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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:53:29 GMT 1
#7: Pre-phase II additions
At the moment development on the game is slightly stilted as I'm setting up the team for next month's 'second wave testing' and can't make any major changes to the game until that is done. As a result, the past few days have been going through and making a lot of smaller changes that I can code and test in a short space of time. In this entry I'll just be going through some of them.
Filtering Alumni: The alumni page for each company can now be filtered. By default, it no longer shows people who were only in short-term (such as loans / trades / etc), but on-screen tick boxes allow you to filter them back in if you want.
Disposition Strictness: A new setting in a company's product is how strict they enforce their disposition split, if they have one. This ranges from not at all to extremely strict. The stricter it is, the bigger the penalties when you do face vs face, heel vs heel, etc. This would allow, for example, a company to have faces and heels in effect but to be able to book them against each other without penalties.
AI Surgeries: The AI can now send its injured workers for surgery just like a player can.
Spoils Of War: If a company goes bankrupt then anyone they're in a significant war with automatically gains a company-wide morale boost for "winning the war".
Neutral Chemistry: When the player finds neutral chemistry this is now stored, a handy reminder that you don't need to re-check it in future.
Apply All Broadcaster Changes: Similar to the existing Apply All Agers in the worker mass editor, broadcasters can now have all their relevant Broadcaster Changes applied automatically too.
#8: Pre-phase II additions (part II)
As with the previous entry, I'm still adding in smaller features while I give the new testers a few days to get used to the new game, so this is just keeping everyone up to date with what those are.
Upgrading Venues: If the user owns a venue they can now choose, via the Investments screen, to spend money to upgrade the capacity.
Reign Length: On the various title screens, the current reign's length in days is now shown (unless it's vacant or the database has been set up in a way where the reign's start date is unavailable).
Product When Choosing Company: When choosing a company to play as the product screen is now available, giving the user more information as to what they can expect / would be expected of them if they go ahead and become booker.
PM Event Rename: The user can now rename events while in PM mode. This is useful if you want to reference the main event's name but don't know exactly what that will be until you've finished booking.
Narrative Chance: Narratives can now be given a chance between 1% and 100% of whether they happen or not. This allows database makers to include a degree of randomness.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:54:22 GMT 1
#9: Social media storms
While finishing off the design work for the new gimmick system I'm adding in a new feature, social media storms.
The way this works is that every now and again a worker will find themselves at the centre of a social media storm whereby something they've done - 'liked' a controversial post, made some ill-advised comments, criticised the wrong person - blows up and becomes a major story. Their employer will then have to decide how to deal with it, whether by simply waiting for it to blow over, not using that worker for a while, making a statement, releasing them, etc.
These are slightly different to other decisions in the game in that they're not always one-off; they can branch out based on what approach you take and become multi-part stories. So, bungling your handling of it could make things worse and stretch it out for longer than it should run, for example.
This isn't going to be a huge part of the game, but it's a nice extra dose of reality and something extra to make the game world come alive.
Obviously this feature is time-locked to the modern age.
#10: Regular social media
With the social media storms now finished, the rest of the week's work will be devoted to a related feature, the regular use of social media.
The way that this works is very simply to produce regular social media based stories that make the game world feel more alive. Usually this will involve two workers interacting in some way; this could be a grouchy veteran complaining that 'kids these days can't work' and get rebuked by a hot young talent; it could be a star giving props to a promising youngster; it could be two workers getting into a pointless argument over something; and so forth. There'll be a ton of different types so that it doesn't get repetitive. It's linked to personality and the individual's stats, so people won't be acting 'out of character'.
Sometimes nothing will come of these interactions, but other times it will trigger fall out. This could be the development of a new relationship between the workers, a morale boost, or even a small skill boost if they learn something from the encounter.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:55:43 GMT 1
#11: Gimmick week, initial testing
This week will be spent entirely on the new gimmick feature. The design work is finished - it's based very closely on what I've posted previously, so there's no big surprises there - so it's just a matter of coding it all in now. Given how tightly wrapped into the game gimmicks are, this is one of the more fiddly and time-consuming changes and so I'm probably not going to be making many, if any, posts for the rest of this week. The hope is to have it finished in seven days so that I can do a post detailing the finalised feature next Monday.
In the meantime, testing is continuing behind the scenes. At this early stage it's mostly tidying up errors that have slipped through the cracks and polishing up features that the new testers think are too confusing / not working well enough.
