PDA

View Full Version : Why they should make the next worms 2D again.


BIGBIRD
29 Jun 2006, 09:49
Why, they may ask?
1st: There are still plenty of good ideas that could be used in a 2D format that have not been utilized yet. I will suggest some that I have thought of later and I am sure you guys can add many.
2nd: Most true wormers know that the 2D ones were just more fun, period. Gameplay is always more important to true gamers.
3rd: 2D is a lot easier to make custom maps, flags, etc for.


Now for some ideas.
1st: The possibility of larger maps, and different shapes. I would love to see maps that were round like a planet and had a center of gravity so you could shoot someone with a bazooka like an ICBM. Also it would be nice to be able to have more than one center of gravity. Matbe make mini solar systems and have interplanetary war. Along with the bigger maps we also need more players.
2nd: If we get too many players we need an OPTION for either simultaneous play, every member of a team going together, or one from each team going together, etc. I emphasize the word OPTION since not everyone wants this in gameplay.
3rd: Better physics. I would love to see the OPTION of being able to set a TNT under a boulder and having it roll down a hill squashing the enemy. I would like to have the OPTION of pieces of land that do not have enough support collapsing and falling on worms. I would like different terrain types to offer different protection values. So a girder would guard you better than the same amount of dirt. We could have stone, steel, dirt, and more. Allow modification of all these options.
4th. Lasers. My WA case says lasers are in the game, they are not. I am still mad. I want gattling lasers, laser guided missles, laser guided air strikes, and sharks with frickin lasers on their fricken heads. Just kidding on that last one.
I would also love to see a new super weapon that was like a rail gun and could shoot through almost anything like a kamakaze but with more power.
5th Along with the new physics and huge maps we could have the OPTION of vehicles. It would be so cool to have your worm drive an assault buggy around and let your teammates shoot weapons off of it. Drving over bumps to fast could flip you on your back and spill you out. Airstrikes that you flew personally. The possibilities are vast.
6th. Customizable worms. We could war paint our worms like Braveheart, add tattoos, put funny hats on them. It should not be too hard to allow this.
7th. Real time lighting/shadows would be something that could be added to make the game more high tech.
8th. Make the OPTION for fog of war for us strategy purists, make is so our worm has to actually be able "see" the enemy before the player can see them. Would add a whole new dimension. You could guess where the enemy was if you caught a glimpse of him.

The best thing about all of this is that since it would be a 2D game no time-consuming 3D modeling would be required so all of the programming time could be used to make all these things possible. Feel free to comment on my ideas and add more of your own.

I want this to happen and if you do as well support this thread!

Thanks,
xSIRxBIGbirdx

RenBB
29 Jun 2006, 13:28
When you mention all these things like driving buggy's around 'n stuff, it would be better if there was an OPTION for realtime. Wouldn't that be awesome? Then you have like, 2 different types of gameplay, so that everybody will be happy and excited to play the game.

bonz
29 Jun 2006, 14:10
*YAWN*
http://www.nanacide.com/worms-unlimited/

Not again, please! :p

Paul.Power
29 Jun 2006, 18:26
*YAWN*
http://www.nanacide.com/worms-unlimited/

Not again, please! :pNice to see that WormTECH got remade.

RenBB
29 Jun 2006, 23:23
Guys guys, i do know that the realtime part has been discussed more than a 100 times, but that's JUST the reason why team17 has to put in into an option. That way everybody would be happy and we will never have to go over that part again...

AndrewTaylor
29 Jun 2006, 23:53
Guys guys, i do know that the realtime part has been discussed more than a 100 times, but that's JUST the reason why team17 has to put in into an option. That way everybody would be happy and we will never have to go over that part again...
Yes, but that options changes the gameplay so fundamentally that the balance would be thrown out, the online system would be an absolute nightmare to code and probably lag like hell, the AI would need an entirely different set of algorithms in realtime than it would in turn-based, the controls and camera would need two different rulesets to keep track of everything in both modes... It would be almost as much work as it would be to make two seperate games, one realtime and one turn based.

It's not just a matter of dropping in a checkbox and allowing two players to move at once. I expect T17 could do that if they wanted. It has knock-on effects that reach a lot further than you'd think at first.

The question is not would it be a good game, but would enough extra people buy the game if it were realtime too to justify all this extra work. The answer, I suspect, is no. I expect -- and I'm really just speculating here so don't pretend I'm any kind of an expert -- that the people who would like this addition to the game are a minority group of the minority group we call "the worms community". The average Joe XBox probably wouldn't know the difference or, having been told, care.

RenBB
29 Jun 2006, 23:59
Well, seeing the time they spend on worms 3d, I guess it's not that hard to program some stuff in 2d. And I know it's not just "some" stuff. But if t17 really wants to get people to buy a new 2d worms game. And with that, I mean real big audiences, they'll have to work very hard on it.

