Get the hell out of my way!

These are two special modes designed each with a specific purpose: Complete the map as quickly as possible (Time Attack), or complete the map with the highest score possible (Score Attack). Both modes force you to take a completely different approach when playing the level (well, if you want to do well that is!). For instance, during time attack, it’s typically optimal to skip as many areas as possible. Sometimes you can do this by jumping off of crawlers or by rocket jumping. Score Attack encourages you to rack up (wrack up?) kills, multi-kills, and to chain together as many kills as you possibly can. Basically, it’s a slaughterfest with a bit of treasure hunting thrown in (some of which can take a lot of skill to get)!

What’s best about these modes though is that you’re not just competing against yourself – you’re competing against the whole world! That’s because your best time/score on a particular map is submitted to the leaderboard!

What? I'm LOSING?! NOOOOOOOOOOO!

What’s even better is that not only is your score/time submitted to the leaderboard, but your replay is as well! Not only will people be able to see your amazing time or score, but they’ll be able to see how you pulled off that amazing feat as well! Plus, if you’re dumbfounded by someone else’s time/score, you can easily check out how they did it without having to run to YouTube! Not only that, but this method will be a powerful cheat deterrent as well.

Runners, start your engines! It’s going to be fun!

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There’s a proverb by Voltaire that says “Perfect is the enemy of good”. Basically, you can let yourself get so paralyzed by the thought of having to do something perfectly that you end up doing nothing at all – or worse! You can’t get a stain out of your carpet so you don’t clean it at all. You’re too tired to do your full workout, so you don’t do any of it. You can’t eat right at a restaurant so you pig out.

Deep-fried pizza, here I come!

It’s a trap I think we’ll all fallen into at one point or another – especially for perfectionists. “So what does any of this have to do with Wrack?” you’re probably NOT asking? This issue has plagued this very project! … or at least, it used to!

As you likely know from the screenshots, Wrack has directional shadows on most of its objects. During one of his playthroughs, Bobby Prince pointed out that the shadows were being cast on walls that objects were behind. Most of the time it wasn’t an issue, but sometimes…

Uh oh...

My response was that it would be really expensive to fix the problem. Sure, I could cut out faces that were facing away from the object, but you’d still have small issues. For instance, if an object was sitting on a ledge, and the shadow shone onto the ledge floor, the ledge wall, and the floor below, the shadow wouldn’t be present on the ledge wall, but it would be on the floor below – all the way up to the ledge wall. Obviously, that isn’t visually correct. You can see that on the image below.

See? Clearly total crap!

To really fix it, you’d have to build depth information so that when you project the shadow, you can tell if the shadow has been “blocked” on that pixel. Doing so would be harmful to the framerate, and not really worth it to do. Because I couldn’t completely fix it, I left the issue alone.

So, let me get this straight. Because I couldn’t completely fix that, I settled for this:

PICTURED: A bad decision.

Having to look at that abomination over and over, I eventually came to my senses. I put in the simple check to not have shadows render on faces that face away from the object, and while it’s not a perfect solution, it’s 95% better than it used to be. Honestly, the whole “ledge” issue is so rare that I’m not even sure it’s present in the first 3 levels. So, this pretty much fixes all noticeable issues with virtually no framerate cost.

Ah, much better!

Perfect? No. Good enough? Hell yes.

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Yeah... I think it's up to par now!

How much has this thing improved? I wasn’t even comfortable showing off the old ones in any screenshots or the trailer. In fact, most people have probably never seen the old version of this thing (it used to be red). But now? I think it’s one of the best looking monsters in the game.

So what do these suckers do? Many of you from the Doom community may be familiar with a custom monster known as the “stone imp”. Basically, these are slow-moving tanks armed only with one hell of a melee attack. The principle is the same with the crushers. Generally, they have a tough time hitting you, but when they do… MAN does it hurt! On hard, these monsters do a whopping 99 points of damage to your unarmored body! OUCH!

To make up for their lack of mobility, you’ll usually find them in enclosed areas – hallways, small/medium-sized sealed rooms, etc. If not used properly, they’re just big boring bullet sponges; but when used properly, they may require you to change your pants!

One last thing – the crusher is a great embodiment of one of the principles of Wrack – large health swings. Let’s say that in another game, you get hit 10 times over the course of a level, and take 200 points of damage total (20 points of damage per hit). Under Wrack’s design philosophy, you would take the same total amount of damage, but over FEWER hits – let’s say, 4 (200/4 = 50 points of damage per hit). So, what does this mean? Since each hit does more, your life is more likely to fall below 0 with each hit. This means that each situation is more dangerous, and that you have to be more careful. The game is much more a roller coaster-type experience, which ultimately leads to more fun!

