Worms Armageddon 3.8.0 changelog sneak peek

[StepS]

What are others thoughts on the release of 3.8 in relation to classic and league style?

New scheme options should hopefully lead to upgraded variants of classic schemes. People have already expressed their will to turn off wind in TTRR. With native reaiming support, the BnG scheme can be improved to remove the repetitive reaim procedure at turn start. In Forts game mode, automatic placement has become possible (as well as the ability to have constant/variable wind in the opposing fort direction). Glitches such as skip-walking in battle races can be disabled to enforce fair play. Eventually more scheme rules will make their way into game engine options, opening up the classic "rule-specific" schemes to more newcomers instead of the historical situation. These are just a few quick examples and I'm sure people will come up with more.

[TheWalrus]

What are others thoughts on the release of 3.8 in relation to classic and league style?

New scheme options should hopefully lead to upgraded variants of classic schemes. People have already expressed their will to turn off wind in TTRR. With native reaiming support, the BnG scheme can be improved to remove the repetitive reaim procedure at turn start. In Forts game mode, automatic placement has become possible (as well as the ability to have constant/variable wind in the opposing fort direction). Glitches such as skip-walking in battle races can be disabled to enforce fair play. Eventually more scheme rules will make their way into game engine options, opening up the classic "rule-specific" schemes to more newcomers instead of the historical situation. These are just a few quick examples and I'm sure people will come up with more.

Didn't know skip walk will be disabled now, great fix. 

A dream option for me is mirrored wind, would finally make BnG the perfect artillery scheme.  Mirrored wind i.e. (getting the same wind opponent did the previous turn, only the inverse) if your opponent gets 2 red bar wind, you get 2 blue bar wind the next turn, and so on).  The new wind options are great, should eliminate annoyances in Big RR as well, youll never get pinned against a wall and forced to chute down again with wind at 0.  Also chute race and bungee race benefit from 0 wind.  Loving this new update, great work.

[lacoste]

As a biased 'classic' old schooler i don't think (would love to be wrong) the 3.8 patch will return the glory league days of wa.

I'm affraid the only way to bring some life into classic WA would be official, properly organised ingame ranking system, tournaments and all that (among other things) happening within ingame menus, so basically the 4.0 rework we dream of, with good publicity on top of that. It's not like old farts will start comming back chasing past when they only grow older, so this game needs new generations if it wants to stay active that way for some more time.

A dream option for me is mirrored wind, would finally make BnG the perfect artillery scheme. 

I disagree. That's clean reproducibility. If anything, a system that would generate 10 winds and then mirror them shuffled between players without that mirrored repetition of the same shot after shot would make more sense when it comes to fairness and not taking away that element of suprise.

[Kradie]

As a biased 'classic' old schooler i don't think (would love to be wrong) the 3.8 patch will return the glory league days of wa.

I'm affraid the only way to bring some life into classic WA would be official, properly organised ingame ranking system, tournaments and all that (among other things) happening within ingame menus, so basically the 4.0 rework we dream of, with good publicity on top of that. It's not like old farts will start comming back chasing past when they only grow older, so this game needs new generations if it wants to stay active that way for some more time.

A dream option for me is mirrored wind, would finally make BnG the perfect artillery scheme. 

I disagree. That's clean reproducibility. If anything, a system that would generate 10 winds and then mirror them shuffled between players without that mirrored repetition of the same shot after shot would make more sense when it comes to fairness and not taking away that element of suprise.

This is what I've been saying before. Veteran players often relies on their past & nostalgia to find a comforting foothold in today's WA. Despite being an old school myself of the early-mid 2000, I am able to adapt in the modern WA society. I am sure that this new update will generate a temporal influx of new, existing and old players. Perhaps a lot of them will find a reason to stay. Unfortunately if you want to be competitive, you need to rely on external services like The Ultimate Site, this can be off putting for some, and this alone divides the player base. We are already witnessing it, a small inactive league with the regular cynics with the inability to change over time and only will recognize those with high ranks, while the rest in WA are committed to funners. Of course this my own hypothesis and experience. A built in league system in WA could alleviate the gap between players.

When it comes to the mirrored wind, it is a novel idea, nice option to have, but I think in the end for me, I also like the element of surprise.
I'm guessing a lot of the current schemes could use a little tweaking and updating. I think the entirety of WA community should be involved with these sort of things. It would be very egotistical for a group of people to decide how popular main schemes should be shaped & played. Then again, some could argue ''Well Kradie, if you let n00bs and non-competitive players vote and give their ideas, it could break the existing schemes completely! Imagine Donkeys in Intermediate!'' Sure, if such argument are to be made, I would say; Yeah sure I get it, and that is why we need a proper voting template for people to follow. Such template would be shaped on popular opinions and ideas suggested by anyone.
Then again, maybe none of this is necessary, and perhaps all existing schemes are fine as they are. Though, I guess most of us agrees that TTRR needs zero wind...

