Work on the camera is as good as done for now. The tools are in place to setup multiple cameras from practically any view that we would desire to use, but it turned out that a very simple approach works even better than anything the many options allows us.

That's how it sometimes works but we have at least exhausted our options and made sure we've covered all bases. Its not always easy to say when good is good enough - the idea that something even better is just around the corner can be too tempting not to try out in practice. However, we're gonna stick with our side-camera as the default view and continue developing gameplay from here.

5M is also close to finishing the system that deals with selecting the best footballer to control at a given time - as good as is it is now it might need further tweaking down the road once AI have been fully implemented.

Next up for our over-burdened code wizard is another go at the 'footballer-ball' interactions. This is a crucial piece of work that we find ourselves coming back to again and again. Its like one good idea leads to another, making a simple setup suddenly complicated.

A new stadium is also close to completion, but even better should be the news that we're not far from releasing an online form of the name-in-game that will make it so much easier for users to register and change settings at will. The one draw-back is that existing users will have to get in touch with us to be able to use it. More on this later.

A select few have been identified as the first closed-alpha testers. We're working hard to finish an alpha preview build for them to get some early feedback on the control and general feel of the game.

There's still some time to go before all this will happen so once again we have to hope for your patience.

Now, this is why I love football:

5M have worked a lot on the camera in the past weeks, and there's been some issues that just seemed very hard to solve - although not impossible.

A vertically panning camera has some issues, such as the actual goal at the bottom obscuring the action and the ball being hidden behind a footballer when running up. More importantly, it also seemed like the gamer playing upwards have an advantage over the gamer playing down because of the perspective and tilting of the camera. He would simply see the goal earlier when running up. One solution is to have a camera looking almost straight down, as in KO, but this is less desirable because it also make it difficult to see the animations and the relative height of the ball compared to the footballer - which is necessary to judge when to kick the ball and tackle etc.

During one of our regular chats 5M casually mentioned that he had also implemented a side-camera, that we had discussed some time ago, and asked me to test it. I have previously campaigned for the top down view, claiming it was the only view that would allow us a perfect aim at goal etc.. but I was wrong. The side camera works like a dream, and for starters it doesn't favour any of the players.

So, long story short: we have more or less made a decision to change the default camera view from top down (vertical) to side view (horizontal) - very much like in PES or FIFA, rather than as in SWOS or KO. Please note, the top down view will still be supported!

Below is a preview movie of the side view. Both cuts in the movie are first takes - you'll see that its indeed possible to score from a difficult angle - I didn't need any practice really to pull it off - and no, it wasn't just first time lucky I could do it again and again! =)

I've had 5 days off of work, thursday - monday both days included, and they've been put to good use working on new stadium graphics, and also a nice site update if you ask me. Somehow we didn't get invited to any Easter family lunches and didn't invite people over either - which is unusual in my family, even though most of us aren't religious. I've posted some images of the new stadium at our forum.

I also think I've finally put the words together that describe how WOF will be different from PES/FIFA and the old skool SWOS and KO. The old introduction have been bugging me for so long that I'm glad I finally got it changed - judging on early feedback it seems to go down well with the few people I've discussed it with. You can read it on our front page and judge for yourself..

Its incredibly how time flies though. Recently I've had a few discussions, with people on other football gaming forums, about the progress of WOF and how it seems like nothing is happening - someone even dared to call it vapourware. In hindsight WOF was announced too early perhaps - but then again, had I not announced it Fivemagics would have never heard of it and we wouldn't have been here today
- and I must stress a lot is happening, people just seem to forget that we're effectively a two man team trying to do a full game - in our spare time. I hate making these comments, as it feels to me like I'm making excuses when I'm actually damn proud of how far we've come - and its as if the game, as we've imagined it, is hiding just around the corner.

Now the short Easter vacation is over and its back to work in the morning. The first day after a weekend is always tough. As usual I immedieately slip into a bad sleeping pattern when I have a few days off, and its always payback time come monday, and sometimes also tuesday and even wednesday.. Anyway, we're just grinding on, doing the best we can as fast as we can. Soon we'll be around the corner and we can start to work our way towards the next!