Game Update

Work on the gameplay continues, and we're really closing down on the game balance stuff now, and we're almost there. The similarities to the game in 2D is uncanny, but the progression from 2D Worms is pretty remarkable. The feel of the game is different, yet at the same time, comfortably familiar.

New strategies, play styles, game modes and suchlike will emerge and you'll also be able to play/recreate many of the old type of games. But it's important to understand that you won't be able to do things exactly like you could in 2d because it's all new and different. We've done certain things (like alter the energy transferred in blasts) to ensure the game plays well - but a lot of it will not be obvious at first.

Obviously, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Some will love it, some will think it's ok and we assume a few will find it not to their taste. Some people just don't like change and the hard-core fans are the hardest to satisfy - however, we can assure you that this *is* Worms in 3D :-)

Lots to do still... localise products (and demos), console demos, on-line testing and other stuff...


Weapon Update

Much talk on the forum is about weapons. What's in/out/new etc. Obviously, we can't reveal everything, but here's a brief list on current weapon technology/thinking.

If anything's been removed, replaced or re-engineered then we've done it for good reason. Some of the weapons did not have the same function in 3D or did not translate well and were removed. A number of weapons have gone that had very similar actions or properties - our aim wasn't to achieve a really high weapons count just for the sake of it, we wanted weapons that worked well and were better balanced.

The following weapons went in and were working but have since been removed (and no, they can't simply be switched back on due to us freeing memory & resources up on the console versions!)

Flamethrower (Just didn't work well - 3D flames are tricky to pull off and just don't look great in a cartoon environment)

Ming Vase (With Cows, Sheep, Bananas, Dynamite, HHG and something else, there was little room for it and we felt it was a bit tired)

Super Banana Bomb (As above)

Minigun (With shotgun and uzi, it was duplicating)

Dragonball (Looked a little weak and wasn't as effective in 3d, but Shotgun, Dragonpunch, Prod and Baseball Bat are available)

Mailstrike (Been replaced)

Skunk (Been replaced)

Longbow (Couldn't offer the same functionality in 3D - arrows couldn't be used as 'ladders' due to the scale issue. It was also difficult to precision aim an arrow in 3D)

Worms 3D is not the 2D game in its entirety transferred to 3D. In the process of remaking and re-energising the game many of the weapons have been expanded, enhanced and vitalised by the move. The rope's importance is lesser in the 3D game, but it's still useful for getting about, particularly if you have no Jetpac or Teleport. In addition, the back/fore flip jump lets you get around pretty well, fairly quickly and pretty intuitively. The Shotgun has some aiming 'wobble' that settles down after a period. We added this because it was too easy to use over long-distance. You also get less of them in the game because they are quite powerful. As mentioned above, we're still working hard on trying to make the game well balanced and not too reliant on particular weapons.


Demo Update

Due to requests to get the demo size down, the frontend has gone and so has the tutorial. So now it's a 2 player deathmatch with a limited weapons set. But it's just a demo, right?

Unfortunately, we have too much work on to just keep churning out different demos (like finish the game itself!) so plans for an enhanced demo including the removed frontend/tutorial have had to be shelved. Every time we produce a demo it has to be robustly tested here, at Sega (and 3rd party publishers) considered for CD, considered for download size, all kinds of stuff.

BTW Even cut down, the demo is about 50mb (which will frighten off dial-ups we imagine!) and the full game is over 1Gb of data now (as we mentioned last week).

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