So, what do you all think? Do you like how the crusher looks? How would you use them on a map? Let us know!

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Okay, so maybe I’m not the best person ever at posting regular progress updates. I resolve to do a better job of that. It’s not exactly the first of the year, but dammit, I can make a resolution anyway! I had been keeping quiet because I thought our first release was imminent, but for the first time in the history of mankind, something’s taken longer than expected. So, I figure instead of delaying any sort of news because “We’re SO close! Just wait!”, I may as well just post already – lest this silence go on for much longer.

Anyway, let’s get on with the updates – delivered to you in convenient bullet format!

• The pre-order release is basically done! We’re in the last phase of the design process, which is the music/sound part. To properly make music and sound for something, you really have to do everything else (concept sketch/model/texture/animate) for something first, otherwise it won’t fit properly (plus, in the case of sounds, sync properly with the animation). Thankfully, the man himself Bobby Prince is working on this, so as you can imagine, things are coming along very smoothly!
• The first level is being redone. After coming across a pretty awesome Sequelitis video by egoraptor, I realized that while our first level does a fairly good job of introducing Wrack, it could do a much better job. This shouldn’t delay our first release at all. If it makes it, great! If not, it will be included in a later update.
• Time Attack and Score Attack mode are finished! In my QuakeCon interview, I talk about how not only will your times/scores be recorded on a leaderboard, but your replay will also be sent allowing everyone else to watch your amazing feat! Well, I’m pleased to say that it’s finally a reality, and will be part of the very first release!
• I’m working on having the logo recolored. I was never totally happy with how it was colored, so I’m going to try to have that fixed up. Yes, I know – I am very picky.

There you have it! For more news and notes, don’t forget to follow both me and Wrack on something called “the Twitter”.

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Be sure to check out all of the new screenshots on the media page. But, for now, here’s one to get you started!

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In the interview, we discuss several topics, which include games today, Wrack itself, and working with the legendary Bobby Prince! You can find the interview here. Feel free to share your thoughts!

Oh, and as a little treat, we’ve put out a new screenshot to go along with the interview. We’ve been pretty quiet lately for very good reason – we’re working extremely hard to improve the visual aspects of Wrack. We’ve got a couple of new people working on it (who had been working on it previously), including Remco Ernst (aka Rulero), and Todd Nickens (aka WastedYouth). Here’s a little taste of what Wrack will be looking like in the future. Enjoy!

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So as it turns out, the trailer didn’t do a very good job at showing off one of the most awesome things about Wrack – new music and sounds made by none other than Bobby Prince. In fact, some thought the only reason he was credited in the trailer was because of the Doom track I used, and that he had nothing to do with Wrack! Yikes! Bad job by me!

Well, I’m here to make up for that… and then some! I present to you not one, but two new videos! The first one is a new music track called “Crusher” that will be used in one of the later levels, and the second one shows off many of the new sound effects Bobby has created for Wrack.

Enjoy!

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To avoid confusion with another game that’s coming out sometime soon, we’ll be dropping the name “Last Bastion” (which – let’s face it – a lot of people didn’t care for anyway!). I was hoping to have a new name for you guys, but despite weeks of trying to think of something new, I still have yet to settle upon something I really like. I want to get it right this time, and don’t want to settle for a sub-par name. Hopefully we’ll be able to announce a new name soon. … oh yeah, and when we do, it will likely be accompanied by a new website!

Also, big news concerning our first release!

I’m changing up our first release plan. Instead of releasing an alpha, we’ll be doing a pre-order system. By pre-ordering episode 1 of the game (I almost typed “Last Bastion” there – oops!), you’ll get an account which will give you access to the current version as well as updates as we continue to make it! So, instead of getting stuck with an incomplete and possibly buggy (and shitty) version of the game, you’ll get to come along for the ride as we make it! We’ll be able to fix issues, listen to your requests, add features for modders, and most importantly – continue to develop content for, and finish up the game!

That should all be a lot of fun, and it’s coming up soon! Hopefully we’ll be all done and ready to go this summer. Until then…

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Lately, we’ve been focusing on the theme for the next two levels after what we showed at QuakeCon. In these two levels, you’re traveling through a waste disposal area, so it has a grungy industrial type of look with a lot of damaging nuclear waste. Here are some screenshots of the first area. Enjoy

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