Early reactions have been super positive, which is always nice, and it's been particularly good to see that some of the new AI features are working well. To give just one example, a tester reported that SWF managed to turn Jefferson Stardust into a star by strapping a rocket to him and getting him from 58 to 81 popularity in a twelve month period. With the AI now being much better at making stars, it really opens up a whole new aspect of the game as it becomes less about relying on signings.
#12: Gimmicks
With the new gimmicks feature now added, today's entry will go through how it looks. I'm really pleased with how it has ended up and the reaction from the testers has been very positive, so I think this will probably end up being one of the most popular alterations.
When you're in the game and viewing a gimmick what you'll see is its name, it's rating, and a list of pros and cons. In TEW2016 some gimmick types had in-built pros and cons, such as 'legitimate' gimmicks getting penalised if they list to 'comedy' gimmicks; TEW2020 takes this further by having many different possible pros and cons which can be linked to a gimmick. More on this in a little while.
In terms of how long a gimmick lasts, tweaking it, and how its rating goes up and down over time, that is all the same mechanics as TEW2016.
When you want to make a gimmick change you first pick a name for the new gimmick, then select a Basis: this is from a selection that includes things like Realistic, Legitimate, Comedy, Mysterious / Occult, etc. They're slightly different from the TEW2016 categories as I wanted to make them a little more intuitive (I'll give a full list at some point in the future when they're finalised). The Basis is important as it tells the game what the underlying feel of the gimmick is, how it will interact with other gimmicks, and what sort of pros and cons are potentially appropriate.
Once you've done that, you then select your aim. You have a 5 x 5 grid and you position your aim simply by clicking the square you want to use.
Running from left to right is the Generic - Unique scale. The more Generic your aim (i.e. the further to the left you go), the more familiar and easy to grasp your gimmick is. This means its unlikely to get a poor rating, but its also correspondingly unlikely to get a really high rating. However, the more Unique you go (i.e. the further to the right), the more 'out there' it is, so you run a bigger risk of it flopping badly but also get a better chance of catching lightning in a bottle and getting a really high rating.
Running from top to bottom is the Creative - Safe scale. The more Safe you go (i.e. the closer to the bottom of the grid), the longer the gimmick is likely to last but it can generally be tweaked less and you'll get less pros and cons attached. If you go more Creative (i.e. upward), again, the opposite happens; you run the risk of it burning out quicker but you will likely get more pros and cons attached.
As the player, you can therefore pick the approach that you feel is best for each worker. You might go into the extreme bottom left hand corner - Ultra Generic, Ultra Safe - because you are happy with just a standard gimmick that isn't going to have much in the way of a positive or negative effect on the worker. You might go dead in the center of the grid and take the 'standard' approach. Or you might decide to go into the bottom right, taking a big risk with the rating but playing it safe in terms of the pros and cons and length. It gives the user a lot of freedom to try different things. It also means that for workers you're not that bothered about you don't really even have to put much effort in - leave the aim in the center, pick a name, pick a Basis, done: literally a few seconds at most.
Unlike TEW2016, there's no need to fiddle around having to find a gimmick that 'fits' as the game takes it as granted that you aren't doing something stupid like giving a female-only gimmick to a man, etc. This was always a flaw in the old method anyway, given that it was easy to get around just by cloning a gimmick and altering its requirements.
When you perform a gimmick change the game uses the basis and aim to work out how the gimmick turns out. The rating is the same format as you have with TEW2016 - you'll see that it is Awful, Adequate, Legendary, etc. As discussed above, the number of pros and cons you get is linked directly to how Creative you've gone. You might end up with absolutely none, or you may end up with 5 or 6 (or more!). There is an in-built list of potential pros and cons, some of which are only available for specific Basis types, some of which are universal. For example, "Gets a bonus for being in comedy matches" is a possible pro if you've chosen to use a Comedy Basis, but isn't available for Legitimate. "Extremely marketable, boosts a worker's merchandise sales" is available for almost all the Basis types however.
The pros and cons cover lots of things: who they can lose to ("Is penalised for losing to Comedy gimmicks"), their merchandise sales (see above), their skills ("Receives a boost to their Star Quality during matches and angles), how wins and losses affect them ("Wins have more impact on popularity than normal"), etc, etc, so they can really impact how you're likely to book someone.
