[we are currently only looking for candidates who live in Canada]

Pykrete Games is currently looking to hire a 2D artist, or possibly two, on a freelance contract basis to help make Championship Wrestling Promoter look better. Here’s what you need to know:

Pykrete Games is a small (currently one person) video game studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia, looking for an artist for Championship Wrestling Promoter, a sports simulation game where players get to manage their own fictional professional wrestling promotion. We are currently looking for a 2D character artist and an illustrator. One candidate who is able to fill both roles would be ideal, but we are open to hiring for the two roles separately.
   

• This is a contract position for this project only.
• It is a paid position.
• This is a remote position. However, we are currently only looking for candidates who live in Canada.
• Previous industry experience is not a requirement as long as you’re talented and reliable.

For a full job description and details on how to apply, visit our web site: https://www.pykretegames.com/blog/2021/6/12/seeking-an-artist

[NEW MATCH SCREEN]

It’s been a while with no development updates. Unfortunately due to an unusual confluence of factors (my desktop PC failed, local stores were closed due to Covid, and mail was delayed due to the Christmas rush), I ended up not being able to do any new coding for over a month. But the game remains under active development and I’ve got lots to share this month.

The bulk of the changes are to the way matches play out. This includes a completely new match screen, a new formula for determining how well the wrestlers are entertaining the audience, some new pre- and post-match screens, and, for the first time ever, some graphics. Let’s dive into the specific changes in more detail.

NEW MATCH SCREEN



There are a ton of changes here, and I won’t go through all of them, but if you’ve been following the development so far (or if you look at the screenshots I’ve posted previously) you’ll see how big the changes are. This screen isn’t finished, but it’s functional enough to do testing and further development. The current graphics are placeholders, and the grey background is a work in progress. But in general you can see where this screen is going.

Aside from the new layout, which includes some graphical elements as opposed to the old one which was all text, you may notice that the match descriptions have been changed substantially. Previously matches were made up of a series of pre-written text blocks. They worked kind of like MadLibs, with particular details being changed based on the wrestlers in the match, but the bulk of the text was fixed. This made for matches that were pretty fun to read initially, but I worried that they were too wordy and it was too difficult to pick out important details.

There are two other, more important reasons I moved away from that format.

• It was incredibly labour-intensive, which quickly became a problem once I started adding special match types like Steel Cage or Street Fight. Every time I wanted to add a new match type I essentially had to put in an equivalent amount of work as though I was creating all the match descriptions from scratch. It could take a week to create a new match type, just in terms of the text, not including any new code or layout that was required. It was really slowing down development.
• No matter how much text I write, it’s impossible to write enough that players won’t become bored of it. I think the descriptions I was writing were good, and they would have been fun if you played the game for a few hours. But writing that felt fun for 2-3 hours would have started to feel very repetitive if you played for 20-30 hours, and it felt like I was putting a disproportionate amount of development time into something that most players were going to wind up skipping after they’d played the game for a few hours.

The new format makes it much easier to add new content, and it’s much less of a mental load to read as a player. Matches advance one move at a time, with randomly inserted pin attempts, and it’s pretty easy to keep up with. The text advances automatically now, the way you would expect in most sports simulations, and it’s possible to change the speed if you read quickly. It’s also still possible to immediately jump to the end of a match and just see the results.

INTERSTITIAL PANELS

Speaking of match results, the beginning and end of matches have been improved. It used to be the case that you would immediately jump from match-to-match, with no introduction. Now each match gets a screen introducing it (and eventually promos will have these too).



Match results are now much cleaner looking than they used to be, with a separate pop-up that appears over the match panel after you choose to “View Results” at the end of a match.



These screens are likely to go through some changes before they’re finalised, but already they’re making each TV show or PPV feel more like a proper event with a flow to it, and less like a series of text boxes that come one after another.

GRAPHICS

You have no doubt noticed that there’s only one wrestler model in the game at the moment. That’s because I needed one to create layouts and get a general idea how things look. In the final version of Championship Wrestling Promoter every wrestler will have their own appearance, which will be customisable. The ring will also have customisable colours, and the “CWP” logo in the ring uses whatever the acronym of your own wrestling federation is. And these graphics are just programmer art. I am hoping to be able to hire a professional artist closer to the completion of the project to improve the look of the game, but that will depend on a number of factors that are still up in the air.
[/list]

[PROMOS]

I’m hoping to have a second demo of Championship Wrestling Promoter ready to go sometime around the end of the year. This new demo will be much expanded with the new features I’ve been working on such as promos (a critical part of any wrestling show) and special match types.  To that end, I’m not spending a lot of time adding new features at the moment, so much as adding content and improving the general user experience. Most of what I’ve spent the past month working on is adding new types of promos and special matches (called Stipulations in CWP), so let’s take a look.

PROMOS

Last month I showed off the first 1v1 promo type, which is two wrestlers standing in the ring exchanging words. That’s probably the most common type of promo that wrestling fans think of. I’ve added some new promo types since then. One fun one is a backstage brawl, where one wrestler does a sneak attack on another (as I’ve mentioned before “Mr. Microphone” is a name that will be user-editable).



There’s also a new type of solo promo as well, the hype video.



OTHER UPDATES

The game now has a basic Morale system. In the final version of the game, managing the morale of your locker room will be almost as important as managing your finances and TV ratings. Right now wrestlers gain and lose morale based on whether they’re being showcased or left off TV each week, but once more systems are up and running morale will largely be affected by whether you’re giving a wrestler the opportunities they expect based on the role they were promised in their contract.

