Bay 12 Games Forum

GTA III: Consoles - October 2001    PC - May 2002
GTA Vice City: Consoles - October 2002    PC - May 2003
GTA San Andreas: Consoles - October 2004    PC - June 2005
GTA IV: Consoles - April 2008    PC - December 2008

So it stands to reason that it should be around

GTA V: Consoles - September 2013    PC - April - June 2014

That said V should be a smoother port job than IV, if only because V runs way better than IV as it stands on consoles. (Seriously, boot up IV if you still have it and compare it during heavy fights/chases. I've never seen V stutter the way IV could) Then add the fact that Console specs are the exact same while our PCs are 5 years better, and the port should be smooth sailing. I mean I can still see them fucking up PC controls, especially since they've gone heavy on the radial menus, but GTA really is a "Plug in the gamepad" type game anyway.

The only problem I have is that it feels way shorter than IV. I checked an it does have a few less main missions, although a crapton more side missions. (It's also not really clear on which are side missions and which are main, as both use the Letter icon on the map, the only indication is if you're watching the 100% list) However, since the missions don't suck like in IV (I swear damn near every mission in IV was Boss: "Go kill this guy", Niko: "I don't want to kill them" Boss "I'll pay you" Niko "Well ok then". Every fucking missions.) you'll blaze through a ton of them each session without the urge to fuck around instead. Which is a shame, because the fucking around is pretty amazing this time around too. Except Yoga, fuck Yoga. That made my hands hurt.

Well, I got the game and played it for all of 45 min before I had to stop. Why? My goddamn PS3 controller finally gave up the ghost. Right after I finally had a game that made me use the damn thing as something more than a PC gamepad. 

Project Zomboid recently released the ability to get Steam keys from Desura, which I find to be extremely awesome, as I don't ever use Desura despite having signed up for an account at some point down the road. It doesn't appear to be directly available through Steam as of yet, but it does appear to be a very good possibility in the near future.

Oh thank god. I mean, I know Desura is a godsend for indie devs but, it's also the only distribution platform that has regularly broken down on me as far as downloads and updates, sometimes requiring me to just start all over from a fresh install. I admit I tend to transfer my keys to Steam the moment that option is available.

So, here we go, another fortnight, another show. Absolutly nothing out of the...


Shit.

Well, a backstage incident could be either good or bad. It could be anything from a fight between workers, to some guys bonding over video games, to even someone just getting fucking blackout drunk before the show. Anyway, there's nothing to do but hope for the best.


Yes, on his very first day on the job, Powerful Man gets into an altercation with Irwin. I'm going to give Irwin the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the new kid's fault, so when given the choice of disciplin, I give a stern talk to Powerful. His response?


Well, that actually didn't go so bad. He admitted his mistake and apologized. Now an apology doesn't mean anything if he keeps doing it, but I'm willing to write this off as first show nerves. It's not easy being the new guy. Looking again at the backstage screen I see that one of the plusses is now the argument between them, meaning I successfully diffused the situation. Go me!

Anyway, for this show I want to try something different. Namely a tag team match. If either of these teams are discovered to ahve good chemistry with each other, their teams may become a more permanent fixture. I'm hoping I can at least get Buzz and The Silencer together, if only because Law & Order is an amazing tagteam name.


Now for a tag team match, it's important to note both the victor AND the loser, as a tag team match ends with one pin, not two. For this I've decided newcomer Silencer will have to take the fall, but that he should still be made to look strong. As this is our opening act, I've instructed the workers to get the crowd warmed up for the rest of the show. Also Zak and Starling probably have the stupidest tag name ever, but I can fix that later, and that's assuming they are even a good team.


So, this show is about the return of Stoner from his injury. Neonivek still can't find a good challenge, and looking back I probably could have winged a short storyline with that, but it's too late at this point. Stoner making his return is finally able to beat him, setting up the threat of his return. I'm trying to build some momentum on both him and Sackhead in order to hype up the title battle between them. In addition I have Brooke defeating Olivia in order to scope out how good she is this time, and Powerful Man facing Peaches. Although he loses that match in the end, the idea is that, like Rocky Balboa, he "Went the distance". Also again it's a bit short, but I tend not to pay attention to the length. SOmetimes it'll be too long, sometimes too short. The fans don't mind, as this sin't a TV show where there is a promised show length. As long as the show itself is good, they leave happy.

With that said, let's get this underway.