Overall, this removes a lot of the fiddliness from the gimmicks section - no more scrolling through lists or searching for specific variations of the same gimmick - in favour of a much more user friendly, intuitive approach. The only limit is the user's imagination. With the new pros and cons system, you're adding a lot more depth too, as the pros and cons you get can significantly impact your future plans for a worker. Having a risk pay off and land you with a gimmick that's highly rated and that comes with some great pros and few negatives could be the difference between a worker being your next world champion or an also-ran.
Incidentally, as they're such a big part of the game, the pros and cons are easily accessible throughout the game - they're one click away on all the rosters and booking screens.
The TEW2016 Gimmick file does remain in TEW2020, but is now renamed Gimmick Ideas. The way this works is that when you're making a gimmick change you can click a button called 'Give me inspiration' and this will load up a searchable list where you can see all the gimmicks that would fit that worker based on the criteria. Clicking one will automatically fill in the name and Basis of your proposed gimmick change for you. This file isn't required, so if database makers don't want to fill it in there's no penalty or potential issue, but it's there for people who like having something to jog their memory or give them ideas.
#13: Performance skill revamp
One area that has been totally revamped in the worker performance skills, which in TEW2016 covered face and heel performance and each of the gimmick-related performances (i.e. Brute, Weasel, etc).
Faces and Heels
The old face and heel performance skills are now replaced entirely with attributes. The time-saving concept here is that as most real life wrestlers are perfectly capable of playing babyface and heel, if there are no related attributes present then the game assumes that they can play both. This saves database makers a significant amount of time as it means that for most workers they don't have to do a thing, and is more intuitive for players as you're not looking at abstract numbers but seeing text telling you explicitly if they can or can't play face or heel.
There are a variety of attributes present, allowing workers to be set as only able to play one or the other, to be able to play both but have a preference, and also to be extremely good at one, both, or neither. These attributes allow the game to know whether someone is in a role that they struggle at, whether they should get bonus points, and (for AI hiring) what their initial disposition should be.
Gimmick Performance
Likewise, the gimmick performances are now also no longer 0-100 stats but are entirely done by attributes. Again, this allows some major time-saving because the game can assume that if it isn't explicitly told so via an attribute that the worker is neither horrible at the role nor amazing at it - they're simply capable of playing it without any bonuses or penalties being needed. As most workers are able to play a wide variety of roles this means far less work for database makers and less abstract numbers for the player to go over.
For each gimmick basis there are two attributes, allowing the database maker to say whether the worker is unable to play that role or whether they should get a bonus because they're so good at it.
Obviously the gimmick performance attributes have slightly different names from the ones you're used to in TEW2016 as they match the new basis types used in TEW2020, as mentioned in the previous entry.
With all these new attributes this also improves the user friendliness of the game because you can clearly see each worker's attribute list from rosters, worker screens, etc, so you don't have to click multiple windows to find out what dispositions and gimmicks they can do.
Note that the TEW2016->TEW2020 converter automatically fills in attributes based upon each worker's TEW2016 stats, so a converted database will already be set up with all of this filled in.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:56:37 GMT 1
#14: Tidying up
The last few days have mostly been spent polishing up the new gimmick feature. This has primarily been about cleaning up the screens, adding in extra pros and cons, and working on making it user friendly.
With the latter in mind, there are a couple of new parts when running a show. When you made a manual gimmick change in TEW2016 you'd just get a message saying what its initial rating was. In the new game, what we have instead is a custom pop-up that gives you both the rating and a list of the pros and cons; as they're so important, it's more user friendly to have them listed immediately rather than having the user have to go and investigate later. In addition, there's a new "Gimmick Recap" button at the bottom of the screen. Clicking this gives the same pop-up as above, but for everyone whose gimmick has changed during the segment; this means that you cover both manual gimmick changes and those that happened automatically (such as for debuting workers).
As I mentioned when phase 2 of the journal started, today also marks the cut-off point where we move from adding new features into polishing up what we have. This is always a bittersweet part of the development cycle as it's a big milestone in moving towards the eventual release but also means that a lot of features don't make the cut - although the game has well over 250 additions and changes, when you consider that we start out with well over 1500 possible features / suggestions it means that more things don't make the cut than do. I had been hoping to add a feature to include blading in matches and angles for example, but ultimately that didn't come to fruition and so won't make the final cut (pun unintended).
