Wrack Blog

Mark Your Calendars!

Brad Carney — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:03:55 +0000

… or smartphones or whatever the hell you use to keep track of upcoming stuff nowadays!

Things have been going great with Wrack lately. Hopefully you’ve seen some of the previews and maybe even the playthrough by OverTheGun. We’re so close to being ready that I’m finally ready to announce the pre-order release date! That date is…

FRIDAY, MAY 25TH, 2012

On that date, you’ll be able to pre-order the first episode of Wrack, instantly be able to play the first three levels, and you’ll receive the level editor, WrackEd. For more details on what pre-ordering entails, check out our pre-order page.

It’s going to be a lot of fun!

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Speed Runs and Score… Funs?

Brad Carney — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:50:21 +0000

Following on the heels of last week’s article on Wrack’s super-mega-awesomepants features, I thought it’d be great to talk about another one of them – Wrack’s Time Attack and Score Attack modes!

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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The World of Wrack Modding

Brad Carney — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:16:18 +0000

I think it’s time we talked about one of the finer points of Wrack – its modding capabilities! As many of you know, my previous project was Skulltag – a Doom expansion which adds client/server multiplayer; new game modes (such as capture the flag); and a slew of new weapons, items, and monsters.

It also adds imp sex. Lots and lots of imp sex.

Skulltag, as well as Doom in general, continues to thrive years after its release largely thanks to all of the great maps and mods people have created over the years. My hope is for Wrack to be the same way.

I think most would agree that the ability to make new maps is the most important aspect of modding. To do that, you need a great map making tool. Wrack’s map editor, WrackEd, aims to be just that (and if it falls short, I’ll fix it, dammit!). It’s a powerful tool that aims to be fairly intuitive to use. It has three 2D views which allow you to create and manipulate your level geometry and placed items on any plane, and a 3D view which shows you exactly how your level is turning out in real time.

Wrack's map editor, WrackEd

Maps are saved to a file called .map (makes sense, right?). These files can simply be dragged and dropped onto Wrack.exe (or opened with Wrack.exe) which brings up a menu asking if you’d like to play the map right away, play it after setting your skill level, or just going to the main menu (you can also set it to remember what you picked). This makes it ultra easy for people to play custom maps – something I hope people make a lot of!

The last thing I want to touch on is the straight up modding of Wrack – adding a new monster, editing an existing one, replacing a sound, etc. For starters, all of Wrack’s data is defined externally. What does this mean? Wrack has no idea what the hell a crawler, crusher, or even a DOOR is. All of these things have been defined through a series of text files, which can be manipulated by you. You can build your own monsters, weapons, face actions, etc. all using the same tools we’ve used to make Wrack. You can even build off of what we’ve got!

Not only can you define your own properties for objects (ex. how tall it is, or how much damage it does), but you can also define the behavior for most everything as well. For instance, all monster behavior is done through scripting. Here’s a (simplified) example of a section of the crawler’s script:

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------- state Chase { int iTicks;


  event( "struck wall" )

  {

    // If we hit a wall, try to turn and move towards our target.

    // If we can't move towards it, first try to walk along the

		// obstruction.

		FaceTarget8Way( true, false );
		if ( CannotMoveForward( ))

			changestate( WalkAlongObstruction );

	}
	event( "target died" )

		TargetDied( );
	OnEnter

	{

		// Play our movement sound.

		PlaySound( "crawler_move.wav", 100, SFXF_LOOP );
		// Set this state's animation.

		SetAnimation( "chase", -1, ANIMF_LOOP );
		iTicks = 0;

	}
	MainLoop

	{

		// Attack once we get into melee range.

		if ( TargetWithinAttackRange( ))

			ChangeState( Attack );
		if ( iTicks == 0 )

		{

			// Change directions.

			FaceTarget8Way( true, false );

			iTicks = rand( 1, 2 ) * FPS / 4;

		}

		else

			iTicks--;

// Move forward. MoveForward( ); } }

I’ll explain how scripting works later, but you can probably figure out some of how this works already (for instance, PlaySound() probably… plays a sound!). This should give you an idea though of just how much flexibility you have when it comes to modding Wrack.

That’s it for right now! Do you have any questions? Do you plan on doing any Wrack modding? If so, what do you plan to do?

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The Enemy of Good

Brad Carney — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:32:11 +0000

Have you ever refused to do something because you couldn’t do it perfectly?

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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Monster Showcase – The Crusher!

Brad Carney — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:29:20 +0000

Well, the time for our first release is fast approaching! Recently we’ve finished retexturing several of the monsters – none of which getting a bigger facelift than… THE CRUSHER!

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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Progress Update – 02/12

Brad Carney — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:15:51 +0000

An update?! WHAT?!

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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Want To Get Wrack Early?

Brad Carney — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:38:55 +0000

… you can if you’re a mapper!

That’s right! Because we want one of the big appeals of Wrack to be maps and mods created by you all, I’d like to give a few lucky people the chance to started right away. You’ll get the level editor, WrackEd, along with anything else needed to start modding (mostly, all you need is Notepad!).

If you’re definitely looking forward to making some maps and/or mods, go ahead and let me know. Please show some samples of what you’ve done if you want to be seriously considered. You can reach me at bmc431@gmail.com.

Oh, and one last thing: If I’m here talking about giving some people Wrack early, you can (correctly) infer from that WE ARE ALMOST DONE! Wrack will be available for pre-order very soon now!

Thanks, and I look forward to what you all come up with!

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New Batch of Screenshots!

Brad Carney — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:22:24 +0000

As the title suggests, I’m very pleased to showcase a brand new batch of screenshots! We’ve all worked very hard to improve the look over the past several months, and I think it’s paid off. These represent how the pre-order Wrack will initially look, so I hope you all like it!

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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Looking for Level Designers

Brad Carney — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 01:43:58 +0000

As those of you who follow me on Twitter may know, I’ve been making a huge amount of progress on Wrack’s maps. In roughly a month’s time, I’ve completed the layouts and done the gameplay for almost ALL of episode 2′s maps! Now that’s progress! (And they’re not exactly slapped together either – the concepts behind these maps are things I’ve wanted to do for YEARS, and only now have the programming ability to pull them off!)

Sadly, these levels (along with most of episode 1′s maps) are completely unlit, undetailed, and untextured. To right this wrong, I’ve decided to speed the mapping process along by bringing someone else onto the team.

I’m looking for someone to take level layouts and sculpt them into something beautiful. This involves texturing, lighting, architecture, etc. If making pretty levels is a strength of yours, then you may have what it takes to join our team!

Also, you will be paid for this. So, yeah. There’s that.

Anyway, if you’re capable of taking godawful pieces of shit like this:

… and turning it into masterful works of art like this:

… let me know! Please show some samples of your work.

Thanks!

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New Wrack Interview!

Brad Carney — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:01:20 +0000

As you may recall in our QuakeCon Wrap Up post, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by The Astringent Gaming Journal. I’m very pleased to announce that the interview is now available!

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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