Kelster23
1 Jul 2006, 04:54
I'm confused...if worms went real time, would it be alot like...I don't know....Conker(?), except worms would be running around all the time? Does this mean it would be like Worms-Style Halo?

BuffaloKid
1 Jul 2006, 08:10
No, because as far as this thread's concerned, it's 2D. It would just be your enemy(s) moving about at the same time as you. I think.

RenBB
1 Jul 2006, 08:17
Consider it a bit as Soldat, only with waaaaay improved graphics and some enhanced gameplay. If players just want the old turnbased gameplay, they go to "Options", "Gameplay options" and then turn it off.:)

SupSuper
1 Jul 2006, 15:06
I still can't imagine how to easily manage a whole team in real time, unless each player got reduced to one worm.

Zero86
2 Jul 2006, 17:18
I see in it a problem too, when you have lets say 6 Worms on the field and You move + 4 other people in Online move ... well i dont know
Its pretty chaotic to me, i would stick by the Turn Based Gameplay

BIGBIRD
3 Jul 2006, 04:30
I was unaware of that site, but the fact remains that there are a ton of cool things that they can still do in 2d and since most wormers agree that the 2d games are more fun they should make another. As far as real time goes I think the best bet would be to do a combination of RT and TB. Make it so you only control one worm in RT per turn but everyone can go at once. Or everyone on one team then the other team. If anyone has played Fallout Tactics they know a combination of the two is possible.

KamikazeBananze
3 Jul 2006, 13:56
OK, let's go through this:


Now for some ideas.
1st: The possibility of larger maps, and different shapes. I would love to see maps that were round like a planet and had a center of gravity so you could shoot someone with a bazooka like an ICBM. Also it would be nice to be able to have more than one center of gravity. Matbe make mini solar systems and have interplanetary war. Along with the bigger maps we also need more players.

Round maps are harder to code, I think. You'd have to code in to each one "And when a worm/object is HERE, it falls THIS WAY." The maps'd also be enormous. As a result, it would be harder to control your worms within the turn time, since you'd have to continuously scroll all the way round the map to find targets.

And that interplanetary war thing would be far too big. Too many players spoil the game. Or, in this case, slow it WAY down. How many strategy games have options for more than 8 players, 10 at most? The point of strategy is using fiendish, cunning plans to rout your enemy. If there are too many players/worms, it turns into a farce. That's why, in all worms games, the more players there are, the less worms.

Well, that and engine limitations, I'm guessing.

Oh, and referring to your ICBM idea: already in there. Worms has a marked centre of gravity, as well as wind. This allows you to blow a worm away from the other side of the map. If you're using it in conjunction with your "round map" idea, then never mind.


2nd: If we get too many players we need an OPTION for either simultaneous play, every member of a team going together, or one from each team going together, etc. I emphasize the word OPTION since not everyone wants this in gameplay.

Re-reading this idea, it's actually very incoherent. So I've no concrete idea of what you're suggesting.

Simultaneous control? That would be very hard to do in Worms, especially in the 30 second turn limit. Especially on those enormous maps you suggested.

If you mean teams of worms, the first idea is horrible. Moving eight worms at the same time? HOW??

And the second idea makes no sense.

If you meant player teams, then what happens if there are no teams?


3rd: Better physics. I would love to see the OPTION of being able to set a TNT under a boulder and having it roll down a hill squashing the enemy. I would like to have the OPTION of pieces of land that do not have enough support collapsing and falling on worms. I would like different terrain types to offer different protection values. So a girder would guard you better than the same amount of dirt. We could have stone, steel, dirt, and more. Allow modification of all these options.

I think some of these were in Worms 2. Not sure though. Haven't played it in a while.

Part of the fun of Worms, for me at least, is that you can have floating platforms. You can shoot out the bottom of a landform to get at an enemy, while leaving the upper layers intact.

Interesting fact: Implementing this kind of physics would mean that girders would no longer work. They float. Therefore, they wouldn't.

If you want the Newtonian laws of physics to apply only to land... Well then, floating land is gone. No, floating land already there wouldn't remain there. By the laws of physics, it should fall. And cause a horrible coding error, since it wasn't supposed to.

Your differential protection idea doesn't seem too bad, though.


4th. Lasers. My WA case says lasers are in the game, they are not. I am still mad. I want gattling lasers, laser guided missles, laser guided air strikes, and sharks with frickin lasers on their fricken heads. Just kidding on that last one.
I would also love to see a new super weapon that was like a rail gun and could shoot through almost anything like a kamakaze but with more power.