Most of the other changes this month are updates to the user interface that are harder to show in screenshots. For example, when you click on a wrestler’s name in the match/promo creation screen, the roster now opens up with that wrestler pre-loaded, rather than displaying the default roster list. I’ve also been trying to added graphical elements here and there, so you may notice that some of the text in-game has been replaced with sliders or other images that do a better job of conveying numbers at a glance. And as always, I’ve been working on improving the game balance.

One more fun thing, and this is probably more interesting to me than to you, is that there is now a way to send feedback to me directly in the game. Previously, clicking the Send Feedback button opened up a pop-up that listed a few methods to contact me, such as email. Now there’s a form that can be used to send feedback and bug reports without having to leave CWP.

This looks good so far. Looking forward to seeing more of it. I love a good detective game.

[Promos]

September saw a lot of work on the traditional things that go on behind the scenes to make the game better but aren’t necessarily visible: UI improvements and game balance issues.

But there were two big new features added to the game that I can show off: opposed promos and special match types.

Promos

The first is that you can now book promos where two wrestlers face off and exchange barbs.


Promos are a critical part of a wrestling show that are missing in most wrestling games, so they’re something I want to focus on really getting right in Championship Wrestling Promoter to help make the game unique, and feel like you’re getting the complete experience of being a professional wrestling promoter.

Stipulations

It’s now possible to add stipulations to matches in CWP. “Stipulations” are the term I’m using to describe what you might think of as special match types, like steel cage matches. At the moment the only kind of special match that has enough work to actually be selected is ladder matches, but you can see from the selection screen that there will be several types available.


A quick breakdown of how stipulations work:

You can only add stipulations to a match between two wrestlers who have built up some Heat in a Feud. Every interaction between two wrestlers, such as a match or a promo, will add some amount of Heat between them (Heat will decay over time, so you can’t build an infinite number of Feuds). Then that Heat can be “spent” like a currency in order to add a stipulation to a match. As you can see, there are bigger and bigger Audience boosts for a match based on how much Heat is required to select a Stipulation.

Stipulation matches will work like regular matches, except that the descriptions will match the type of Stipulation selected, as you can see below for ladder matches.


There’s a lot more work to do to add more Stipulations and increase the number and type of Promos that are available, but with these two major features now in the game it’s now beginning to feel a lot more like you can book and run complete wrestling shows . There’s a lot of work left to do from a content creation standpoint to add in the rest of the Stipulations and expand out all the available promos, but they’re both feature complete in terms of design and implementation.

[Promos]

There’s one big new addition that I’ve made to the game this month, and quite a few smaller upgrades to the look and interface that make CWP better to play.

Promos

Wrestlers can now cut promos in the game! At the moment there’s only one style of promo to cut, but as I continue working on the game there will be a wide variety of promos available. One big difference between promos and matches is that promos will play out differently depending on whether the wrestler is a face or a heel. Matches don’t currently pay much attention to wrestler alignment except for the Audience bonus for matching a face against a heel, but promos are unique to a wrestler’s alignment. I think the promos are where a lot of the character of the game is going to really come through.



You can see another of the changes in that screen, which is that the Audience panel is now a bar that fills up and changes colour to let you know how interested in the match or promo the crowd is. This is a big improvement on the old version, where the Audience panel just displayed a number, but it wasn’t clear whether the number was good or bad.

UI Upgrades

I’ve made many smaller interface changes to try to make the game look nicer, but there are two big ones I want to highlight. The first is that the focus panel at the top of the Roster menu is now divided into tabs, so that rather than having to view all of the information about a wrestler at once, you can scroll through and see information that’s related. This will probably go through more iterations in the future, but it’s already far easier to read.



The second big change I want to highlight is that the layout of the segment selection screen has been completely reworked. Now you can view the different kinds of available segments all at once. This reduces the number of clicks necessary to create a segment, which will really add up when you’re adding several segments to each show. It’s also just a bit easier to read.



That’s it for August. It hasn’t even been a full month since the demo was released and already the game’s gotten noticeably better in a number of ways. The main task for September is to continue to flesh out the promos, which need to be brought up to the same level as the match simulation.

[Links]

Championship Wrestling Promoter is a wrestling management simulation game in development for PC. It's a sports management game in the vein of Football Manager and Out of the Park Baseball.

Unlike most wrestling video games, which are structured as competitive fighting games, in Championship Wrestling Promoter you run the show from behind the scenes without directly controlling the wrestlers. In CWP you put together TV shows and pay-per-view events by booking matches and promos to try to get audiences to go wild. But booking shows isn't enough to run a successful promotion, because you'll also have to manage the contracts, morale, and expectations of your wrestlers while making sure the company earns enough revenue to continue operating.



Many aspects of the game are placeholders or will otherwise be improved before launch, such as the menu design and icons. Early development has focused heavily on the match simulation engine and the accompanying procedural text generation, so at the moment all events consist only of 1v1 matches. However, there are many other big features planned for the future, such as:

• pixel art character graphics
• tag team and multi-wrestler matches (such as 1v1v1)
• stipulations (cage match, ladder match, etc.)
• a wide variety of promos for individual wrestlers and groups of wrestlers
• contract negotiations with wrestlers setting their expectations based on their statistics and role in the company
• morale system where wrestlers will demand screen time, wins, and in some cases championships
• trait  system that will make every wrestler unique beyond their statistics,  similar to what you might see in other strategy games like Total War or Crusader Kings
• random events to interfere with your best laid plans and keep you on your toes

Links

• An early demo is currently available on itch.io.
  
• Web site PykreteGames.com
• Twitter @pykretegames