Wrestling Empire News

v1.5.8 introduces a handful of classic moves to celebrate the return of Street Fighter! It has been a fun experiment in animating unorthodox attacks with unique mechanics. They're not distributed among the characters as standard, so purists needn't fear as you'll never see them unless you go looking for them.



This is also the long-awaited update that finally allows personalized team names under the "Relationships" tab, as well as a handful of the usual bug fixes:
http://mdickie.com/guides/wempire.pdf

You never know what each update could contain when you're trying to keep a wrestling game topical! After taking a month off to see how Wrestlemania panned out, I found myself creating a rubber chicken. I also finally got around to adding my version of the "Cross Rhodes" - which was every bit as hard to animate as I feared, but benefits from being used as a running/flying move from the rear for some wild spots. Inspired by Vikingo's antics on Dynamite, I've also made it possible for especially agile wrestlers to perform SOMERSAULT grapples! You can study the full patch notes here:
http://mdickie.com/guides/wempire.pdf

Inspired by last month's Royal Rumble spot, mid-air collisions are now a spectacle in this game! Whenever 2 flying attacks meet in mid-air, BOTH participants can hit each other and tumble to the ground in a variety of ways. This is, of course, quite rare unless you get performative in multiplayer mode! You're more likely to see it at ground level, where 2 running attacks can also result in a double clothesline.



Flying or jumping opponents are also now vulnerable to any attack powerful enough to knock them out of the air! We're seeing a steady flow of new such attacks. Inspired by the re-release of Weekend Warriors, its "Spinning Back Kick" and "Spinning Back Elbow" have made a welcome return to this game - as well as a "Shove", which makes its 3D debut after being one of my favourites in 2D.

v1.5.5 also features a handful of new animations elsewhere, and alternative referee voices courtesy of Ross Foad:
http://www.mdickie.com/guides/wempire.pdf

Fresh out of the Christmas break, the project is entering its 3rd year of free updates! The big news is that being able to write text in 3D is changing the way the world communicates with you, as a poster backstage indicates who is in the ring should you choose to interfere. The train also now indicates 8 different destinations through each of its doors. Another nice detail is that the new weather FX are now visible through the windows of indoor locations!



Having lost several people in real life since the last update, v1.5.4 also includes the "Split Kick" from IK+ in memory of Archer Maclean - as well as Jay Briscoe's "Jay Driller" underhook piledriver. Being able to keep things topical is one of the many great privileges of having this much creative freedom!

I've spent much of January fine-tuning how controllers are used in my games, so those users may be interested to take advantage of the new "Calibration" option (via "Cast>Controllers" or the C key from the titles). I did my best to accommodate Xbox & Playstation as standard, but it's good to know you can now adapt to anything else as well.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as seasonal weather such as rain & snow is forecast in my games for the first time! There are also gifts large & small that you can actually open to reveal secret weapons, and the last event of each year now has fun with these festive gimmicks. To celebrate the World Cup at the same time, you may even see a few balls lying around with their own unique physics...



Speaking of physics, if you double-tap to either side with an agile wrestler you can now show off a graceful new cartwheel animation! You can even hone this skill in the gym by doing it over the blue mats to score a stat increase. v1.5.3 also fixes its fair share of bugs that were caused by too many particle FX or spawned objects. Hopefully, the chaos is more foolproof now:
http://mdickie.com/guides/wempire.pdf