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Worms Armageddon maintainer here, AMA :) Here is a somewhat more nicely formatted list of highlights: https://worms2d.info/Worms_Armageddon_3.8_Features https:
by CyberShadow 6y ago
Worms Armageddon maintainer here, AMA :)
Here is a somewhat more nicely formatted list of highlights:
https://worms2d.info/Worms_Armageddon_3.8_Features https://worms2d.info/Worms_Armageddon_3.8_Features
- gryzzly 6y agoA question: Is there any place where the patch can be purchased / downloaded to install onto existing files (apart from Steam)?
- CyberShadow 6y agoIf you have the game on CD (any edition), you can download an updater for the CD version from here: https://worms2d.info/Updates_(Worms_Armageddon) https://worms2d.info/Updates_(Worms_Armageddon)
- Lammy 6y agoAny chance of seeing an update to the Dreamcast version? :p (Thank you!!)
- komali2 6y agoWhat's the motivation behind continually updating such an old, albeit very fun, game?
- riggsdk 6y agoI bought the game when it was first released and I loved it. May I ask how come you are still working on the game? Out of sheer love for it? Did you work on the "original" codebase before becoming a maintainer?
- CyberShadow 6y ago> May I ask how come you are still working on the game? Out of sheer love for it? Yes, for the game and its community. After so many years of playing the game and being part of the community, it is now an inextricable part of ourselves. > Did you work on the "original" codebase before becoming a maintainer? No; I started playing Worms World Party maybe around 2004. In 2006 I started writing third-party add-ons for the game, and I had been given a copy of the source code so I could continue maintaining it alongside Deadcode (David Ellsworth, the first maintainer).
- riggsdk 6y agoHow come this update was based on Armageddon and not the newer versions? (IMHO Armageddon was the best in the series so I'm happy, just curious)
- CyberShadow 6y agoWorms World Party is the last game of its generation to use the same engine. The reason why the updates are for Armageddon and not World Party is mostly arbitrary - it was the game that the original maintainer had and was playing. A bit more info here: https://worms2d.info/WA_vs_WWP https://worms2d.info/WA_vs_WWP There is also Worms W.M.D., which we understand is based on Armageddon's source code, but that came out much later, and is still very different in terms of gameplay and style.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoThat’s wonderful! Is the code open source{,able}? I used to play an old game called Underlight. When they shut it down, the owner sent me a CD with the codebase. To my eternal shame, I lost the code. It was so neat seeing the old hacks; it even overwrote the ebp register in an inner graphics loop, because apparently in the early 90’s that sort of thing made a big difference. Would love to get a glimpse at how worms’ ninja rope physics is implemented...
- gus_massa 6y agoIs this the code https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/981nmi/underlight_a_20_year_old_mmorpg_has_been/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/981nmi/underlight_a... ?
- sillysaurusx 6y agoYes! Wow! Thank you so much!! This brought back waves of nostalgia I haven’t felt for like a decade.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
- singingwolfboy 6y agoOh man, I loved this game! Any chance I can get it to run on my Mac?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- CyberShadow 6y agoYou may have some luck with Wine or CrossOver. Unfortunately we don't currently test on macOS. Edit: I've been told that the removal of 32-bit support in the latest OS versions makes macOS support unlikely. The game uses some old proprietary DLLs (for some file formats) that are 32-bit only. Sorry :(
- AurelioB 6y agoCrossOver could work. I've had success running other 32 bit only games (counter strike 1.6) on OSX
- rpastuszak 6y agoWe can still play via a VM right?
- CyberShadow 6y agoYes, of course. I think for a while we have been careful in maintaining compatibility with VMware's virtualization, though lately it is largely unnecessary (due to improvements in the VM software).
- gryzzly 6y agoI’ve been using PlayOnMac with particular version of Wine and DirectX support for WA 3.7. Haven’t tested with 3.8 yet, but soon will!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoThank you for keeping such an old game alive and awesome! Slightly offtopic: I haven't played Armageddon for a long time, but I assume the pace of Worms Armageddon is similar to Worms W.M.D. (which I'm playing on Switch), and it seems like there is a lot of waiting involved - just a few seconds here and there, but overall, it feels like the game could move at a much faster pace, especially when playing single player. Do you know if this is a conscious decision (e.g. to keep people from burning through the available content through fast) or due to technical limitations (e.g. the AI actually has to think), or just happens to be that way? A few seconds before the damage count shows up, a few seconds before the next enemy worm gets selected, the five-second countdown before the bot worm starts moving, a few seconds after the turn ends, a few seconds between the "machine gun destroyed" and the explosion etc. - would it be possible to add a "faster" mode? (Sorry if Armageddon has that, as I said, it's been a while.) (For W.M.D. on the Switch, the long loading screens add to the waiting, but those sound a lot harder to avoid than the in-game delays.)
