(https://files.steps.moe/worms/images/owppa.png)
Online Worms and its sequel, Worms World Party Aqua, are Asian adaptations of Worms 2 and WWP, released in 2001-2003 and 2004 respectively. The games were developed by MGame (called "Wizgate" before 2003) with permission and source code obtained from Team17. There were three language editions released for Korea, Japan and China.
The games have some fundamental differences from their Western counterparts, from their distribution to their engines. Most importantly, they were based on an online-only, free-to-play model with some premium content. It was only possible to obtain the installers online, and every player was required to register an online account, even if they wanted to play a single-player match. They enjoyed extreme popularity in the beginning. According to IGN, there were up to 20000 concurrent players online at peak.
In 2005, the Japanese servers of Online Worms closed down. In 2006-2007, all services for all games ceased operation. Japanese and Chinese regional websites have vanished from existence, and all Korean links to MGame return "page not found" errors. Any surviving publisher websites no longer contain any references to the games. All download links for the game installers and servers hosting them have also died. Moreover, even if one manages to obtain an installer and install the game, they will be unable to launch it, because it requires 1) a special init config and 2) a working online server. This basically rendered the games completely unusable and almost forgotten since then. There had been some attempts to hack the games, but none of them successful enough.
In January 2019, a developer called "Ray"/"RayKoopa" (also known as "Pac-Man" in the Worms community) has been able to reverse-engineer the initialization and networking protocols used by the games, as well as gather much more information about the file formats in use. He has created a complete launcher and a simple online server that emulates the server list and lobby/channel protocols, as well as converters for some of the game data, some of which had never been seen in a raw form before. Thanks to this, it is now possible to launch into single-player matches of the games for the first time since their death in mid-00s. The online server is available as part of the Syroot.Worms library, licensed under MIT, on GitLab (https://gitlab.com/Syroot/Worms).
General differences
(https://i.imgur.com/QicNfkm.png) (https://i.imgur.com/eX3LekR.png)
The game engine, borrowed from Worms 2 and WWP, has experienced remarkable changes. The original menu systems were scrapped and replaced with those more resembling other popular Korean games of the time such as KartRider. The in-game interface has had some notable additions, such as mouse-assisted power bars (to ease shooting at "easy"/"normal" difficulty levels), mouse cursor being present on-screen at all times (to interact with some parts of the UI) and other features. The Enter button is now used for on-screen chat (instead of the chat panel), where text renders on top of the game, and Jump/Drop is remapped to Z. Backflip is mapped to both X and Backspace, though X is recommended by the game.
Online Worms is more or less just Worms 2. Most of the changes that you will see are cosmetic (like the mouse-based UI, support for 800x600 and 1024x768, new background music, etc.). It adds some special utilities like "restore health" and some paid items, as well as support for half-sized maps (960x696) in the Korea-Small version. In singleplayer 1v1 matches, "antisink" is enabled and prevents worms from drowning (with some health adjustments). It also makes more extensive use of the Worms 2 engine than the original Worms 2: for example, the Backflip is enabled by default and doesn't require a cheat.
(https://i.imgur.com/MeO52uj.png) (https://imgur.com/a/jBC4ekM)
(click to see the whole gallery)
WWP Aqua, on the other hand, is completely different. The menu systems at their core are the same as in OnlineWorms (though noticeably upgraded along with the network protocols), but the game engine has seen a whole range of new developments.
- The game now runs in 16-bit (65536 colors) mode, and it includes new objects, weapons, sprites and mechanics. It is not even WWP, it's more like a mix of the Worms 2 and WWP engines: the game core has been upgraded to WWP, with new weapons, sprites and sounds from WWP, but not completely: for example, the Ninja Rope used in the game is the one from Worms 2 (both in its physics and sounds) and not the "slower" one from WA/WWP. Backflip height also feels higher (more like Worms 2) than in WA/WWP. It also doesn't implement the whole range of weapons at once: some of the new weapons were hand-picked into the game, some were never included and some (like Utilities) are paid exclusives at the Item Shop (emulation of the Item Shop is one of the tasks to be done at the moment). Some weapons were reskinned (Axe -> Hammer, paid; Jetpack -> Underwater Jetpack). But at the same time it does implement "team mines" from WWP.
