Topic: Warsow's story and background from 1999 to 2005 - v0.4
About me : being 38, I belong to the earliest videogame generation. From 1996 to 2002, I wrote for various computer and videogame magazines : news, articles, many tests, walkthroughs, strategy guides.
From 1999 to 2001, I was writing a french e-novel named Chasseur de bots ("Bots hunter" in english - www.chasseurdebots.org). The story was taking place both IRL and inside a game (a MMOFPS called Warsow), main characters being coregamers.
In 2000, I discovered tricks jumps in quake 2, thanks to OZH, from www.frenchfragfactory.net, who made great tutorials demos of various q2 tricks jumps. It was like a Satori. I discovered a brand new and highly challenging game inside the game. Then, I knew that trix were the future of FPS.
In 2001, highly influenced by Jet Set Radio in the other hand, I started to write a short game design document, including wall jump and a basic system of acceleration. Main concept being a double public development, and a crossover between the game and the e-novel.
In early 2002, I joined www.halflifedesign.net, which was during those days a strong modding french community leaded by Ertai (I interviewed this nice guy few years ago for an article about modding) and started to recruit. So, the almost lonely quest became a complete new collective adventure. Months after months, grew up the first Warsow dream team, gathering talentuous (already professionnals, or in a good way to become it) french artists, around a pool of great co-leaders composed by Blemish (lead designer and lead mapper), Kurim and Pb (lead coders), Cedled (lead graphist), Dolbi and Pigfreezer (lead sounders). We quickly decided to make a standalone game instead of a mod, hesitated a long time about what engine to use. Finally, Quake 2 GPL was the best choice for us.
In mid 2003, we released a first "rough but already solid" alpha. This prototype was already featuring the main basics of the concept, but it was still golden age of Quake3 and CPMA, so we didn't really get attention. Finally, after all energy and time spent on warsow, many of our artists slowly started to get discouraged, or found a job, or came back to their studies. Anyway, I still miss all of them.
During 2004, Kurim and Blemish rebuilt from scratch all trix and moves of w§w, and they made too the double fire mode. Cedled, Nanabaky, Fallen_Angel and other artists remade almost all models, created a nice and clean outline, and enhanced in many ways the cartoonish look of the game. We were really satisfied by last improvements, but we had to migrate several times to last qfusion versions, which was each time huge extra work, in order to fix some bad stuff before being ready to release a new public version.
In spring 2005, 2 major events gave a big boost to the dev. 19th of April, we've been introduced on www.esreality.com by a simple gamer who, almost accidentally, found a link to an internal release in our public forum (this guy was ETR, and he joined the team as tester later). The topic on esreality got great feedback (http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=784540). Being introduced in a such neutral and spontanous way, on a such big coregamers community, helped a lot. Nobody but gamers, having nothing to sell but their cleverness, enthusiasm and spontaneity, can have better credibility and can be our best ambassadors. They got all the powers to bring a game to the top, or to ruin it. It sounds a bit rude but that's the rule, nothing else to do but to deal with it and keep on showing low-profile. By gamers - for gamers powa. Few days later, Giga-TV started to make a big promotion of the game. For the first time, we started to be supported by a real, strong and prolific community of hardcore gamers, having serious involvement in esport.
During the same days, Jal joined the team as coder. This spanish and highly experienced guy instantly showed deep involvement, great multi-skills, huge capacity of work, perfect knowledge of qfusion engine, and very nice personality. Since, many new members joined, coming from various countries of Europe, from Spain to Finland, and changing the french project into a real european project. Today, even if we still miss 3D and 2D artists, the core team features the best pool of programmers, strongly secunded by a good bunch of testers leaded by Nip. The team accomplished huge work in the next months and our code became one of the best features of the game. Warsow couldn't be in better hands ![]()