Prerelease:Worms Forts: Under Siege

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Worms Forts: Under Siege.

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes. Notes: I found an in-dev presentation video showing loads of WIP things, I mention it a few times in this page without sourcing it. I need to do some research to find out what its source is, then document it, likely in its own subpage, before I can use its contents as a proper reference here. Additionally, I got my hands on a Media Kit from 2004 that contains loads of concept art for cut content. I reference it a few times here too. I need to document it in its own page before I can use it as a source here.

Cut Weapon Concept Art

Some weapon concept art contains cut content that, unlike the weapons showcased on the main page, is not referenced in any way in the retail version's data.

Greek Old Lady

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  "Old Lady - Greek" concept art

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  3D model alongside the other designs

Concept art that was available on the official website shows both artwork and a fully completed 3D model for a fifth design for the Old Lady.

In the retail version, only four designs are used, each representing its respective Epoch. However, the concept art has distinct designs for both a Roman and Ancient Greek Old Lady. This is intriguing because both cultures are merged into the "Greek" Epoch in the retail game, which, ironically, uses the Roman-inspired design, leaving the Greek one in concept art only.

Cluster Launcher Kiwi Projectile

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  "Explosive Fruits" concept art

Concept art found on the official website shows art of kiwis alongside the four other types of fruit used with the Cluster Launcher in the retail game.

Unlike the cut Old Lady design, the kiwi is absent from the 3D model reference sheet, suggesting that it was scrapped relatively early in development.

Development Timeline

• 2004
  • Apr. 29th - Sega Europe announces the development of Worms Forts Under Siege^(sic) for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC. Sega is set to publish the game in Europe and Australia, with the European release scheduled for Q4 2004. They also announce that the game will be unveiled at E3 2004.
  • May 11th - Acclaim, having recently published Worms 3D a few months prior, announces a publishing agreement for the North American release of Worms Forts: Under Siege!^(sic). The game is said to become available in fall 2004.
  • May 11–14 - The game appears at E3 2004 with a trailer and a playable demo at Acclaim's booth.
  • Early Aug. - An early Demo of the game is released.
  • Aug. 6th - Sega Europe releases a 2 minutes long trailer on their website, slotting September 2004 as the release date.
  • Aug. 27th - Acclaim announces they are to file for bankruptcy and shut down permanently, leaving the game without a North American publisher for the time being.
  • Nov. 3rd - Team 17 announces that the game has gone gold on all platforms. November 19th is set as the European release date. Dates for North America and the rest of the world are yet to be confirmed.
  • Nov. 19th - Worms Forts: Under Siege is released on PC, PS2, and Xbox in Western Europe (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain).
  • November - Worms Forts: Under Siege is released in Czechia and Slovakia (exact date unclear).
  • Nov. 26th - Worms Forts: Under Siege is released in Australia.
  • Nov. 29th - Worms Forts: Under Siege is digitally released throughout North and South America exclusively through Trygames.com, announces Trymedia.
  • December - Worms Forts: Under Siege is released in Poland and Russia. Soft Club is the publisher for the Russian release.
• 2005
  • Jan. 7th - The PS2 and Xbox release for the United States is announced for the 1st of March.
  • Mar. 15th - Worms Forts: Under Siege is released in the United States on PS2 and Xbox, published by Sega of America in place of the late Acclaim.

Prerelease PR Articles

Initial Game Overview

The game's official website featured an "About" page that outlined the overall vision for the game prior to its release.

While the earliest available capture of the page on the Wayback Machine is from May 26, 2004, the Acclaim E3 2004 Media Kit (documentation TBA) contains a "Fact Sheet" text document dated April 15, 2004. This document contains all the content from that page, except for the "new features" section.

Weapons

Massive weapons and massive destruction! Catapults, cannons, giant crossbows, bows and arrows, flaming oil, rocket launchers, artillery fire, air strikes, napalm... even nuclear strikes!

Okay, so we've had destruction in previous titles, but nothing like this. Siege weaponry, giant catapults, huge howitzers and even frozen ferrets[...]

The weapons mentioned include "bows and arrows" and "flaming oil", neither fit the description of any weapon present in the retail version. However, "flaming oil" fits the "Fire Weapon" seen in the prerelease presentation video (documentation TBA) with its Molotov Cocktail icon, while "bows and arrows" fits a piece of artwork seen in the Acclaim E3 2004 Media Kit. (documentation TBA)

There is also a mention of "artillery fire" in addition to "cannons" and "rocket launchers". There is also a later mention of "huge howitzers". This could suggest a cut weapon akin to modern artillery.

