned, to the point that every grade is roughly the same size (6% per grade, with the exception of the two extremes, F- and A*, which cover 5% each). This is different from TEW05, where the middle grades (around B) were much smaller than the others. The effect on the actual gameplay itself is of course very minimal, as the grades are only a cosmetic feature for the player. However, it does change things from a player's perspective, as it spreads out the assigning of grades, making them far more accurate. As an example, in TEW05 it was fairly common to see plenty of people in the A and A* range, as that covered 20% of the possible values. That same range now only accounts for 11%, and so naturally it is now much rarer to see someone with an A or A*, which therefore makes them far more valuable.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 2nd[/B] I can now confirm that there will definitely be an change to the way grades are done in TEW07 from TEW05. The obvious change is that the three grades D, E and F have now been expanded into nine; F-, F, F+, E-, E, E+, D-, D and D+. The second change is that due to the increased number of grades, the entire system has been realigned, to the point that every grade is roughly the same size (6% per grade, with the exception of the two extremes, F- and A*, which cover 5% each). This is different from TEW05, where the middle grades (around B) were much smaller than the others. The effect on the actual gameplay itself is of course very minimal, as the grades are only a cosmetic feature for the player. However, it does change things from a player's perspective, as it spreads out the assigning of grades, making them far more accurate. As an example, in TEW05 it was fairly common to see plenty of people in the A and A* range, as that covered 20% of the possible values. That same range now only accounts for 11%, and so naturally it is now much rarer to see someone with an A or A*, which therefore makes them far more valuable.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]6th November[/B] Currently the testing time is being split in two directions. The first is the addition of the new graphics. The new background screens have arrived, and so it's a lengthy task to update every single pop-up window in the game. We are not merely changing the background, but every screen is getting a redesign too. In some cases this is very minor; for example, the pop-up window where you tick the boxes for a worker's personality (drug problems, drink problems, etc) is virtually identical to TEW05 - this is of course unavoidable, as there's very few ways to vary a screen which only has five tick boxes! In other cases there are much bigger changes, such as the user's Shortlist evolving from a simple list of names; highlighting a name now brings up the picture of the worker, and his biography, which is far more useful for low-level workers who you might not remember otherwise. The other direction is the actual testing. No massive errors have been found yet, only ones that have been easily fixed within a few minutes. This is a very good sign for the overall stability of the game.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]6th November[/B] Currently the testing time is being split in two directions. The first is the addition of the new graphics. The new background screens have arrived, and so it's a lengthy task to update every single pop-up window in the game. We are not merely changing the background, but every screen is getting a redesign too. In some cases this is very minor; for example, the pop-up window where you tick the boxes for a worker's personality (drug problems, drink problems, etc) is virtually identical to TEW05 - this is of course unavoidable, as there's very few ways to vary a screen which only has five tick boxes! In other cases there are much bigger changes, such as the user's Shortlist evolving from a simple list of names; highlighting a name now brings up the picture of the worker, and his biography, which is far more useful for low-level workers who you might not remember otherwise. The other direction is the actual testing. No massive errors have been found yet, only ones that have been easily fixed within a few minutes. This is a very good sign for the overall stability of the game.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]7th November[/B] It's a short update today - the reason being that although I did about eight hours work yesterday, it was entirely made up of changing background graphics and lay outs of screens, which while necessary, is very very dull. Unless you really want to hear how I moved a worker picture 3 pixels to the left, ran the game, decided it looks a bit crap, then moves it 3 pixels back to the right. Today is one of the biggest days for the graphics, as I am revamping the worker booking section so that it includes more information (rather than just push and disposition), which is a big task and should improve that section a lot.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]7th November[/B] It's a short update today - the reason being that although I did about eight hours work yesterday, it was entirely made up of changing background graphics and lay outs of screens, which while necessary, is very very dull. Unless you really want to hear how I moved a worker picture 3 pixels to the left, ran the game, decided it looks a bit crap, then moves it 3 pixels back to the right. Today is one of the biggest days for the graphics, as I am revamping the worker booking section so that it includes more information (rather than just push and disposition), which is a big task and should improve that section a lot.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]8th November[/B] As mentioned in the last diary entry, yesterday was spent re-doing the worker booking screen. The goal was simply to fit more information in, to make it easier to book matches. Before, if you remember, you got the worker's picture, his push level, and his disposition. Under the new screen, you get a massive amount of information, the same sort of level as your regular roster screen, right down to getting the six "skill overview" grades too. You also get access to a filter, so that if you were looking to get an opponent for a midcard babyface, it's very simple to make it only display midcard heels. The same is almost true on the "book singles or a tag team screen" (the one where you'd get a list of tag teams down the right hand side, singles workers on the left) - the only difference is that there is slightly less information shown due to the limited screen space of fitting three workers on screen.