Lasers might be fun, I'll admit. However, there's no real point to them. They would fulfill the purpose as weapons that are already in there. Gattling lasers? Miniguns, Uzis. Laser-guided missiles? Homing Missiles, Homing Pigeons, and, in a small way, Super Sheep. Laser-guided airstrikes? Strike weapons.

And your super-weapon idea is far too powerful. And has no specifics. How far does it fire? How much damage does it do? That sort of thing.

By the way, I think there's a Weapons Ideas thread. Post weapon ideas there please. Unless it's been dead for a month. In which case, necromancy is frowned upon in these forums.


5th Along with the new physics and huge maps we could have the OPTION of vehicles. It would be so cool to have your worm drive an assault buggy around and let your teammates shoot weapons off of it. Drving over bumps to fast could flip you on your back and spill you out. Airstrikes that you flew personally. The possibilities are vast.

I've already talked about enormous maps and physics.

Driving an assault buggy? That would be cool. However, at the end of turn, would it still be there? Would it be like a part of the terrain? Like a siege tower?

And spilling your teammates, if you're playing with teammates, would get you yelled at, especially if they fell out over water, or a minefield.

And would the airstrike be controlled by a worm? In which case, you'd probably lose a worm. Is it controlled by you? In that case, the various strike/homing weapons already do that.

I'm getting the feeling you're trying to make Worms into a new UT2k4.


6th. Customizable worms. We could war paint our worms like Braveheart, add tattoos, put funny hats on them. It should not be too hard to allow this.

That's in Worms 4 already. I think T17 have already mentioned something about this.


7th. Real time lighting/shadows would be something that could be added to make the game more high tech.

Please see my UT2k4 comment for Point 5. Thank you.


8th. Make the OPTION for fog of war for us strategy purists, make is so our worm has to actually be able "see" the enemy before the player can see them. Would add a whole new dimension. You could guess where the enemy was if you caught a glimpse of him.

Hmmm... Fog of war... A possibility... But the game would last for too long, if using your bigger maps idea.

And, about the Fallout Tactics idea. Fallout is isometric. Worms is side-on. Fallout has hexes. Worms has a time-limit. Fallout Tactics was panned by fans and critics alike.

Worms in real-time is not Worms. That's the dark of it. Fallout is a turn-based, isometric RPG. Worms is a turn-based free-for-all. Worms and Fallout use turns to limit choices and promote strategy. Even part-real-time wouldn't be Worms.

Your real-time ideas fail to take into account turn-time. Fallout has Action Points. Worms has a timer. As a result, when a worm attacks, the turn's over. Eight worms moving at once, even if you're only controlling one, makes the game less a strategy, and more of a slugathon. Each team doing everything until the turn ends is "Firing a Weapon Doesn't End Your Turn Mode" from WWP's Wormpot, and using Worm Select. Otherwise, controlling eight worms at once would take some time. In RTS games, units tend to have only one weapon.

Taking Red Alert 2, GIs have short-range weak machine guns, tanks have more powerful longer-ranged guns, and aircraft drop things on people. In Worms, each worm has the same amount of weaponry. Thus, if a GI encountered a Conscript, he would open fire with his machine gun. If a worm met another worm, he could open fire with an Uzi, a Handgun, a Shotgun, a Minigun, throw a nade, a Cluster Bomb, hit the worm with a Baseball Bat, use a Banana, Drill the worm, Blowtorch the worm, zook the worm, drop a Mine or Dynamite, punch or DBall the worm, etc.

And do you have any statistics that prove that most Wormers prefer 2D Worms?

By the way, just looked at that site. Lotsa ideas.

As an aside:

1) How many of these ideas did you come up with after playing an FPS?
2) Why do you say option all in caps so much? Stop shouting.

Plasma
3 Jul 2006, 14:51
Round maps are harder to code, I think. You'd have to code in to each one "And when a worm/object is HERE, it falls THIS WAY." The maps'd also be enormous. As a result, it would be harder to control your worms within the turn time, since you'd have to continuously scroll all the way round the map to find targets.
1: The gravity would be the easiest part of round maps to code. All you do is set the direction of the gravity to the x and y coordinates of the center of the land mass.
2: If there was another 2D game (for other than the handhelds), it would most likely include a zoom in/out feature anyway.

Run
3 Jul 2006, 14:55
I still can't imagine how to easily manage a whole team in real time, unless each player got reduced to one worm.

That's something I discussed here

http://www.nanacide.com/worms-unlimited/realtime.php

Run
3 Jul 2006, 14:58
Worms in real-time is not Worms.

Oh don't even go there.

SupSuper
3 Jul 2006, 16:22
That's something I discussed here

http://www.nanacide.com/worms-unlimited/realtime.phpI read that, but your idea is mainly reducing the teams or just make the whole thing more complex.

