Wurmz!

From Liero Wiki

Wurmz! is a Liero Clone programmed by Patrys. This clone was the first to boast netplay (playable even on 32kb/s!). Wurmz! features a powerful, yet unfinished system of LUA Artificial Intelligence scripting. The game was revolutionary in many aspects. Advanced but easy to use level engine, sophisticated sound effects, several game modes, and much more. It reached its popularity peak in the first half of 2003. Then problems with lack of respect and host started to come, slowing the development down. In 2004 only a few people were involved, and they were mainly developers. Eventually, having announced Gusanos its successor, Patrys closed the Wurmz! project late 2004.

Contents 1 Features 2 History 3 Screenshots 4 External links

Features

• Eight players via net or with splitscreen
• Six main gametypes:
  • Last Man Standing (life limit)
  • Free For All (frag limit)
  • Predator deathmatch (predator disappears while not moving and only he scores frags; kill the predator to become one)
  • Capture the Flag (flag locations configured in levels)
  • Game of Tag
  • Domination (be the last one, who touched the flag, for the longest time possible!)
• Advanced level system
  • easy to learn creation rules
  • look vs. structure independency
  • 256 material types
  • special objects (weapons, healthpacks, kicker pads) set by levelmaker
  • quick configuration with a text file
  • program for waypoint creation
  • parallax background
  • foreground lights
  • mp3 can be attached to play during fight on the level
• PNG with alpha channel support (beautiful explosions, etc.)
• Player profiles
• Flexibility
• Designed for TotalConversions
  • from very similar to liero1.33
  • through Quakelike with weapons located on levels
  • to space combat with turrents, force fields, homing rockets and mines
• Complex, scriptable AI
  • LUA scripting
  • waypoint system
  • high accuracy
  • opponent chaseing
  • analytical choosing of the best weapon for each situation
  • good pathfinding
• Homing weapons
• Doppler effect
• Demo recording

History

• 2002.02.18 Patrys started writing his Liero clone
• 2002.02.20 He announced Wurmz! on Liga Liero Forum and showed it to Biernath_John and Durbik. Durbik immediately called it "the best clone in the world (so far)". It featured rope, levels and four worms
• 2002.02.21 First public alpha (playable)
• 2002.02.27 Weapons like Larpa and Chiquita Bomb added
• 2002.03.15 First netplay between Greybrow and Patrys
• 2002.03.25 First four-player match
• 2002.06.12 Joosa Riekkinen (cyclometh) became interested in Wurmz!

[13:07] <cyclometh> im beginning to be interested in this wurmz project
[13:08] <[LL]Patrys> why are you interested in my game?
[13:09] <cyclometh> 'cos its a good idea and you've done well with it
[13:17] <[LL]Patrys> did u like wurmz?
[13:17] <cyclometh> yea i like it
[13:17] <cyclometh> when playing alone lag-free :P
[13:17] <cyclometh> i should try it on lan i think
[13:18] <[LL]Patrys> it ownz over lan
[13:18] <[LL]Patrys> i'm trying to keep that 'liero feel'
[13:18] <[LL]Patrys> the playability stuff
[13:19] <cyclometh> well it feels and looks like the original (THOSE AMAAAAZZZIIIIIIING
graphics), so.. it'll survive for a long time :D

• 2002.06.29 Alpha 60 released (tha last one, not counting the bots release of the same alpha)
• 2002.07.03 Patrys programmed first (simple, but much better than that of Liero) Wurmz! Artificial Intelligence
• 2002.11.06 First beta (called Wurmz! Bravo) published
• 2002.12.24 Wurmz! Ops (first Charlie version available to the public)
• 2003.02.12 Wurmz! Charlie released (some people still believe this is the latest version)
• Somewhere here the development was stopped due to FireAarro's theft. He stole and published a closed (available to about 20 people) version of Wurmz! Delta. It made Patrys close the project. Although he returned to it again after some time, it was never the same again. The multi-developer system with autoupdater and new versions released several times a day has never come back to life.
• 2003.08.29 Wurmz! Delta engine published as part of SorWurmz Total Conversion by Jerrec
• 2003.10.13 Wurmz! Classic released. It is a TC (created by Jerrec) as similar as possible to Liero 1.33, but on the engine of Wurmz! Delta
• 2004.11 First Official Internet Wurmz! Tournament. The final match was never played as Jerrec had to return home (with really slow modem). See the results

Screenshots

On the second working day, Wurmz! was already more advanced than clones being coded for more than half a year.

Three screenshots from games played on 2005.07.24 by Chollix, Guth, Jerrec, Krymzon, Patrys and Smoothguy.

External links

• The Official Wurmz! Site English version not working, Polish totally outdated
• Fanpage A nice and new fanpage, a lot of stuff do download