October saw one new system added to the game and a whole bunch of work on the graphical overhaul I’ve long talked about. Along with the graphical changes comes a host of customisation options. Let’s take a quick look at the new system and then jump into the graphics.
Factions
It’s now possible to create factions in Championship Wrestling Promoter. Factions are any group of up to four wrestlers who receive bonuses when they’re in tag-team matches or appear in promos together. As far as game logic goes, tag teams count as factions; they’re merely a faction of two. There’s a limit of four wrestlers in a faction for game balance reasons. As wrestlers in a faction appear in TV segments together they’ll build an attribute called Affinity, which gives a boost to all of their rolls in any tag match with other faction members. You can think of it as wrestlers getting familiar with each other and building their profile with fans.
So far CWP has only allowed 1v1 matches. Now that factions can be created, the next big feature I’m working on is tag team matches (2v2 and 3v3). Stay tuned for more info on those in next month’s development blog.
Graphics!
For a number of months I’d been teasing a graphical overhaul of the game, which is now well underway. There’s now art in the game for wrestlers, championship belts, and arenas. As you can see in the screenshot above, wrestler graphics are getting added to many areas of the game that were previously only text.
One of the most important aspects of the wrestler sprites is that they’re fully customizable. The code will randomly generate a sprite for each wrestler the game creates, but they can be edited at any time.
Since this is a small game with a limited budget the wrestler graphics are all static (ie. there are no animations), but they should be flexible enough to let you create a unique look for each wrestler in your promotion. I haven’t seen any other wrestling simulation-style games that let you customise the look of wrestlers to this degree, so I’m hoping players will really enjoy it.
Championship belts are also now presented graphically in the game and can be customised as well.
The ring colours can also be customised.
Put it all together and you’ve got a game that’s got a lot of room for you to add your own style and character to the promotion, and I think it looks pretty good too!