So we start the show off with a tribute video to Stoner. Showing his devastating injury where Sackhead slammed him through a table, to his grueling recovery, to finally him stepping out of a car infront of the arena. The fans seemed to like it.


Next was the tag team match, which went REALLY well. Not only did the match itself go great (The devoid of heat message again just being because we suck by default), but our two new worker's gimmicks went over extremely well. Zak with his blue collar working stiff gimmick, managed to pander to the crowd. After all, he's one of them. While everyone ate up The Silencer's mercenary gimmick. This reminds me, I'm going to put the theme music for our current workers in the OP in a spoiler box. Haven't decided what these guys get yet, but when I do, it'll be there for easy reference. In retrospect I should have made a second reserved post.

Next is Noenivek making an open challenge to anyone who can take him on. It again scored fairly well. Followed by the Peaches/Power man match, which did decent. After that was the Olivia/Brooke match which again was out of the ordinary enough to warrant a screenshot


26. An E 26. I'll need to check, but I THINK that may actually be our best match. My memory is shakey on it. In addition, her gimmick as a klepto went over decently. If so, I'm VERY pleased with Brooke right now. Hell even if it isn't I'm pleased.

Next was another ok segment where Stoner accepted Neonivek's challenge, and then they wrestle.

Sadly, this was a slight letdown from the previous match, but still a solid bout between two of our better workers. Stoner has established himself as being back, and Neon learned some humility for now. However, with that how did we score?


Not too bad, not too bad. A three point increase from our last show, and if we can keep this up, we'll be out of the basement of wrestling in no time. (No time being a year or two, but hey, that IS no time in the entertainment business!)

One final thing. I did want to check if that Brooke match was infact our best one, so I went to our "Top 100 Matches" screen and...

It absolutely was, followed closely by the Stoner/Neonivek and the Tag Team match from the same night. I think everyone working at BTWF can be proud of that show. Especially our 4 rookies who all proved themselves valuable additions to the BTWF family. Anyway, we still need a second storyline, and soon will be the time to unveil our title belt.

Alright, first thing I've done before doing an update proper is throwing together a logo for us so that blank space isn't staring me in the face every time I visit the home screen.


It's not great but hey, it was made with one of those free online tools and 45 seconds in GIMP, so, for the amount of effort it took it'll suffice. You can actually see the Gimp Window with half of the logo in the bottom that was accidentally left in frame. The tool I used didn't do multi line gradients so I had to generate each half on it's own.

So with not much to do untill our next show, I simm away while keeping an eye out for any interesting stories from the news feed. That said, one of the features I like is how, when you are processing the AI's turn, it shows you a profile from a random worker currently active in the database. As an example


Sometimes this can help tell you about workers who you may not have heard of yet.

Sadly, on Wednesday, Week 3, January 2013, the wrestling world lost another of it's own.


Freddy was a decent worker who at one point worked for the SWF, and after his contract was up he was snapped up by USPW, where he won their title belt in 2006 before falling to the midcard over the next seven years. However, he is now just another grim reminder of how rough this business can be, passing away at only the age of 43.

Finally another loose end tied up on Friday, Week 3 of January. Boston Brawler finalized his contract as our Road Agent. At the age of 60, with 42 years in the business, he should know quite a few tricks to teach our workers to improve themselves in the ring. Or he might drop dead of old age in a year.

Next we have what I like to call the Tuesday Night Wars. SWF and TCW both hold their TV show in the same timeslot. Now ratings wise SWF has about double the viewers of TCW, their last show having a TV rating of 12.55 against TCW's 7.07. However if we look at the actual shows.


We can see they're both neck and neck. Really it was the main events that hurt SWF, earning a 74 and 78 while TCW's finisher hit a 90. It will be interesting to see how this continues. Perhaps in a few years TCW may finally be able to slay the beast.

However the rest of the week and a half goes by without anything noteworthy happening, so we proceed to our show. Now first off, the length hasn't been shortened yet. This will change next month, because well.... I only set it for the first show, now the second. And the game autosaves every day, so we can't fix it now. However, I feel we can make it work again.

Anyway, we're cutting it a lot shorter than before though, only reaching around 75 minutes.

Now first off, you'll notice the first leg of the show is centered around Leopard King being a cocky son'a'bitch and then getting the ever loving piss beaten out of him by our second least favorite wrestler, Otto. My hope with this is we can squeeze a bit of popularity out of this, to make Otto slightly less worthless. Leopard King was EXTREMELY unhappy with the booking, but since we plan to get rid of him after the show, he can shove it.

