Discoverin' sunken treasures

**Harti** · (This post was last modified: 02-07-2013 12:04 PM by Harti.)

When the questions came up in another thread I was reminded of my super old laptop computer containing a folder with screenshots from the early Outwitters beta.

I remember Alex once said something about it being okay to show everything off so I am now reminiscing in good old times with the old soundtracks in my ears (which I unfortunately do not have)!

So we actually tested Reaper as well as Thorn Gulley which is pretty awkward because in beta build 1.3 I did notice having played Reaper sometime but not Thorn Gulley, haha.

So this was the main menu.
[Image: old_mainmenu2.PNG]

See the unlocks section? We were worried about the way things got unlocked, I believe you were supposed to gain XP from winning (+100) and losing (+50) and by playing masses of league games you could thusly unlock new maps or other features. So we feared that everybody would simply resign a hundred games and would receive 5,000 XP from just doing that.

Mobi could do different things!
[Image: oldmobi.PNG]

Most characters were staring right into your eyes, like the Adorables Soldier, Heavy or Medic.

But yeah Mobi used to actually suck in an adjacent unit and catapult it 2 spaces far away. So you could maneouvre units over pits and/or break a mexican old Sharkfood Island standoff (you could still move the unit after spitting it out). It wasn't really useful though, especially due to its 1 base HP. It usually died right when you had everything set up.
Notice the old Feedback Soldier sprite on the standoff screenshot? I believe it's from the very early prototyping stage where you can see an ultra old Long Nine and possibly Adam's finger in.

Speaking of Long Nine, it had a bit of an unbalanced version before. Good fixing on that one, OML!
Some Trivia: The Feedback Medic used to only have one "eye" so to fit the art style, Adam added a second one to today's Feedback Medic. It's the tiny things that matter and this is one of the reasons I like this game so much. It's polished into its very detail.

Back to Sharkfood Island though, it did have an even more ancient version!
[Image: old_oldsharkfood.PNG]

And probably a couple of ones before that, but I didn't experience these.

The old map selection screen was horrible, haha, you'd never remember which map was which. So glad they changed that.
I believe "Small" and "Medium2" were today's Veggienauts maps but I really don't remember.

Foundry was quite cool back then:
[Image: oldfoundry3.PNG]

Its game flow was very interesting but monotone. I believe it had quite the massive FTA too.

Wonder if we're going to see some of the above "remixes" of old beta stuff soon? Hope you enjoyed the little piece of ancient history! Maybe some of the other beta dudes have got something to share, too.

GoHeat 3 · 02-07-2013, 11:41 AM

Did I inspire you to do this Harti? Wink

Necrocat219 · 02-07-2013, 11:43 AM

Woah, this was so interesting and awesome to read about, especially the Mobi's previous ability, the map balancing that had to be done and that XP abuse problem! I can see exactly why the mobi was changed to what it is today though, it would have been so situational and it's strength would depend largely on the map played on!

GoHeat 3 · (This post was last modified: 02-07-2013 11:47 AM by GoHeat 3.)

I also believe long nine was a feedback map as well!
Edit: whoops! You have that included already!

CombatEX · 02-07-2013, 12:14 PM

Thanks for posting this! It's interesting to discover that Reaper was a beta map they decided to bring back.

In regards to the redrawn characters there was actually a news article on it in the news feed. Here's the accompanying image.
[Image: peeps.jpg]

A friend of mine commented:

Jaeson Wrote:May 27, 2012 at 4:04 am

I like how you poke fun at your changes, but they really do look better =) Sometimes subtle changes make an enormous impact on the final product.

And I think that really captures it. OML made a great core game, but what really puts it on the next level is all the attention to detail and the resulting little touches here and there Adam and Alex added.