That's not to say that there won't be more changes or smaller additions over the next few months - sometimes testing throws up places where it's necessary or appropriate - it just means that that is no longer the focus. As such, the journal will be more about talking about the process from now on rather than being about announcements.
#15: A quiet week
This week has been pretty uneventful, hence the lack of posts. As I mentioned in my last entry, this week was all about adding in new product types, nearly doubling the amount that were previously in. This took far longer than expected due to the complexity. In the meantime, I was also busy fixing various bugs that the testing team found.
There are a few very minor changes that have been made over the past few weeks that haven't been commented on yet, so I'll be using today's entry just to go over them for completeness.
New Narrative Types: A handful of new types have been added, including the ability to alter alliance, media group, and training facility details, change a worker's star quality, and have workers gain attributes that see them enter into a world outside of wrestling (like acting).
Warning On Title Matches: As someone requested it, the game will warn you if you book a title match and don't select a winner; this helps avoid unintentional title changes.
Meddling Changes: When meddling with relationships (in the PM locker room controls) the screen has now been redesigned to give the user a clearer idea of the chance of success or failure when positively or negatively interfering. This makes things more intuitive and user friendly.
Editor's Whiteboard: The editor now has a 'whiteboard' integrated into it; this is effectively a big notepad where people can record notes, thoughts, future plans, etc. This can be used to help keep track of what's going on or what is needed, and should be helpful for databases that have more than one person working on them.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:57:25 GMT 1
#16: Masked worker names
A new addition that I made on a whim over the weekend is to have masked wrestlers now get gimmicked names when they debut into the game world.
The way that this works is that when a freshly generated character appears who has a mask, the game will try and give them a gimmicky name - this will usually be a two-term phrase like "Blue Eagle", "Golden Tiger", "Midnight Ninja", etc.
They will automatically create a Legacy entry, so if you do happen to play for several years and that character is successful, you will likely see the mask get passed on to a younger character - "Blue Eagle Jr", "Golden Tiger II", etc.
As the game has no way of knowing what the mask in the picture actually is, you can of course end up with mismatches, such as "Blue Eagle" having a red-coloured mask, but, as the only way around that would be to have database makers fill in a whole bunch of information on the colour and design of every mask in the Free Pictures section, I think this this is a relatively small minor negative for a feature that brings a big positive to the game - the user can always rename anyone who ends up with a mismatch if they really want to.
The worker's real name is still generated at the same time, and is referenced in their biography (i.e. you'll see "Golden Tiger (James Smith) is a....").
#17: Testing and other things
This will be more of a peak-behind-the-curtain type of entry as frankly there isn't a lot of interesting stuff happening to talk about this week.
At the moment the main focus of the team is on general testing; that is, just play-testing over and over to try and uncover bugs and issues. We're only seeing 2-3 errors per day of testing at the moment, which is a really positive result at this early stage. We are doing a lot of tweaking at the same time. To give one example, a tester noticed that the Classic Mainstream Puro product, designed as an analogue of NJPW, was too severe on comedic wrestlers, thus making Toru Yano unable to work there. As a result, some tweaks were made to address that. While these little tweaks aren't particularly newsworthy, they add up over time and will give a much better end product.
While the testing team are doing that, I'm working on the task of getting the screens designed so that they're ready to have their interface graphics applied. This is spectacularly dull for the most part as it's literally just moving borders around, but where possible I am also updating screens to make them more user friendly.
For example, the old availability calendar has been reworked so that rather than using green ticks, red crosses, and "ticket" icons to show the information - a system that works but requires a fair bit of clicking - this is now done by having the date written down the left hand side, any events on that date to the right, then a list of unavailable workers beside that. This means that the same information is available as before but without the need for any clicking at all, taking advantage of the new wider screen size.
In a similar vein, a new calendar has been introduced that gives a "desktop diary" style view where you can see three months at once where all the events and TV shows you have are shown. This gives the user an instant overview and is much handier when planning ahead during booking, advance booking, etc, scheduling, etc. To avoid confusion, the old calendar is now simply called Availability, the new "desktop diary" one is called Calendar.