[TheWalrus]

As a biased 'classic' old schooler i don't think (would love to be wrong) the 3.8 patch will return the glory league days of wa.

I'm affraid the only way to bring some life into classic WA would be official, properly organised ingame ranking system, tournaments and all that (among other things) happening within ingame menus, so basically the 4.0 rework we dream of, with good publicity on top of that. It's not like old farts will start comming back chasing past when they only grow older, so this game needs new generations if it wants to stay active that way for some more time.

A dream option for me is mirrored wind, would finally make BnG the perfect artillery scheme. 

I disagree. That's clean reproducibility. If anything, a system that would generate 10 winds and then mirror them shuffled between players without that mirrored repetition of the same shot after shot would make more sense when it comes to fairness and not taking away that element of suprise.

Good idea coste, didn't even think of that, I do like surprise winds.

[wza]

I was wondering about the force wine virtual desktop being removed. I've had a pain trying to get it to work with wine. I finally have it working but I have to run it in xquartz on x11. If I uncheck the force virtual desktop I get black screen with sound but can't do anything. If I run natively in wine without x11 or xquartz I would see a white or red flash before it launched,  it would go through the intro, and then the start menu would be unclickable, or it would be black.

[StepS]

I was wondering about the force wine virtual desktop being removed. I've had a pain trying to get it to work with wine. I finally have it working but I have to run it in xquartz on x11. If I uncheck the force virtual desktop I get black screen with sound but can't do anything. If I run natively in wine without x11 or xquartz I would see a white or red flash before it launched,  it would go through the intro, and then the start menu would be unclickable, or it would be black.

You don't need any wine-specific fixes anymore. 3.8.0 will run natively without any virtual desktop, and it will use your native window manager to run in windowed mode (with the new "Windowed mode" option). Fullscreen has not been tested much (although I think it works) and depends completely on its implementation in wine itself.
All black-screen issues have been fixed completely.
Upon a fresh start you will only be asked if you want to enable windowed mode.
All renderers now work in wine, not only ddraw32. However, even though OpenGL was added, its performance is still sub-par compared to Direct3D 9, both in wine and on Windows. Direct3D 9 is now the default renderer in use on all systems after Win9x.

[Ytrojan]

Just bring the flaming health bars back that's all I want

[sarcasm]Yes. In fact, let's make any animated GIF be able to be used in Health bars, I feel it could work.[/sarcasm]

Seriously, though. While the flaming health bars are a good idea, the creation of the update has already been finished. However, I can see it happening in 3.9 or 4.0, which will likely be 5 years away

5 more years for something they removed from the game 15 years ago 

They can also add it in the next update, if the players REALLY want it back. Or you can create a Wormkit module, shouldn't be too hard.

[j0e]

Just wondering, is the windowed mode for the frontend the same as d3d9wnd, or can we finally drag the window around with normal window controls?

[wza]

Oh thanks for clearing that up steps!sounds awesome then!

[ohms]

Was there a plan at one point to merge WA with WWP in 4.0?
I vaguely remember this mentioned somewhere probably 10 years ago.

WWP was ported to Steam a couple years back with the promise of updates which amounted to nothing so interest in it didn't last (like every other Worms game they release) but there are still some cool features in it like the interface for extra game options you can add (extra long ropes, extra explosive explosives, and the like).

[Tomtysti]

Holy hell! This is amazing news. Thank you DC and CS, you absolute legends

[StepS]

WWP was ported to Steam a couple years back with the promise of updates which amounted to nothing so interest in it didn't last (like every other Worms game they release) but there are still some cool features in it like the interface for extra game options you can add (extra long ropes, extra explosive explosives, and the like).

More scheme features, like long ropes, will eventually be added.

Just wondering, is the windowed mode for the frontend the same as d3d9wnd, or can we finally drag the window around with normal window controls?

Spoiler! View

[Ytrojan]

More scheme features, like long ropes, will eventually be added.

Does this mean a Project X-like environment will eventually be implemented?!


If yes, the day it is implemented in a release will be the day I finally uninstall 3.6.31.0, which is not only ancient, but doesn't work properly on Windows EIGHT (let alone 10) without Project X's rendering

[TheKomodo]

Another suggestion, change the "NASA Award" to "SpaceX Award".