Worms Revolution

[Anubis]

Does anyone have a quote or interview from the T17 guys what they currently think of W:A with all it's patches? Do they actually like W:A and it's schemes/gameplay or just run it for the sake of it? It would be interesting to see their thoughts on current W:A. If not, somebody should definitely ask them about W:A, what they think of it. It would tell a lot about the future of 2D Worming.

[chakkman]

Worms Revolution is the future of 2D Worms. But yeah, would be interesting to hear what the developpers think about W:A in its current state... interesting in terms of what a shit they code now compared to 2 independent developers who love this game so much that even after 12 years they care about and improve it.

[TheWalrus]

After worms reloaded or whatever that game was called off of steam, and after buying W2A for xbox, I realized that team17 isn't going to make a game that is the spiritual successor for worms armageddon.  After clunking their way through the worms 3d incarnations, the full retail game window for worms effectively closed.  Customization isn't going to be available because like HHC said, the game is packaged for console and steam, it will likely be a 10$ download, and for 10$, team17 isn't going to implement much of anything new, much less fix whats inherently broken with the newer games.  Team17 should have brought code and shadow on full time 10 years ago and developed a true sequel, utilizing the very people who have coded quality additions to WA.  Instead, they have sporadically (at least it seems to this guy) supported our title.  There isn't going to be another worms game of the caliber of worms armageddon again, if there was going to be, it would have happened in the last 13 years since WA dropped. 

At least there is still this community, that is something.  The problem is team17 doesn't value the game that this community wants produced.  And in reality, that might be a good business decision.  As much as we all want Worms: Armageddon 2, the reality might be that they make more money off the crappy, dime-a-dozen bullshit games they put out now based on the same formula they came up with so long ago.  Why craft something tailored to a limited market (us) when they can sell a ton of 10$ arcade games with almost no effort into development?

[franz]

Say... what did Andy Davidson actually do anyway? I mean, in terms of design decisions. He made the original prototype Worms, sure, but that doesn't explain why everyone's thinking of him as a god now.

Firstly, ello! To you as everyone else here, it's good to be back

Need to get proper T17 address/username set-up again (it's been a while!), but was reading this thread at home and thought I'd fill you in on some backstory as I have been doing on NeoGAF.

The game I showed T17 in 1994 wasn't a prototype, it was Worms just 80% finished and under its working name which was Total Wormage. I'd been writing it on the Amiga for 4 years, it was originally just a game for me and my mates to avoid school-work

Over the next year T17 converted it to PC/PlayStation etc. while I finished off the Amiga one and put the last things in which was the new background graphics, and things like playing on custom levels and importing your own pictures.

After Worms 1 was released in 1995, I then started writing the Director's Cut which was also my way of prototyping all of the things I wanted to put in Worms 2. Drawing your own levels in the game also went in here, as well as everything from back jumps, air moves, Super Sheep, to Holy Hand Grenade and of course the almighty Concrete Donkey. It was essentially Worms 2 running in the engine of Worms 1. This version was very much a labour of love, to give the Amiga the best version of the game possible as a thank you. As without the Amiga I would never have been able to create it in the first place.

T17 used this at the basis for the gameplay in Worms 2. Armageddon was meant to be the last in a trilogy, that is why it was named that, and be the completed vision of what I had in my head. But for various reasons I wasn't able to get this to happen. There was a lot of ideas missing, and the 'last' game wasn't completely finished in my eyes and too close to Worms 2 to be a proper sequel.

It was after that I decided to walk away from my baby, which was an incredibly hard decision to do but the only one I felt comfortable with.

The environment at T17 is very different now, I liked it and it felt good to be back and an opportunity to not only help the series stay true to the spirit of the original games but also complete the vision for the game and do entirely new things as well.

Look forward to discussing things with you on here, I loved doing that on IRC in the early days, and I'm glad you liked my little game!

[Aerox]

there were numerous talks with Team17 about porting WA to steam. I spoke to Spadge numerous times on MSN about it and my conclusion is the following:

Team17 don't consider WA as their own. I doubt they even agreed with Andy's creative direction at the time, it shows with their newer games (and how they went to him for help when they realized how they were ruining the worms franchise). They hate that a game done by someone working at team17 that later left is their most popular and known title, their franchise game. They hate that they, as a full games company (albeit one whose goal is to be present in the Appstore) haven't managed to produce anything that WA fans consider better.
Man, you have to pity them, the one time they were closer to achieving similar level of popularity was when they basically copy and pasted Andy Davisons work (denying they did, which is further proof of what I'm saying here) and even then they failed, miserably (wwpep).