There is one actual new addition to the game to announce, which is that the Hall of Immortals and Hall of Fame(s) now have an additional entry, Epic Reigns. These are for major title reigns that go ten or more defences. Simply winning a title is now less powerful than it used to be. This allows the game to differentiate between short and long reigns and rewards the latter as being more impressive.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:59:24 GMT 1
#20: Auto booker, redo schedule
With work on the auto booker well under way, I thought I'd outline some of the design work that's gone into it. Bear in mind that I'm still in the very early stages of writing it given that it's such a huge task, so things might change between now and completing it.
The first and most significant change is that I'm trying to allow it to take into account the existing bookings. This means that you should be able to book a few matches if you wish, then hit the auto booker to fill in the rest, with the game understanding what you've already done. Or you could use the TEW2016ish method where you give it a blank canvas to work from. This approach should be more user friendly and useful.
Another change is that along with the on-screen list of which members of your roster you want to be eligible for inclusion, there's now an "Auto Selection" button - this automatically excludes people who aren't appropriate, whether that's because they're too fatigued, or the show isn't one they'd be likely to work (such as not having your superstar main eventers on a B show). You can of course then disregard any or all of what the selection comes out as. Again, this is just some extra user friendliness.
In terms of the actual booking, as previous mentioned this uses the AI code - which is working extremely well and giving out some really cool, realistic shows in testing - as the basis, just tweaked so that it takes into account that this is a player-controlled how rather than AI (so doing things like match lengths). As it is based on the AI, this means that it can automatically take context into account - i.e. it's not going to put a killer card together for a throwaway show, tour shows will have an abundance of tag matches, etc, etc.
Currently the four options you'll get are Book Whole Show (which takes into account your existing bookings, as covered previously), Book Only Matches (which is the same, just leaving angles to you), Book One Match (where you'll get a suite of options similar to the ones in TEW2016 where you can specific what level, what division, etc), and Book One Angle. The latter two are there primarily for "gap filling".
As I mentioned, this is a huge task - it's the last major coding part left - so this is probably going to take a week or two to get finished, but if everything works out this should be a big upgrade on TEW2016.
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There's one new addition to the game to mention, which is in the scheduling section. Players now have a Redo Schedule button. What this does is allow you to totally recreate a schedule from scratch, with the ability to choose from any of the pre-written options (such as Monthly, Tour, Seasons, etc). This isn't going to be a feature that'll get a lot of use for most players, but for those who move from a normal to touring schedule (or vice versa) this is going to be invaluable as otherwise you'd be looking at a fairly major amount of work - this new feature gets rid of that task for you.
#21: More auto booker
This will just be a small update to keep everyone in the loop.
Work has continued on the auto booker all through this past week and is going extremely well. Getting it to be able to successfully understand what the player has already booked and take that into consideration was the hardest part, but that is now done and working well. As you'd expect, it works best with a completely blank slate because it doesn't have any restrictions, but it's certainly nice that you can book a few key matches that you really want to see and then fill in the rest via the auto booker.
There is still some tweaking and adjusting to do to get the feature to a finished state, but it's already producing some really good bookings and will only get better with further work. Next week will be all about finishing that part off and also giving the option to auto book single segments rather than an entire card.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:59:59 GMT 1
#22: Products and matches
With the auto booker now pretty much complete, needing little more than some final polishing at this stage, that means that all the big coding-intensive features are done. The next few weeks are therefore going to be about going through and tidying up, adding, and tweaking some of the other features.
One thing that is a continual process is adding to the products. There's two things in particular that I'll be working on for the next few days.
The first is to have products recognise unsuitable matches. The way this is going to work is that the crowd will react badly to certain match set ups. For example, if you're using a 1990's AJPW-style product and book a match which has tables, ladders, and chairs in it, the fans will be annoyed. Book a match with barbed wire or fire and they'll be totally turned off.
The second is having certain match aims either be turned off or penalised by product. For example, if you're using a very kid-friendly product then the Deathmatch and Hardcore aims will either be automatically hidden from the list of potential aims or you'll get penalised for using them. At the moment I'm leaning towards the former method, as I think that's the most user friendly option and removes the chance of someone accidentally booking an aim that would cause them to get heavily penalised.
As with all the other product-related pros and cons, these will be listed on-screen when viewing the product so the user will have all the information visible to them.
#23: Coming schedule
The product-related additions that I mentioned in my previous entry are now done. Rather than hide the match aims I've instead decided to leave them available, but you will get a warning from your road agent if you try and use one that would result in a penalty. This seems like a good compromise between being user friendly but still allowing people to go full-on sandbox if they want.