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]8th November[/B] As mentioned in the last diary entry, yesterday was spent re-doing the worker booking screen. The goal was simply to fit more information in, to make it easier to book matches. Before, if you remember, you got the worker's picture, his push level, and his disposition. Under the new screen, you get a massive amount of information, the same sort of level as your regular roster screen, right down to getting the six "skill overview" grades too. You also get access to a filter, so that if you were looking to get an opponent for a midcard babyface, it's very simple to make it only display midcard heels. The same is almost true on the "book singles or a tag team screen" (the one where you'd get a list of tag teams down the right hand side, singles workers on the left) - the only difference is that there is slightly less information shown due to the limited screen space of fitting three workers on screen.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]10th November[/B] After a full week of doing absolutely nothing but graphics, the light is at the end of the tunnel - just two more to go and every screen will have been updated to TEW07 style. This means that next week can go back to "normal", and testing, bug fixing, and new additions can start happening again. The journal will also be going back to a daily schedule.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]10th November[/B] After a full week of doing absolutely nothing but graphics, the light is at the end of the tunnel - just two more to go and every screen will have been updated to TEW07 style. This means that next week can go back to "normal", and testing, bug fixing, and new additions can start happening again. The journal will also be going back to a daily schedule.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]13th November[/B] At the request of members of the testing team, a new addition that got put in over the weekend was the reporting of title changes from around the world in the Internet section. This is actually more complex than it sounds, as in order to make it as realistic as possible it had to be written to take into account previous title reigns. The good news is that it works perfectly now, so you will get stories that read something like: "[I]The SWF was a title change at last night's show, when Remo Richardson took the SWF World title away from Steve Frehley, beginning his third reign with the belt. He'll be hoping to put on a more impressive showing that Frehley, who managed just one successful title defence during his reign.[/I]" One of the main sections that got redone during the graphics work was the Booking Overview section. I was never happy with how it was in 05, specifically having to select someone on a grid and then press Select, which didn't fit with the rest of the game (but was unavoidable at the time). That entire section is totally different now, and is far more intuitive. As another request from the testing team, long periods of time (over two months) are no longer shown purely as "X days". This is because it was felt that seeing "338 days" was not user friendly enough, as it was difficult to know how long that was. Under the new system, long periods of time are now shown as "X months, X weeks", and revert to the old way only when there are less than two months left.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]13th November[/B] At the request of members of the testing team, a new addition that got put in over the weekend was the reporting of title changes from around the world in the Internet section. This is actually more complex than it sounds, as in order to make it as realistic as possible it had to be written to take into account previous title reigns. The good news is that it works perfectly now, so you will get stories that read something like: "[I]The SWF was a title change at last night's show, when Remo Richardson took the SWF World title away from Steve Frehley, beginning his third reign with the belt. He'll be hoping to put on a more impressive showing that Frehley, who managed just one successful title defence during his reign.[/I]" One of the main sections that got redone during the graphics work was the Booking Overview section. I was never happy with how it was in 05, specifically having to select someone on a grid and then press Select, which didn't fit with the rest of the game (but was unavoidable at the time). That entire section is totally different now, and is far more intuitive. As another request from the testing team, long periods of time (over two months) are no longer shown purely as "X days". This is because it was felt that seeing "338 days" was not user friendly enough, as it was difficult to know how long that was. Under the new system, long periods of time are now shown as "X months, X weeks", and revert to the old way only when there are less than two months left.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 14th[/B] A new addition is [I]event importance[/I]. This is a measure of the historic value of a certain show; the most importance\prestige that it has, the more fans it can draw and the higher buy-rates will be. A new event will always begin with 0 importance, which means it has no extra effect on attendance or buy-rate. The rating can then rise over time, based on certain criteria. For example, to rise from one of the higher levels, you need to put on two shows which rate over a B+. The editor can be used to assign importance to events before the game begins.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 14th[/B] A new addition is [I]event importance[/I]. This is a measure of the historic value of a certain show; the most importance\prestige that it has, the more fans it can draw and the higher buy-rates will be. A new event will always begin with 0 importance, which means it has no extra effect on attendance or buy-rate. The rating can then rise over time, based on certain criteria. For example, to rise from one of the higher levels, you need to put on two shows which rate over a B+. The editor can be used to assign importance to events before the game begins.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 15th[/B] Yesterday saw the addition of a new section to the Your Promotion screen, which allows you to view who you have on developmental contract, where they are working, and get quick access to their profile. It's primarily for organisational purposes, as I realised that there was no other way to actually find out who you had under development contract without going through the "child" promotion's roster manually. The rest of the day was spent adding the finishers that appeared in WreSpi2 into the worker's profiles, and adding more to the Alter Ego file.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 16th[/B] The new taskbar has finally been completed, which means the new interface is 99% complete. Screen shots will probably start happening in a few weeks. I have updated all the angles to the new TEW07 system; storylines just need to be updated too to complete that section of the game. The "You're Unemployed" screen has been updated; your reputation level is now shown on that screen (rather than having to go all the way to your profile to find it), and a list of currently available jobs also appears there (rather than having to go via the Other Promotions screen and filtering).

