Update 0.19.0: Ladders!

I'm delighted to announce that one of the most requested things has made it into Casual Pro Wrestling: Ladders! Also known as: mobile carnage. Grab a ladder and place it wherever the hell you want - you decide where to perform your next stunt.

Implementing ladders required deeper changes to how wrestlers interact with weapons and other objects in the arena. This comes with benefits: you can now climb on tables and perform jumps off them, too! Oh, and that entrance structure? The steel support does look somewhat like a ladder, doesn't it? ^_^

Not everything is fleshed out yet. The AI doesn't really make use of ladders, but most importantly, there are no ladder matches yet. These things, along with different sizes of ladders, will be implemented in the process of getting ladders stable. Ultimately, that shall motivate the implementation of title belts and championships. The writing is on the wall!

New Wrestling Minigame

Remember a couple of months back? You decided that button mashing sucked for the wrestling minigame and I agreed. Now, it's finally time to say goodbye to that. The wrestling minigame has been replaced by something I internally call a timed press minigame: a cursor is moving left and right, and you have to time a button press in the "hot" area - something you may know from party games. Whoever manages to do it first wins; the size of the hot area depends on your wrestler's condition and skill - the more gassed, the harder it gets!

In our testplays, this proved way more fun than mashing buttons, and it may also find its way into future minigames, e.g., grabbing an item from the top of the ladder, climbing over a cage wall, ...

Mind you, the button mashing stayed for some situations where it adds a sense of urgency - e.g., when you want to kick out of a pin.

Update Changelog

As with all major updates in the past, there are many more things that have been improved. Have a look!

Additions

• AI: In no-DQ matches, AI wrestlers will now fetch weapons from underneath the ring.

• Arena: Added the ability to climb the entrance support structure.

  • This is currently abusing the new ladder system, which means climbing animations are not too nice.

• Arena: Placed ladders in the training gym.

• Menus: Added the Weapon Around Ring option to the Arena Setup screen.

  • Four weapons of the selected type will be placed around the ring.

  • This is only available for the CPW Arena.

• AddedWeaponsAdded ladders!

• Weapons: Added the ability to climb, walk on and perform flying moves off tables.

  • Similar to the arena's stage, when you are standing on a table, hold Climb ([c]Y[/c] on gamepads, [c]Q[/c] on keyboards) to go into a jump ready state.

• AddedWeaponsAdded the ability to attack with bulky weapons (namely tables and bottom stairs).

Changes

• AI: When deciding to go back into ring in matches without count-out, AI wrestlers will no longer hurry.

• Arena: Moved some spotlights in the audience not reacting for wrestlers entering mid-match when they do not have a theme.

  Weapons: Fixed weapons and stairs apparently "z-fighting" with the ring base when placed near the apron.

  Weapons: Tables are no longer "stacked" on tables that are not standing upright.

  Technical Physics: Conceptually separated collision and detection when scanning the surroundings of wrestlers for world/ring/weapon interactions (e.g., running the ropes, being whipped into stairs, climbing the top rope, etc.)

  Ideally, no bigger changes are perceivable other than slightly improved performance.

• entrance area to make room for climbing the support structure.

• Audio: The volume of entrance themes is now automatically adjusted to approximately meet a common target level.

  • The computation is based on the theme's RMS volume, which should work fine for everything that is considered music.

  • As a result, the [c]VolumeGain[/c] in theme descriptors (JSON files) is now obsolete.

• Balance: Re-evaluated fatigue and momentum changes caused by actions and moves.

  • Internally, these are now organized in categories to give more consistent results.

• Physics: Wrestlers now ragdoll when falling down a certain height.

• UI: Kickout progress bars, wrestling minigames and labels (e.g. "ELIMINATED") floating above a wrestler's head now actively avoid overlapping.

• AdjustedWeaponsIncreased the mass of tables in the physics engine. This should make them less prone to being kicked around like a balloon.

• Weapons: When dropping a weapon after a couple of hits, its "explosion" force now considers its mass.

  • This is so tables don't fly around when being dropped.

• RemovedWeaponsWhile being rolled onto a table, collisions between the table and the wrestler are now disabled to avoid the table moving around like crazy.

• Wrestling: Replaced the button mashing contest by a timed button press minigame.

  • To beat it, you have to press a button when the cursor is in the "good" area.

  • Whoever beats it first gets to advance or counter the hold, respectively.

  • The difficulty (width of the "good" area) is determined by the wrestler's condition and skill attribute.

Fixes

• FixedAIFixed AI wrestlers sometimes prematurely canceling their plan of going for a weapon.
• FixedAIFixed wrong logic preventing AI wrestlers from picking back up (big) weapons that they just placed into the ring for navigation.

• CAW: Fix content packs not being renamed when their only contained wrestler is renamed.

• Camera: Fix camera wildly rotating up or down when the action takes place above it.

• FixedEngineFixed escaped unicode characters no longer being decoded when parsing JSON (e.g., [c]\\u00FC[/c] instead of [c]ü[/c]).

• Flying Moves: Fix Flying Cross Body hits not being triggered properly when target is hit near the end of the jump

• Flying Moves: Fix jump parabola computation failing when one is very (very) high up.

• FixedLoggingFixed logfile archiving not working on Windows.
• FixedLoggingFixed stack trace not being logged for errors.
• FixedMenusFixed missing Steam user icon in the bottom lobby bar.
• FixedMovesFixed Cannonball and Spinning Wheel Kick being stopped in itng over the top rope when leaving the ring "through" the ropes.

• Rules: Fixed several situations where wrestlers are not detected as going over the top rope.

  • Wrestlers are now considered over the top rope whenever they play an animation falling over the rope, even if they are visually not over the top rope. This fixes bugged behaviour for some abnormal body shapes, e.g., very small wrestlers.

  • Said animation has also been adjusted to make wrestlers go higher than before.

  • To better handle different body shapes, the "core position" that is evaluated for over-the-top-rope detection is now between the thoracic spine and the stomach, which is somewhat lower than before.

  • When ragdolling on the apron, the decision that somebody went over the top rope was often revoked prematurely because of the inherent inaccuracy of ragdoll physics. This should be greatly mitigated now.

• FixedUIFixed nameplate not showing and audience not reacting for wrestlers entering mid-match when they do not have a theme.
• FixedWeaponsFixed weapons and stairs apparently "z-fighting" with the ring base when placed near the apron.

• Weapons: Tables are no longer "stacked" on tables that are not standing upright.

Technical

• Physics: Conceptually separated collision and detection when scanning the surroundings of wrestlers for world/ring/weapon interactions (e.g., running the ropes, being whipped into stairs, climbing the top rope, etc.)

  • Ideally, no bigger changes are perceivable other than slightly improved performance.

Alrighty. Next up (apart from the usual quick fixes of bugs that have probably hidden in this version): more moves, ETA summer.

So long now! Thanks for supporting CPW, stay tuned and have fun!