The current schedule is to now move on to start adding in a lot of the attributes that people suggested (in the Attribute Suggestions thread) and to let my testers do some longer-term games to see how that unfolds. That should take us nicely into November where we can start finishing up the product section.
Regarding the default database, I have made some progress on putting together a lot of my notes - when I say that I've got over 30 A4 pages on new character names alone, that should give you an idea of how much content we're talking about. I've also been busy collating a lot of the various pictures that the artists on the board have been pumping out since 2016's release, and I've also commissioned a few new pieces specifically for TEW2020's game world. I'll be going into more detail with the world-building aspect later in the year when I have the initial plans finalised.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 17:00:45 GMT 1
#24: This week's attribute additions
As will be the case for the next few weeks, the past seven days have been entirely about fixing errors and adding attributes. Below are this week's additions:
Personality
Passes On Knowledge: The worker is more likely to take on proteges than normal. Unapproachable: The worker does not act as a mentor to others. Highly Strung: The worker tends to react very strongly to events; positive and negative morale changes are amplified. Positive Outlook: The worker is noted for always having a positive outlook; all positive morale changes are amplified and all negative morale changes are dampened. Thin Skinned: The worker is noted for their negative outlook; all negative morale changes are amplified and all positive morale changes are dampened.
Performance
Canny Operator: The worker is known to hold back on shows that don't matter. Dynamo: The worker never holds back during matches, even on unimportant shows. Tag Team Specialist: If the worker is used in a tag team that has at least 15 experience and does not have negative chemistry, the team gets a special performance bonus on top of any chemistry bonus (the boost is only applied once, even if both have this attribute). Selfish Performer: The worker has a selfish tendency to 'eat up' lesser performers in order to make themselves look good. Giving Performer: The worker has a kindly tendency to 'shine up' lesser performers, making them look better than they are and improving the match. Explosive Ring Style: The worker's extremely explosive in-ring style means that they get a bonus when allowed to dominate a match but a penalty in bouts that are slowly built, go over 10 minutes, or are aimed at working or calming the crowd. Squash Master: The worker knows exactly how to work squash matches in order to make themselves shine; they get a bonus when booked to dominate in a match. Scatterbrained: The worker is infamous for their abysmal memory; trying to get them to do a scripted match is pointless as they'll have forgotten everything by the time they get to the ring.
Misc
Healing Factor: The worker seems to recover from significant injuries far quicker than a normal human should. Career Woman: The worker will not become pregnant as long as she is set to potentially be an active wrestler. Prodigy: The worker improves their skills at a faster rate than normal during their maturity phase. Not A Natural: The worker improves their skills at a slower rate than normal during their maturity phase. Age Is Just A Number: The worker loses their skills at a slower rate than normal during their decline phase. Can't Fight Time: The worker loses their skills at a faster rate than normal during their decline phase. Ahead Of Their Time: The worker is ahead of their time and so is completely unaffected by leaving the relevancy phase of their career. Homebody: The worker will not become available in new game areas (other than via an excursion). World Traveler: The worker has a higher chance than normal of choosing to become available in new game areas. Deep Roots: The worker is settled where they are and will never move house to a new region. Fitness Fanatic: The worker is less likely to become out of shape than normal and is better able to achieve and keep a toned or muscular physique. Bodybuilder: The worker is more likely to get bigger than normal and is better able to achieve and keep a muscular or ripped physique. Skinny Genes: The worker is less likely to get fat or out of shape and finds it easier to achieve and maintain an impressive physique. Fat Genes: The worker is more likely to get fat and out of shape and will find it hard to achieve or maintain a toned, muscular, or ripped physique. Masked For Life: The worker will never agree to lose their mask. Troublesome Neck: The worker takes more wear and tear to the head section of their physical health than normal and, if injured, is more likely for it to be a neck-related injury. Troublesome Back: The worker takes more wear and tear to the body section of their physical health than normal and, if injured, is more likely for it to be a back-related injury. Troublesome Shoulder: The worker takes more wear and tear to the arms section of their physical health than normal and, if injured, is more likely for it to be a shoulder-related injury. Troublesome Knee: The worker takes more wear and tear to the legs section of their physical health than normal and, if injured, is more likely for it to be a knee-related injury. History Of Concussions: When injured, the worker has an increased chance of the injury being a concussion.