- CyberShadow 6y agoWorms has always been a "Turn Based Strategy", both online and offline. I think it would be safe to say that this trait defines the series, and has been upheld through all generations of Worms, including the 3D ones, all the way up to this year's announcement of Worms Rumble, which is real-time (and therefore causing so much hubbub about its departure from the formula). I haven't played W.M.D., but from what I've seen from the streams, pacing definitely feels different. The delays are a part of it, and they do subjectively seem less forced in Armageddon. For another thing, W.M.D. introduces crafting, giving players at least something to do between turns - in Armageddon you've nothing to do but follow the action and mock your opponents' mistakes :D
- tomc1985 6y agoAlso keep in mind the game is built for couch coop and that it takes a bit of time to swap seats/hand over the keyboard
- 6y ago
- spacechild1 6y agoOne of my favourite games of all timed! I have to check this out.
- gryzzly 6y agoThanks so much for your work. I play with my wife and friends across the world at least 2-3 times a week. We’ve been relying on your work for years now. Big love <3
- londons_explore 6y agoAre you paid to be a maintainer? Or is it just for fun/fame? Is the game still for sale, and does it still sell enough copies to employ someone fulltime to do this kind of work?
- CyberShadow 6y agoRight now we do it on our free time. Yes, the game is still for sale; I know it's available on Steam, GOG, and Humble Bundle. I don't know any sales numbers, sorry.
- throwawaysea 6y agoWhat is the best way to support this work?
- CyberShadow 6y agoThanks for asking! I can't speak for Deadcode (David Ellsworth, the other maintainer). Personally I have a Patreon account, though mostly it pertains to my open-source projects. And of course, tell your friends that Worms Armageddon is still alive and has active multiplayer (see https://wormnet.net/ https://wormnet.net/) :)
- throwawaysea 6y agoFor those searching: https://www.patreon.com/cybershadow https://www.patreon.com/cybershadow
- grawprog 6y agoThanks for keeping worms Armageddon alive. It's still my favourite worms game by far. >Worms Armageddon now runs well under Wine or Proton on Linux. Was wondering if there would ever be a chance of a true native linux port? I've got one of the later worms games natively on linux, but it sort of pales in comparison to worms Armageddon and while I appreciate the efforts of the proton maintainers and Devs like yourself that work hard to make their games compatible with proton, but I'd still prefer to buy a game that runs natively on the os I use.
- detaro 6y agosee other comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23890279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23890279
- grawprog 6y agoThanks, I got too excited and didn't read the rest of the comments before asking. I should have realized I was likely beating a dead horse. It does sound like it may be possible to at least port it some day and work is being made in that direction so that's pretty awesome.
- hjek 6y agoI know it's not the same but I do think Hedgewars comes quite close to WA.
- kristofferR 6y agoWhy? As long as it works flawlessly and performant it shouldn't matter.
- grawprog 6y agoNot in regards to worms specifically, but, because at that point I'm paying the same price for a product that will always be treated as second class in regards to support and just about everything else. At any point the deveoper could decide to stop supporting proton and unlike with a native linux port, like with rocket league recently, if that happens I'm shit out of luck, at least with a native port, there's a chance of a refund if they drop support. Even steam's policies states that refunds should not be used for testing proton comparability with games. If I'm going to be a paying customer, I'd prefer to be treated like all the rest of them.
- dm319 6y agoBig fan of worms from my Amiga days - thanks for keeping it alive! Have you played liero? Do you like it?
- CyberShadow 6y agoYes, Liero's great! Lots of fun.
- rambojazz 6y agoIs WA open source?? Sorry but I've never heard using the word "maintainer" on a proprietary software, only with open source projects. Usually people call themselves "<software> developer" instead.
- CyberShadow 6y agoOur situation is a little unusual in that we didn't participate in the game's creation; Instead, years after the fact, we were entrusted with the source code by the developer company (Team17) so that we could continue maintaining it. The updates are still published by Team17, but almost all programming is done by us. So, I can't think of a more appropriate word.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoIs it a paid position?
- CyberShadow 6y agoNo, and hardly a "position" at that!
- Waterfall 6y agoWhat's your favorite weapons and why? I have been fond of the holy have grenade. There hallelujah always made me laugh and the concrete donkey was way too cheap lol
- CyberShadow 6y agoTough question, but... I love French Sheep Strike, just because of how majestic it looks. Some of Danny Cartwright's best!
- eitland 6y agoThere used to be a number of funny videos in one of the earlier worms versions that I haven't seen since. I found them on YouTube now that I started looking for them, but I've been missing them from my Worms game (on steam) :-) For anyone wondering: here they are: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wV5AFxEnuBo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wV5AFxEnuBo I think I first saw them in 1998 or something.
- kawsper 6y agoDo you know who to ask about the voice lines and voice actors? Worms 2 introduced the "Danish Pyrus" voice bank, and it might have been voiced by Jan Linnebjerg, who played Pyrus, but it isn't written down anywhere in the manual or credits.