I've also pondered having the other worms controlled by AI like in squad-based games, but in a game like Worms that'd probably cause much more havoc when the AI is too good / too crappy.

AndrewTaylor
3 Jul 2006, 16:56
1: The gravity would be the easiest part of round maps to code. All you do is set the direction of the gravity to the x and y coordinates of the center of the land mass.
Yes, but the gravity would cause problems as well -- I know, because I made a game much like that (http://apathysketchpad.com/index.php?id=code/grav05) in 2003. If you don't have much land left you could get into a situation where a shell comes to rest in the centre of the planet, or enters a rough low-Earth orbit for a couple of weeks before hitting home.

W:A has a failsafe fuse time built into all weapons just in case something like that happens, (what most people think is an invisible wall way out to sea), but when it happenned fairly regularly right in the middle of the screen that wouldn't be so satisfactory. You could always have a circle of water in the middle of the map, but that would look mighty strange.

I solved it by allowing players to skip to the impact -- if there was an impact.

Muzer
3 Jul 2006, 19:51
I know! There's moultem alva in the middle of the planet!

Run
3 Jul 2006, 20:18
Actually that'll be an iron core.

KamikazeBananze
4 Jul 2006, 15:06
I thought it was a combination of iron and granite. So hot that they run together.

With the lava somewhere between the core and the surface.

AndrewTaylor
4 Jul 2006, 15:53
I thought it was a combination of iron and granite. So hot that they run together.

With the lava somewhere between the core and the surface.
Granite? Never heard of that. Granite isn't even a chemical -- it's made up of all kinds of things.

Iron and nickel, the Earth's core is. How is this relevant?

KamikazeBananze
4 Jul 2006, 17:40
...

I'm not entirely sure.

Thanks for the info though. I'll remember that if I'm ever on Mastermind.

Drunk-worm
19 Jul 2006, 10:13
Well, for a new 2D Worms game, if they ever make one. I say they should give it a New Super Mario Bros. style 2D/3D makeover... As mentioned in another topic. It'd not only look good, but allow for customisation of our little invertabrate friends again.

Evil Bunny
24 Jul 2006, 17:45
Here's 1 reason why not: 2D games dont sell.

Kelster23
25 Jul 2006, 03:35
...unless they're for gameboy! :rolleyes: :p

SupSuper
25 Jul 2006, 18:02
In fairness, there's not that many good GBA titles.

KamikazeBananze
25 Jul 2006, 19:51
Poking Monsters did well.

Paul.Power
25 Jul 2006, 22:05
In fairness, there's not that many good GBA titles.Do you mean released recently, or in general?

Because, err, AW, AW2, Sonic Advance, Pinball Challenge*...

* Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies on one GBA cartridge. How cool is that?

SupSuper
26 Jul 2006, 11:12
Do you mean released recently, or in general?

Because, err, AW, AW2, Sonic Advance, Pinball Challenge*...

* Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies on one GBA cartridge. How cool is that?In general. Whenever I look at a GBA section, most of what I see are crappy games based off cartoons/movies/whatever, or lots of existing games dumbed down for the GBA, or lots of old games ported for it. Some may be good, but most weren't even originally made for GBA anyways.

AndrewTaylor
26 Jul 2006, 12:18
In general. Whenever I look at a GBA section, most of what I see are crappy games based off cartoons/movies/whatever, or lots of existing games dumbed down for the GBA, or lots of old games ported for it. Some may be good, but most weren't even originally made for GBA anyways.
Mario Versus Donkey Kong, Chu Chu Rocket, Mario And Luigi Superstar Saga... There are hundreds of good Game Boy games, especially if you include legacy GameBoy titles like Tetris, Tetris Attack, and WarioLand.

Yes, 90% of GBA games are crud. But that is because of Sturgeon's law. The same reason 90% of X-Box games and 90% of PSP games and 90% of T17 forum users are crud. 90% of everything is crud.

The Game Boy gets a slightly raw deal because it's so cheap and easy to develop for that you can knock out a rubbish game much more easily, but it also gets a good deal because Nintendo make games for it. So it's swings and roundabouts, really.

Muzer
26 Jul 2006, 17:45
dARE i mention WWP GBA?

SupSuper
26 Jul 2006, 18:03
dARE i mention WWP GBA?In fairness, it was better than the previous GameBoy ports. Just not a whole lot. :p

Paul.Power
26 Jul 2006, 18:16
In fairness, it was better than the previous GameBoy ports. Just not a whole lot. :pOh I dunno, WGB was okay.

WAGBC now... that was pretty dire.

quakerworm
27 Jul 2006, 10:04
WAGBC now... that was pretty dire.
don't remind me. i still wake up at nights, screaming.