#25: More attribute additions
Here are some more additions to the attribute section.
Personality
Horndog: The worker has an increased chance of starting new dating relationships, having them collapse early, of cheating on or with someone, and of getting involved in scrapes because of their one-track mind. Notorious Ribber: The worker has an increased chance of pulling ribs on people backstage. Anti-Hardcore: The worker is outspoken about disliking 'garbage' wrestling and will not want to sign deals with companies that present a hardcore product. Keeps Kayfabe: The worker is outspoken about disliking 'cartoon' wrestling and will not want to sign deals with companies that present an entertainment product. Extremely Old School: The worker is a purist and will not want to sign deals with companies that present entertainment or hardcore based products. Money Motivated: When evaluating contract offers, the worker only really cares about the financial aspects. Loves The Business: When evaluating contract offers, the worker places a lot of value on how happy they'd be in the company rather than just looking at the money. Fame Hungry: When evaluating contract offers, the worker puts a premium on the size of the company as they are looking to become famous. Has A Temper: The worker is known to have a temper and so has an increased chance of starting or getting pulled into fights and arguments backstage. Born Fighter: The worker is known never to back down and so while they are no more likely than normal to provoke a fight, they do have an increased chance of getting pulled into physical altercations backstage. Bad Ass Reputation: The worker has a reputation in the industry for being a bad ass. They will protect their image by not getting involved in games or gossip backstage, are more likely to act as a judge in a wrestler's court, and will always stand up for themselves if provoked. Motormouth: The worker never shuts up and so has an increased chance of getting involved in gossip, giving opinions on other workers, and telling stories. Story Teller: The worker is well known to be one of wrestling's great story tellers and has an increased chance of entertaining people backstage with tales. Prudish: The worker is prudish and so will not pose for magazines or get involved in things like sex tapes.
Misc
Loyal: When under an ongoing contract, the worker is more inclined to stay for a long time rather than seek out new challenges. Itchy Feet: When under an ongoing contract, the worker is more inclined to leave after a few years to see new challenges. Future Referee: The worker will choose to be available as a referee upon retirement (they may take other roles too). Future Announcer: (Same as above, just a different position.) Future Colour Commentator: (Same as above, just a different position.) Future Manager: (Same as above, just a different position.) Future Personality: (Same as above, just a different position.) Future Road Agent: (Same as above, just a different position.) Wrestling In The Blood: The worker eats, sleeps, and breathes professional wrestling - they will never retire from the business no matter how old they get. Outside Interests: The worker has interests and / or financial income outside of the wrestling business. They're much more likely to stop competing if their career stalls as they don't need the money. Modelling Experience: The worker works or has worked as a model and so has a higher probability of posing for magazines and doing photo shoots.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 17:02:03 GMT 1
#26: Unsurprisingly, it's even more attribute additions
As several people guessed, one of the extras that attributes bring to the table is that they can be set to expire after a certain amount of time has passed. This allows them to model temporary boosts and penalties. Today's entry covers the first seven of these.
Hot New Move: The worker recently invented a new move or spot that everybody is talking about; they get a bonus to their performance in every match. [This attribute is automatically temporary and lasts between three months and two years.] Hot New Catchphrase: The worker recently invented a new catchphrase that has caught on in a big way; they get a bonus to their performance in every angle in which they get to talk. [This attribute is automatically temporary and lasts between three months and two years.] Flavour Of The Month: The worker recently did something that has everybody talking about them; they get a small bonus to the rating of every match and angle they are in to simulate the increased interest. [This attribute is automatically temporary and lasts between one and three months.] Personal Issues: The worker is currently going through some severe personal issues; they get a penalty to their performance in every match and angle. [This attribute is automatically temporary and lasts between three months and two years.] Groundswell Of Support: The wrestling public have connected with this worker on a deeply personal level; the worker gets a bonus to the rating of every match and angle they are in to simulate the rabid support. [This attribute is automatically temporary and lasts between six months and two years.] Midas Touch: The worker is enjoying a sudden burst of amazing form; they get a bonus to their performance in every match. [This attribute is automatically temporary and lasts between three months and two years.] In A Funk: The worker is enduring a period of extremely poor form; they get a penalty to their performance in every match. [This attribute is automatically temporary and lasts between three months and two years.]