- CyberShadow 6y agoSadly our communication with Team17 is very limited, so we've had little insight regarding the game development that's not already public knowledge. Sorry.
- kawsper 6y agoThanks anyways, it was worth a shot :)
- mbStavola 6y agoThank you for keeping this wonderful game updated! IIRC you were also working on a D port of the engine. Did that make it into this release or is it planned for later / not at all?
- CyberShadow 6y agoThank you! We use D for almost everything else, but not the game itself. I'm still hesitant in making the switch, just so we don't cut ourselves off of targets where using D would be problematic (e.g. WASM where implementing a GC is difficult).
- droffel 6y agoSince you're the new maintainer, I assume you're unaware of Worms Armageddon's old "official" page, that currently has a broken certificate. A lot of the old playerbase think it's dead because the old site isn't up - any chance you could fix the cert and update it? wa.team17.com
- CyberShadow 6y agoThank you, yes painfully aware (as well as of other problems with the site, such as that the navigation doesn't work upon entering), unfortunately I don't control the website. We already brought it up to Team17's attention and suggested a fix, but their respective team is backed up at the moment due to all the other things happening. For what it's worth, we have a working mirror here: https://wa.worms2d.info/ https://wa.worms2d.info/ Also curiously, when covering the release announcement, a lot of news websites referred to our unofficial website (worms2d.info) as the official one, possibly due to the same reason!
- Razengan 6y agoThanks to you and all the original devs for some of the best and most hilarious couch multiplayer fun I've ever had!
- typh00n 6y agoThank you for your work and love on Worms Armageddon. The latest patch is bringing my favourite gamemode "multishot boomrace" to worms armageddon natively. :-) Is there something like a "roadmap", which things you want to tackle for future updates? (if there are any planed at all, since this is done in your free-time and the last patch was 2013) Because my oldschool and nostalgic memories are about worms world party i always wondered if it could be possible to get the two games together. It's a little bit sad, that the online-community of wwp is nearly dead, and the remastered version did not get too much momentum. I always liked the theme/ui of wwp more, because wa's UI feeld a little bit clunky to me. (e.g. the selection of worm-pots does a neat integration of this features) Do you also do/plan some work on the UI?
- CyberShadow 6y agoIf you ask us, "Do you want to improve X?", of course we will say yes. I think Project X (a powerful but sadly unmaintained third-party scripting mod for the game) has shown us a glimpse of what the culmination of the game's development might look like, so that's the direction that we want to go. Games with powerful modding capabilities (Garry's Mod, Skyrim) very often outlive the more static linear games, and combined with Armageddon's existing configurability and random map generation, I think it is something with a lot of potential.
- zVirtu 6y agoCouldn't agree more. A Project X-like framework for scripting is capable of extending a game's lifetime in proportion to the involvement of its community, which is fortunately abundant in W:A's case. In the same vein, the new schema format with Rubberworm capabilities was definitely a game changer. There's something so exciting about user-generated content officially making it into a base game. Thank you for making this possible! But most importantly, it seems you guys have enough freedom to work on these sort of new features as much as the usual quality of life/bugfix changes. How open is Team17 to these more intricate changes, especially towards the modding capabilities dream?
- 6y ago
- jquave 6y agoWow that tweening upgrade is beautiful. Huge fan of this game! Thanks so much for maintaining it!
- baby 6y agoIs a web browser version of the game in your roadmap? I really wish I could get more of my friends to get together to play this game but it probably won't happen if it doesn't run in the browser :o
- totetsu 6y agowell if its AMA. Do you know id the worms 2(?) level skip code still exist in the infosphere? All I can recall is that is started "OnceThereWas AWormWho"
- aethertron 6y agohttps://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/47995-worms-2/faqs/17376 https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/47995-worms-2/faqs/17376
- akdor1154 6y agoWhy are you keeping compatibility with old versions of Windows? Is this a directive from T17? Your own interest? A good way of targeting Wine compatibility? Some other reason? Genuinely interested, not passing judgement on your priorities. :)
- CyberShadow 6y ago1. Because it's not very difficult to avoid breaking compatibility; 2. Because we don't want to invalidate the original system requirements.
- whatsmyusername 6y agoWorms Revolution when? Still my favorite entry in the series.
- dang 6y agoOk, we've changed to that from https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/217200/view/4889171591903920896 https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/217200/view/48891.... Thanks!
- shaklee3 6y agoWorms 2 was my favorite PC game. I remember the mods with rope games opened a whole new world, and provided endless hours of fun and challenges. Armageddon I remember slowed down the ropes so that wasn't possible anymore. Did they ever fix/change that?
- shayanbahal 6y agoHow can one play Worms World Party (or even Armageddon) on Mac OS X these days?