- A remarkable addition is Worm Genders: they can be male and female. This setting is determined by your online profile (in the current server implementation there's no way to change this so the default of female is used). Worms wear team-colored hats and hairs for male and female respectively. Each gender also has 3 speechbanks by default: Standard Korean, Gyeongsang & Jeolla dialects (in the Korean version). It should be noted, though, that with these hats comes a slight decrease in the number of animation frames. This was possibly done to simplify the work for graphics artists, since each frame was essentially pixel-edited to appear with hats. These hats will appear cyan in the Gfx.dir files, however they will actually be rendered with the respective team color once in-game.
- Parts of the front-end UI can now be displayed in-game, such as high-score tables, guild (clans that you can join) stats, and other overlays.
- The weapon power-up bar is no longer displayed in the path of the crosshair. It is now displayed only at the bottom-left Dolphin UI. Using the mouse allows for "notching" where you can pre-set any desired shooting power, which is helpful on "Easy" and "Normal" difficulty levels. On "Easy", you get full trajectory prediction (without accounting for bounces), with "Normal" you get half of it, and with "Pro" you get the usual crosshair. Once you have set the desired power level, you have to hold the spacebar and release it precisely when it's around the position of the bookmark (so, this is not a complete aimbot).
- There's a comprehensive in-game help displayed behind the map. It explains key bindings and weapon usage. The help is toggled via Ctrl+H or via the button on the Dolphin UI.
- The game includes various original maps (full 256-color palette) with custom landscape themes (background, water and debris), many of which have been exported a while ago on WMDB. However, 38 additional maps have been discovered in .WSM offline challenge files, never seen before (one notable example is an elaborate Battle Race map). These will be studied and properly exported in the near future.
- There are 38 offline challenges (training missions), each supporting Global Highscores. Missions are spread into 5 levels, up to 8 challenge types in each. Challenge types include things like Grenade, Baseball Bat, Aqua Sheep, Ninja Rope challenge, Walking challenge, etc. They are very well made and some are quite difficult. Some of these dynamic missions use features from WWP missions such as respawning mines. Upon completing every level, global highscores are displayed. However, highscore handling has not yet been implemented in the online server, so you will see nothing and will have to wait around 10 seconds before the window dismisses itself.
- When you hit a wall (lightly), the parachute will be auto-selected and then used when falling. It will also be pre-selected as a secondary weapon for multi-chute falling (pressing Space several times). Once you get on the ground, your Rope is re-selected back again.
- The game includes a new soundtrack in MP3, rather than MIDI like in OnlineWorms. Most of the tracks are original, however there's at least one track that's been reused in other games ("Festival of the Ghost").
- There is a good selection of custom single player settings and schemes compared to Online Worms. One notable scheme is Underwater. It includes Bubble Jetpack (infinite ammo) and Spears. Underwater terrains have a unique mine-generation feature. There are "underwater mines" floating in the "air" with a 0.5s fuse. They are automatically regenerated upon each turn end (up to a certain amount), and they may be affected by wind for short periods of time. Another feature is worm bubbles: if your retreat time ends in "mid-air", your worm is enclosed in a bubble and stays floating, partially affected by the wind, for some time. All motion on underwater levels produces bubbles in the path of the projectile. There are also other schemes very close to those in WA/WWP, such as Roper, Onlycrates, BnG, etc.