Don't you think they should be proud of having a game like WA still being popular so many years later? They're actually hoping Wormnet goes to hell. But it costs so little :>

[franz]

the t17 thread: http://forum.team17.com/showthread.php?t=55790

SupSuper in that thread puts it nicely as well:

Wow, Andy himself in here, I almost missed you with your regular nickname and non-bolded nickname, no offense. Rare to see any devs hanging around anymore, hope that trend changes.


As for the everlasting W:A argument, I hate to get into it, but I will just say this: W:A as it is now is not a Team17 game, it is a community game, and excepting/comparing any other Team17 game to it is completely pointless and nonsensical, as a game company does not work the way a community does.

Put simply, when W:A was a Team17 game, it followed the exact same cycle as all the other Worms games: released, people whined about bugs and issues, Team17 patched the most important stuff and moved on to the next game, repeat forever. Team17 didn't change, W:A did, it's community-driven so the development and fanbase process is completely different, it'll never be the same as any other Team17 game (and I don't mean they'll be better/worse/etc) . Get over it, or try to reproduce it yourself and see how that works out.

tl;dr: It's impossible for a Team17 game to be like W:A 3.5.x.

[HHC]

I wonder how long he will stay this time, prolly not too long..

It's easy to come up with a sweet game on your own, but when there's a whole company involved, and a whole bunch of people who have very different ideas about worms.. the end-result is generally a compromise that satisfies noone (certainly not the guy who invented the whole concept).

[Aerox]

I wonder how long he will stay this time, prolly not too long..

It's easy to come up with a sweet game on your own, but when there's a whole company involved, and a whole bunch of people who have very different ideas about worms.. the end-result is generally a compromise that satisfies noone (certainly not the guy who invented the whole concept).

but it's pretty obvious the concept changed. I'm no programmer but for me WA is built like a real world in a sense, you don't expect a grenade to bounce like that in real life but it makes sense in its context, it all feels right as if there was a gravity force and such ruling all the factors.

Newer worm games, specially the 2D ones seem to be built under different foundations, or at least a completely different order. They kept the main concept, the one noticed by anyone playing worms for the first time, but seemed to ignore all the things that made the game have longevity. WA always felt like a sandbox. New games will never.

[Anubis]

Well said ropa.

[chakkman]

As for the everlasting W:A argument, I hate to get into it, but I will just say this: W:A as it is now is not a Team17 game, it is a community game, and excepting/comparing any other Team17 game to it is completely pointless and nonsensical, as a game company does not work the way a community does.

Put simply, when W:A was a Team17 game, it followed the exact same cycle as all the other Worms games: released, people whined about bugs and issues, Team17 patched the most important stuff and moved on to the next game, repeat forever. Team17 didn't change, W:A did, it's community-driven so the development and fanbase process is completely different, it'll never be the same as any other Team17 game (and I don't mean they'll be better/worse/etc) . Get over it, or try to reproduce it yourself and see how that works out.

tl;dr: It's impossible for a Team17 game to be like W:A 3.5.x.

It wouldn't be the slightest problem to make a sequel to W:A, which feels and plays like it,  if they still have the program code and if any of their employees ever took the time to get deeper into w:a gameplay and if they listened a bit to what the players still playing this game like so much about it. I think the question is more if they really want to do a sequel to it, which is no obviously.

[darKz]

It wouldn't be the slightest problem to make a sequel to W:A, which feels and plays like it,  if they still have the program code and if any of their employees ever took the time to get deeper into w:a gameplay and if they listened a bit to what the players still playing this game like so much about it. I think the question is more if they really want to do a sequel to it, which is no obviously.

WA 4.0 wasn't officially cancelled or anything, just saying.

[chakkman]

WA 4.0 wasn't officially cancelled or anything, just saying.

I just hope it comes this century. But yeah, no need for a sequel if there's so much good coming.

[Hussar]

WA 4.0 wasn't officially cancelled or anything, just saying.

exactly.

and if I remember correctly, a "design progress" is going forward

[TheWalrus]

WA 4.0 wasn't officially cancelled or anything, just saying.

exactly.

and if I remember correctly, a "design progress" is going forward

I don't think that graphic means anything, it was exactly the same a year ago.  Unless nothing has been done on it in the last year.

[HHC]

Some screenshots: (oi, too wide for the forum, right click and 'view' or use the scrollbar at the bottom to view the whole map)




The terrain looks rather plain. Guess they put all the creativity into the border  

It looks decent though.. at least they sticked to a 2d concept. And the graphic style is pretty pleasant as well, as much as the objects look rather flat. The maps are very solid though (and large? ), they should have made the objects bigger or add bridges or something.  

The bubbles indicate the wind btw, I'm not sure if they affect the game in any way.