CWP Development Update, February 2021

It’s been a while with no development updates. Unfortunately due to an unusual confluence of factors (my desktop PC failed, local stores were closed due to Covid, and mail was delayed due to the Christmas rush), I ended up not being able to do any new coding for over a month. But the game remains under active development and I’ve got lots to share this month.

The bulk of the changes are to the way matches play out. This includes a completely new match screen, a new formula for determining how well the wrestlers are entertaining the audience, some new pre- and post-match screens, and, for the first time ever, some graphics. Let’s dive into the specific changes in more detail.

New Match Screen

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There are a ton of changes here, and I won’t go through all of them, but if you’ve been following the development so far (or if you look at the screenshots I’ve posted previously) you’ll see how big the changes are. This screen isn’t finished, but it’s functional enough to do testing and further development. The current graphics are placeholders, and the grey background is a work in progress. But in general you can see where this screen is going.

Aside from the new layout, which includes some graphical elements as opposed to the old one which was all text, you may notice that the match descriptions have been changed substantially. Previously matches were made up of a series of pre-written text blocks. They worked kind of like MadLibs, with particular details being changed based on the wrestlers in the match, but the bulk of the text was fixed. This made for matches that were pretty fun to read initially, but I worried that they were too wordy and it was too difficult to pick out important details.

There are two other, more important reasons I moved away from that format.

  1. It was incredibly labour-intensive, which quickly became a problem once I started adding special match types like Steel Cage or Street Fight. Every time I wanted to add a new match type I essentially had to put in an equivalent amount of work as though I was creating all the match descriptions from scratch. It could take a week to create a new match type, just in terms of the text, not including any new code or layout that was required. It was really slowing down development.

  2. No matter how much text I write, it’s impossible to write enough that players won’t become bored of it. I think the descriptions I was writing were good, and they would have been fun if you played the game for a few hours. But writing that felt fun for 2-3 hours would have started to feel very repetitive if you played for 20-30 hours, and it felt like I was putting a disproportionate amount of development time into something that most players were going to wind up skipping after they’d played the game for a few hours.

The new format makes it much easier to add new content, and it’s much less of a mental load to read as a player. Matches advance one move at a time, with randomly inserted pin attempts, and it’s pretty easy to keep up with. The text advances automatically now, the way you would expect in most sports simulations, and it’s possible to change the speed if you read quickly. It’s also still possible to immediately jump to the end of a match and just see the results.

INterstitial panels

Speaking of match results, the beginning and end of matches have been improved. It used to be the case that you would immediately jump from match-to-match, with no introduction. Now each match gets a screen introducing it (and eventually promos will have these too).

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Match results are now much cleaner looking than they used to be, with a separate pop-up that appears over the match panel after you choose to “View Results” at the end of a match.

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These screens are likely to go through some changes before they’re finalised, but already they’re making each TV show or PPV feel more like a proper event with a flow to it, and less like a series of text boxes that come one after another.

GRAPHICS

You have no doubt noticed that there’s only one wrestler model in the game at the moment. That’s because I needed one to create layouts and get a general idea how things look. In the final version of Championship Wrestling Promoter every wrestler will have their own appearance, which will be customisable. The ring will also have customisable colours, and the “CWP” logo in the ring uses whatever the acronym of your own wrestling federation is. And these graphics are just programmer art. I am hoping to be able to hire a professional artist closer to the completion of the project to improve the look of the game, but that will depend on a number of factors that are still up in the air.