Promotion Wars History
Wrestling Federation Manager (December 1999)
This is where the road to Promotion Wars first began.
Way back in December 1999, when my only experience of a wrestling sim was
Wrestling 2000 (see Download.com). I debated making a game like Championship
Manager, only where you control WWF or WCW instead of football clubs. I decided
against it in the end, thinking that people would not be interested in merely
taking over the duties at an already established promotion. I couldn't have been
more wrong. Anyway, I chose instead to base the game on starting up your own
promotion, and running it against the big two. You chose the name of the
promotion, and even designed the logo (by simply choosing a font and a colour).
You started with a roster full of indy guys who I took from magazines, none of
whom I had seen wrestling. One of them happened to be a certain Elix Skipper,
who I got totally wrong when creating a description for. The wrestlers all had
their Draw and Entertainment values, just as in PW, and the rosters worked as in
PW - clicking on their name brought up their profile. You created primary and
secondary singles titles, and a tag team title. You chose a venue from which to
permanently have your shows (like how ECW had the ECW Arena), and chose either
singles or tag team matches. Only the main event could be given a stipulation,
and as there was no commentary, there were several gimmicks to choose from, each
having a varying degree on your attendence. Once the matches were chosen, you
were taken to a screen showing a poster of your show, advertising your main
event match. Then you were simply taken to the results screen, where you were
told who beat who, and titles changed hands. You could also sign talent from WWF,
WCW, ECW or Other, as in PW. Because of the small bank balance you begin with,
it is very difficult to afford anyone to start with. There was also a training
camp, as in PW, where you could choose how much money was put into it, and that
reflected the talent you got out of it. Once your promotion got popular enough,
you were given a TV deal, and got to see your ratings compared to the WWF and
WCW. Ratings were shown only as a percentage, however. Another nice feature in
WFM was buying a ring - you had a selection of different qualities, at varying
prices. You could also see what it looked like, complete with your designed logo
on the side, and you could choose the colour of the apron.
I made this game during my early days of
programming, and learned the harsh lesson a lot of people end up discovering. I
thought I knew enough to make a game of that scale, but later discovered there
are a lot easier ways to do things than how I was doing them. I ended up using
50 forms for the Visual Basic project (PW uses less than half that). The game
had serious memory issues, and thus was never really completed as such, although
it is 99% done.
Wrestling Federation Manager 2 (January 2000)
After learning a lesson while making WFM, I set out to
avoid all the mistakes I had made, and remake the game as a sequel. I didn't get
very far into this before I found Extreme Warfare 9000. This got me thinking
about how I could adapt WFM to have the WWF and WCW instead of creating a new
promotion. Work on WFM2 was scrapped, and I began work on a game called
Promotion Wars...
Promotion Wars 1.0 (October 7th, 2001)
Started in January 2000, Promotion Wars was uploaded to
the internet on October 7th 2000, and announced on the Extreme Warfare
discussion board. It caused a wave of interest on the EW Board, who believed
they had seen the last of EW, and had been given nothing but empty promises by
other programmers. Promotion Wars 1.0 was never destined for the internet, and
it wasn't until about 70% into the game that I started considering the
possibility. Then came the problem of getting it onto the internet, which was
solved after several different attempts.
PW 1.0 looked different to all the other PW's. It had a
white background, and looked pretty ugly. The font which I had used was not on a
lot of people's computers, so their computer was replacing it with a bigger one,
thus hiding some of the text and increasing the ugliness. But the features were
a big step up from WFM. The matches now had commentary, using a mix of
Championship Manager and Extreme Warfare influences. There were now a selection
of venues to choose from, which was an idea taken from EW. TV ratings were now
the actual numbers instead of a percentage. In general, the game was written
specifically around WWF and WCW. The signing of wrestlers, and the training
camp, were carried across and modified slightly from WFM. Commentaters were
dropped from PW1.0 after repeated 'Out of Memory' messages.
Promotion Wars 1.1 (October 14th 2000)
After a week on the net, the first refinement to
Promotion Wars was uploaded. The major change here was the look of the game. The
whole thing was redesigned. The white background replaced by a dark blue
background (an idea I had when reading about LMA Manager in a magazine), and the
font which nobody had was replaced by Verdana. Also added was the ability to see
your champions highlighted in gold on the roster.
Promotion Wars 1.2 (October 21st 2000)
A week after 1.1 came another refinement. PW 1.2
allowed the player to rebook a match if they made a mistake, and had the
sortable rosters feature added. Some of the bugs were also fixed for this
version.
Promotion Wars 1.2a (December 26th 2000)
It was a mere 4 days before another new version
arrived. This merely mixed a mistake or 2.
Promotion Wars 1.2b (January 1st 2001)
It wasn't until the new year rolled in that another new
version of PW arrived. This version was meant as a final polishing of PW1.2
before the big 1.3 arrived.
Promotion Wars 1.2c (June 2nd 2001)
There had been no new versions of Promotion Wars for 6
months while PW2 was worked on. But in June, 1.2b was polished a little bit
more. More bugs were fixed, the general difficulty of the game was improved, and
a much requested back button on the roster was added.
Promotion Wars 1.2d (July 30th 2001)
For the first time in Promotion Wars' history, almost
all information within the game could be changed by the player. 1.2d also makes
the player buy out the contract of a wrestler if he wants to release him against
the wrestler's will. The game starts by default with the starting promotions
being the WWF and the WCW/ECW Alliance.
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