AI development is going very well. Footballers can now be told to 'protect' an area - blocking the way into it, and the keeper can jump to get to the ball. The next step is telling the AI to tackle, run with the ball and pass etc.

The movie below show the described actions - it was put together rather quickly as I only finished some stuff late tonight - there's no edits either, except for when one recording ends and another begins. As you can see the 'Barca' defender gave me a hard time, and when I finally got a shot on target the keeper made the save - bastards! =P

You can also catch a glimpse of the HUD - as mentioned earlier all names and logos are placeholders only, as we do not have the official licenses. We hope you will enjoy the movie!

Uploading to youtube really destroys the quality, making the ball hard to see sometimes - so you can also download the movie in a slightly better quality in wmv format here.. (We also have a 227MB quicktime version - but I didn't think anybody would care to download a file that big - send us an email if you want it..).

As promised earlier at our forum we've put together a little teaser showing the progress we've made. We've dubbed it 'near-playabe' because a few fundamental things, such as AI and rules, are still missing for it to be a fully first-playable build..

In the movie below, you can see my brother Dan playing as 'Manchester Devils' versus me as 'Juventus Zebras'. My 'experience' with the game shows; I have played this build and previous builds extensively and I am naturally more familiar with the controls and so on, so all in all Dan was at a clear disadvantage. That didn't hold him back though, and we got to record a few clips for you:

Things are still a bit rough, and some 'issues' are more clear than others - we've spent almost zero time on the eye-candy, so you can see arrows at the borders of the screen when they're not supposed to be there and a few animations aren't finalized or properly tweaked. The power-bar below the footballers is also a quick hack - the final design is not yet implemented, but that's just a trivial task now that we know the concept works in practice. Sadly, the 'fraps' sign overlaps the score which is actually recorded.. I wasn't able to find a piece of music that really fits the mood I wanted, so please don't pay any attention to that..

As mentioned there's no AI or rules yet, but now that the very basics of the player-input part of the gameplay works we're almost ready to start work on adding tactics and all that goes with it. So, in closing, we're very happy with how things are going and we hope that you can appreciate the effort we've put in to it also. As always we're grinding away at it - and if all goes well we'll be able to release a public demo sooner rather than later..

I'll sign off by wishing you all a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year on behalf of the team! Take care! =)

'Interactive' - one of the most used buzz-words about games some years ago. It shouldn't take you long to find a dozen game and movie companies that all had interactive incorporated to their name. What we're busy doing now is working on the interactivity - how the gamer have input on what's going on in the game - but also how the 'brains' and bodies of the virtual footballers react to what's going on in the virtual football stadium.

This introduction have probably been way too long already, so short story; we're adding moves and refining them as we go - sliding tackles and stuff like that already work, but now its stuff like how you chest down the ball, diving headers and such.

Its also tied into the stats of the footballers - a more skilled footballer stands a better chance of controlling a pass well etc. - and as most football fans will agree, a good first touch is often the difference between being great or just good.. The fitnes level has some impact, and will deteriate the longer a footballer takes part in the match. This should give you an impression of how enourmous this task is - its the implementation of the seemingly simple set of values that will make or break the gameplay, and its a long process.

We've making great advances though, even if we're not showing it publicly yet - you'll just have to take my word for it!

I love sliding tackles, and they'll be a key ingredient in WOF. Our inspiration is, as mentioned before, Kick Off and I've always preferred the unrealistic but fun KO sliding tackles to the 'impotent' tackles in FIFA/PES.. With sliding tackles you can not only chop an opponent down, you can also hit the ball, keep it in play or stab it into the goal.

Fivemagics implemented the tackles yesterday and now its being tweaked and polished (a longer on-going process). Below is a movie showing the tackles in its first iteration. Oh yeah the guys fall over too - and you'll be able to scythe your team mates down also!

Here's another little movie showing the switching in action.

There's a new cursor design visible in the clips, but due to the compression it may be hard to notice the difference between the cursors, yet when I'm playing it full-screen here - in-game - I'm having no problems discerning between them. Cursor colours will follow the team colours (which will be selectable in the options). Here the red team fittingly have red cursors and the blue team have blue cursors.

Once again, I'm recording this alone, but as you can see in the clip I can control four players at the same time; using two gamepads and two keyboard setups (on one keyboard). In theory you could play a four-player match using one computer, although the users with analogue gamepads will have the obvious advantage!

The compression really makes it hard to see what's going on here.. =/

As promised some time ago here's a short movie showcasing the player switching in WOF.

Player switching is about finding the best suited footballer for the player to control and there's really a lot of parameters to take into account to solve this issue. Its not just a case of selecting the footballer currently closest to the ball - if he's facing away from the ball, or if the ball is in the air above him, then he will not be able to get control of the ball. Another issue to deal with is if the player want to chase the ball - or the ball holder - or would he rather control a footballer that the ball is moving towards?

Luckily Fivemagics have developed a system that caters for all these things and selects the best choice for us - I don't know how it works in details, but I've played with it for some time now and its very good! =)

If the best suited footballer to control is off-screen then an arrow will appear near the edge of the screen pointing in the direciton of said footballer - all you have to do is run in the opposite direction of the arrow!

I had nobody to play with tonight so I had to record a 'two-player session' alone.. I'm controlling the blue team, and the red team is just idle although the switcing is still active. I hope you'll enjoy the 'show'! =)

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! =)