Next is the further development of the Stoner/Sackhead feud. With Stoner still "Injured", he discusses with Hoster about watching his back while he recovers. Later in ring Hoster makes the mistake of announcing this alliance to everyone in the ring, leading to Sackhead calling Hoster out.

Next we have Peaches and Martin going against each other. There is a little bit of back and forth between them, but not enough to warrant an angle. This is covered in the 2 min of "non wrestling time" that gets put into every match automatically.

And finally, we have Hoster and Sackhead going at it for 17 min in a very slowly building match. It's very likely this will tire them out, but this early I'm more exploring everyone's endurance while the dings we get for a bad match aren't as punishing.

Two very important incidents happened during the match.
First off, Neonivek became tired during a relatively short match, now this may have been a one off thing, or it could be a serious issue that needs to be looked at. However it did tank the match something fierce.

Second
Our main event also didn't do too well, as Hoster wasn't able to keep up with such a long match. Also 15 minutes apparently wasn't long enough for the slow build approach which seems a bit crazy to me to be perfectly honest.

Anyway our final show rating came out at


So a 1 point drop from last time, which is basically margin of error material. Do note the Hoster and Stoner angles. ALthough Hoster isn't that great in the ring it seems, he is AMAZING on the microphone. In general our angles are going over better than our wrestling itself. This may or may not be a good thing in the future.

Anyway, after the show I go to release Leopard King. It asks me one question.
YES I AM SURE!

So we burned that bridge to the ground, and have only one last thing to do now. Advance to the next month.

And the damage is....
$3,686 Profit! Yes our sponsors came through with $9,965 that month, leaving us with actual money in the bank. Next month we may actually hire another wrestler or two, both to replace Leopard, and to fill out our roster a bit more. In addition, we will be adding a second storyline. Anyway, the updates should be a bit more frequent now but I'm not promising anything. So until next time, remember, if you can't wrestle, at least know how to act.

Ok went and found an entrance theme for everyone. Some of it might not fit too well, but I'm not really a music buff, so it was sorta limited to youtube searches. Some have youtube timestamps but they may or may not work.


     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7OdI-b61qg
Just went with something very powerful sounding. Peaches, despite being a woman, IS our largest wrestler after all, except for Buzz

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MBljztEeg0
Eh, what can I say, couldn't think of much and he isn't exactly star material anyway.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0CMzE-e2prY#t=26
Could it be anything else, really? That said going with a cover because this is Wrestling, so we need it to be more Rock n Roll.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23cxD0zKiFk
Not gonna lie, this is one of my favorite tracks from any game, and I feel it fits with a weird cult guy.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbU4fPYRvcY
Yes I went with that. Remember Kayfabe wise, he's also a football player.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX8GG3dnsp8
Dunno, I feel like Aerosmith fits him. I think it's the hair.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_aMb-r4A3M
Was trying to find something that kinda fits a Yakuza style criminal theme, this was the best I could find. I'll admit I've very unfammiliar with any sort of music from the East, so I went with what I know, which is games. Not gonna lie I was really grasping for straws here, if anyone knows any music that sorta has a Japanese Criminal feel to it, please tell me.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThOXlmVbQGs
Jack's sorta an egotistical star who everyone loves regardless, so I feel this fits. Think this fits better than the last song I chose for him in the previous update. Dunno.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmO4DPfGsWg
OK I know this is seriously streatching it since it's the Undertaker's theme IRL, but that's purely coincidence. Since Irwin's schtick is that he's tired of seeing everyone waste away from drugs, alcohol, ego, and so on in this business, I felt this song actually fit. Far more than it does for the Undertaker anyway.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=497ZmAsGAT4
Ok she's a surfer. We REALLY don't have much of a choice but to use this.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2s4pCxQK3M
I know, I know, Doubling down on the Metallica, but again, I feel it fits. Lyrics don't fit as much though, just the feel so in this case they've been dropped. Remember, he's basically the big bad boogeyman.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ONizhfivfLA#t=22
And yes I'm aware that's not actually Bob Marley. I don't know why this cover keeps being misattributed to him.

So that's the themes for everyone so far. Kenneth probably needs a theme if he's going to start pulling Vince McMahon style stuff and being a character in the fictional world of our promotion as well as the real one.