The first two are reworkings of existing features, making them play out in a more realistic way. They're also the only two that are immediately visible in the worker's attribute list; the others are hidden, meaning that the have an impact but don't actually appear when viewing a worker's profile. The idea behind this is that the player will need to apply some judgement / look for clues to figure out if they're in play. For example, if someone has a "Yes movement" style Groundswell Of Support then you should notice a significant upswing in the ratings that worker is generating and can choose to follow up on that. I think this is a far more rewarding way to play than dumbing it down and just have people scrolling down lists searching for people with that attribute that they can exploit.
#27: General status update
Having spent the past few days finishing up all the news stories and assorted text relating to the new attributes, the rest of this week is going to be all about the booking engine; running tests, seeing if we can squeeze out some extra user friendliness, making sure it's as easy as possible to use, etc. So far the feedback about all those areas from the testers is really good, but it's nice to get it all polished up so that it's ready for final testing.
At the moment things in general are going really well - early testing has been very positive and large parts of the game are now in a finalised state and just need playtesting. Unless there's any major issues thrown up by testing or the database work takes significantly longer than I anticipate, I'm pretty confident that we'll be looking at hitting the estimated release date of April without too many problems.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 17:06:15 GMT 1
#28: Initial database work
As a completely unrelated note, there was one change that was made over the weekend to the game engine that I need to announce. The new addition is that when an AI company calls up a worker they will now almost always take that person's partner too, assuming they've available and the team is an active Unit or Permanent Unit. This means that teams can gain experience in developmental and come up together. This will allow teams to stick together more often.
#38: New products and attributes, Japanese feedback
As I mentioned in the last entry, I've been working on adding in new attributes and products from the user suggestions that were made. I'll be continuing to add in attributes right up until the game's launch, but the products are now finalised for release. [As previously outlined, both products and attributes will likely be added in via patches to fill whatever is needed.]
The remaining products that were added are:
Silver Age Pro Wrestling - Existing somewhere midway between Golden Age Pro Wrestling and Respectful Wrestling, workrate is more important than in the former but the wrestling is not yet as intensive as the latter.
Lucha Libre Entertainment - This is effectively an Americanised version of Classic Lucha Libre, with in-ring action becoming less important and more emphasis being placed on angles and storylines.
Grindhouse Lucha Libre - Although based around (often quite dark) storylines and characters, match quality is still important. Hardcore matches and fast-paced, exciting spectacles form the core of the in-ring output.
Catch Wresling - Presented as a shoot, this is no-frills competitive technical wrestling.
Royal Puroresu - This is a very physical style of wrestling with an emphasis on brawling, impactful throws, and submissions. The use of in-ring psychology to tell stories is at the absolute heart of everything. There's little concession to glamour or glitz.
Strong Puroresu - Heavily influenced by the martial arts and combat sports, this style revolves around realistic strikes and submissions - it's midway between Wrestling As A Sport and full-on Shoot Style Wrestling. Everything is treated very seriously.
Historic Lucha Libre - Lucha libre from ye olde days, this is all about mat-based hold-for-hold counter wrestling with very little in the way of high spots.
Deathmatch Lucha Libre - This is a straight-up Deathmatch product but with the addition of the usual trappings and quirks of lucha libre.
Avantgarde Puroresu - Not really found outside of Japan, this product blends modern wrestling with subversive comedy that relies on the audience having an intimate knowledge of puroresu tropes.
Slobberknocker - Designed for big heavy-hitters although there's no reason why it can't be adapted for smaller workers, this is all about workers just going toe-to-toe and hitting each other hard in brawls that are treated seriously.
Lucha Libre Slobberknocker - This is the Slobberknocker product of serious hard-hitting brawling but with the trappings and quirks of lucha libre.
Hardcore Evolved - This takes the ethos of hardcore wrestling but removes the more immature parts, such as the obsession with blood and sex, and instead treats the in-ring aspect with a lot more seriousness. It's still an edgy alternative in the vein of Anti-Establishment Hardcore, just grown up a bit.
No-Style Style - The most meta of all the products, this style....has no style. There's some wrestling, some entertainment, but no real guidelines for how it all fits together. As long as the fans get variety they're not going to mind too much what they're served up.
Modern Throwback - Used by modern companies who are looking backwards, this takes the approach from the golden age - wrestling treated seriously but with a little showmanship - but adds the workrate and style of the modern age.
That takes the final tally to 62.
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