- There are new weapons exclusive to WWPA, such as Spears. "Spears" are arrow-shooting guns, each with different amounts of shots and damage. Arrows stick to the ground as usual. The four types are: Spear, Double Spear, Balinese Spear, Super Spear. More information can be found on the Korean namu.wiki (https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%9B%9C%EC%A6%88%20%EC%8B%9C%EB%A6%AC%EC%A6%88/%EB%AC%B4%EA%B8%B0#s-10) which covers each weapon and their effects in detail, as well as paid weapons, and Online Worms in general (https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%98%A8%EB%9D%BC%EC%9D%B8%20%EC%9B%9C%EC%A6%88). This information will also eventually appear on worms2d.info.
Installation
Before installing and running the games, make sure you have .NET Framework Runtime 4.6.1 or later (needed for the Launcher). You can get it here (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download).
| Online Worms | WWP Aqua |
- Download the Korea Small (https://files.steps.moe/worms/mgame/owsetup.exe) installer.
- Download the OW addons (https://files.steps.moe/worms/mgame/addons/owkrs_addons.7z) package.
- Install the game (do not use "Program Files" as the target directory! It's best to install into an unprotected directory such as C:\Games or Documents)
- Extract the addons package into the installation directory of the game.
- If you're using high-DPI (scaling) in your system, right-click DWait.exe, then "Properties", and on the "Compatibility" tab, check either "Disable scaling on high DPI settings" or "Change DPI settings" -> "Override high DPI settings". This is not done automatically by the addons yet.
| - Download the WWPA Korean (https://files.steps.moe/worms/mgame/wwpasetup.exe) installer.
- Download the WWPA addons (https://files.steps.moe/worms/mgame/addons/wwpa_addons.7z) package.
- Install the game (do not use "Program Files" as the target directory! It's best to install into an unprotected directory such as C:\Games or Documents)
- Extract the addons package into the installation directory of the game.
- If you're using high-DPI (scaling) in your system, right-click Main.exe, then "Properties", and on the "Compatibility" tab, check either "Disable scaling on high DPI settings" or "Change DPI settings" -> "Override high DPI settings - Application". This is not done automatically by the addons yet.
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Note: the window border in WWP Aqua is disabled because the game has some issues with it. For example, clicking the Close button does not kill the process; use the bottom-right Exit button in the frontend to quit. Also it causes the game window to be downscaled and compressed when proceeding to the in-game, because it resizes itself without taking account of the border. This may be alleviated later with custom wormkit modules.
For those who are interested, more installers (like Japanese and Chinese language editions of OnlineWorms) are available here (https://files.steps.moe/worms/mgame/), but they don't work with the online server yet.
Configuration (optional)
| Online Worms | WWP Aqua |
- You may change your nickname and some other things using the LauncherConfig.json file.
- Server settings are stored in Server\OWServerConfig.json. Note that because the latest version of the merged OW+WWPA server breaks OW, it is temporarily replaced with an older version. Another thing to note is that there's currently a bug whereby if you connect from outside of localhost (outside 127.0.0.1), the game will get confused and spam an endless loop of login requests! Only test in local environments for now!
| - You may change your nickname and some other things using the LauncherConfig.json file.
- Server settings are stored in Server\ServerConfig.json. This defaults to 127.0.0.1 for testing the game on your computer. You may put "external" in place of the IP in case you want to open the server to the outside world (in which case your external IP will be detected automatically upon launch). A shared server may be hosted soon for those who don't want to run the Server on their own machines.
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Running
- If the online server is not yet running, open the "Server" directory of the game, and then click the exe (OWServer or Server) to launch it.
- Run the game by clicking "Launcher.exe" in its directory.
What's next?
Further work includes being able to unlock paid weapons and some sort of online play. Support for more packet types is planned. The 38 embedded IMG maps from offline challenges need to be studied and exported for use in Worms Armageddon. Additionally, ReSolution support for WWPA is planned (to support resolutions higher than 1024x768). Unlikely to come for OnlineWorms since so many different versions exist, and the Korea Small version struggles with some of its small 960x696 maps.
Videos