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 17th[/B] A new addition is that of [I]Pre-Defined User Characters[/I]. This is basically for ease of use; rather than having to create your own character each and every time you start a new game, you can create one via the editor and reload him multiple times. Also, a button called [I]Storyline Recap[/I] has been added to the Match and Angle selection screens. Again, this is for ease of use - rather than having to go to the storyline screen, find out what the next step is, remember it, and then go and book the segment, you can now simply click the button and get the information instantly. This is particularly useful when booking angles when you have multiple roles to remember.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 20th[/B] The weekend was spent on the following: I have rewritten the Advance Booking heat section, so that it rises and falls much more realistically in regard to your booking. So, for example, advance booking a singles match between two wrestlers and then having them engage in a series of great interviews will raise the heat up significantly. The code regarding TV deals has been altered too. Rather than having to wait for your contract to expire before you offer a TV show to other networks, you can now do so while still under contract. This allows you to correctly simulate having a show move homes, like Raw did in real life, without a break. The AI for brand splits has been massively overhauled, both for two and three brand splits, and I am very pleased with how it works now. There is one thing that I would like to highlight though: the AI automatically tries to keep all brands of an equal quality. The reason I bring this up is that if you create a real-world mod, that will mean the AI will likely make quite a few changes to the Raw \ Smackdown \ ECW rosters, as obviously the ECW one is far, far weaker than the other two.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 22nd[/B] Just a quick update today; work is currently being done on adding all the new buttons, which is necessary but quite dull and time-consuming. Other than that and bug fixing, there has been nothing particularly noteworthy to report over the past two days. I'm hoping the buttons will be finished by the end of today so that work can resume on other features.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 24th[/B] The last of the buttons have now been added to the game, meaning that the entire game has now been graphically updated. Screen shots should begin to appear in the next few weeks. Minor new features continue to be added at the testing team's request, to make the game more user friendly, such as extra filters. Bug testing is going well; the game appears very stable, and the few bugs that have been found have been swiftly dealt with. One thing that I don't think I have confirmed before is that some of the default graphics will now be database specific. They include the "no picture found" graphic for wrestlers, logos, and belts, and the internet banner. This means that you don't have to swap files around manually when switching between databases. So, for example, the "?" wrestler who appears when no picture is found can be on the Cornellverse blue background when using the default data, the DOTT background when using that database, etc, etc, with no file swapping involved.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]November 27th[/B] As well as continuing the testing over the past few days, some smaller features have also been added, primarily to improve user friendliness: * The AI has been changed so that when a promotion attempts to sign a worker who works for a company they are at war with, the worker will consider the potential loss (i.e. giving up his existing job, as the War relationship would force him to leave) as well as the potential benefits. This stops the loophole that a smaller promotion can steal a worker from a bigger promotion because he is only considering the quality of the offer. * A new road agent note has been added whereby you can set a match to include the rule that titles can change hands on a DQ or count out. * When negotiating with a worker, the contract negotiation screen will automatically default to either written or PPA (and the related amount of money) values depending on the size of your promotion. * The screen that shows a promotion's progress in terms of popularity is now available for the player's promotion too, not just AI feds. * The filters regarding workers now have both Minimum and Maximum values for the different skills. * When booking a show and selecting workers, there is now an on-screen note that tells you if they have already been booking to wrestle that night. There is no block on working multiple times per night, it is merely to help the player avoid accidentally leaving people out.