Mechanics

Resource management. Something completely new, the player must consider carefully where they're going to build in order to gain the maximum benefit from the resources on the map.

Added strategic elements: do you build quickly to grab the resources on the map, or construct your fortifications at a more considered pace to prevent having your "supply lines" cut? The possibility of buildings becoming isolated makes for some interesting tactical decisions.

Although "Resource management" is mentioned as an important mechanic, it was ultimately excluded from the final game. Some cut elements/concepts hint that they could've been linked to such a mechanic, but with how it's described as resources scattered across the map, with the player needing to place buildings on them, it seems like it evolved/was simplified into the Victory Points mechanic of the final game. The later mentioned "supply lines" likely relate to this aforementioned mechanic.

The concept of "buildings becoming isolated" seems to suggest that, initially, severing the link to the stronghold would disable, but not destroy, disconnected buildings.

May 12 - EuroGamer First Impression

An article written by EuroGamer after testing a prototype version of Worms: Forts Under Siege^(sic) running on Xbox. The articles also includes bits of interview with their "hosts at Sega".

Online Functionalities

Will it support PS2 Online and Xbox Live? "We're looking into it." [...] Since Team 17 is looking into it, any chance of downloadable sound schemes on Live? "Download is not a difficult thing to do with Xbox at all; it's a very simple thing." Quite possibly, then.

While the Xbox version did have Xbox Live support, the PS2 version never received an online mode. More importantly, it seems that sharing user-created content through Xbox Live was a considered feature for the game.

Missions

"The single-player game is going to go through time periods now, so there's Egyptian, oriental, Greco-Roman, medieval [four settings used for all the maps in the game so far]. There will be 20 maps altogether, but there will be chapters played out over each map, so it won't just be 20 levels - there will be something different to do on each map. There will also be a story running through it, which we haven't done before."

By means of demonstration, we're shown a mission where our worm has to creep over a sort of mountain pass in ancient Egypt, and our objectives are to survive at all costs, find a way to destroy the Targets of the Gods, and find a way to cross a broken bridge. Later on, we're told, the same map will accommodate a mission involving a pair of opposing forts. "There are some times in single player when you're building forts. Other times you might be looking for something, or you're rescuing something, so it breaks up the gameplay and adds a bit of variety."

In the retail game, the singleplayer campaign consists of 20 levels with varying objectives across 20 maps, but the interview implies that each map would have originally contained "chapters", offering two (or more) missions per map.

The demonstration mission as described by the writer closely fits the description of "Army of the Dead", the 1st campaign mission of the retail game. However, that map does not appear again for a second mission, as the interview claims, nor does any other campaign map.

The concept of replaying a campaign map in a pure Fort vs. Fort mission may have evolved into the Deathmatch Trials mode present in the final game, where the player has to win 10 deathmatch missions, some of them taking place on campaign-exclusive maps. Though, Army of the Dead is not one of them.

Flashing Boxes

Selecting the tower brings up a series of flashing boxes nearby, each equidistant from our central fortress, and a number of spinning stars can be seen all over the map. The stars, we're told, are victory locations, whereas the flashing squares are active deployment points. In an attempt to kill two birds with one banana bomb, we opt for a flashing square with a star inside it - and within seconds our a tower springs up, and a wall pops up connecting it to our central fort.

In this early version, building slots that appear when placing a building were represented by flashing boxes instead of construction fences. This is showcased in the in-dev presentation video (documentation TBA).

Handheld Exploding Fruit

We can still climb up onto neutral areas in the centre of the map or wriggle along the ground, hauling out handheld weapons like the trusty bazooka or exploding fruit (think banana bomb) to dole out old-school justice, [...]

With the family-based weapon selection the game has, the interviewer calling it a "handheld weapon" and the Banana Bomb comparison, it appears that "exploding fruit" was some kind of grenade, possibly even replacing the actual grenade. The concept of exploding fruit grenades is very akin to the Cluster Launcher from the final game, the Tier 2 Grenade family weapon that likewise launches exploding fruits, fruits that split into clusters akin to a Banana Bomb. Perhaps the game initially had a handheld Cluster Bomb equivalent in addition to the standard grenade? Perhaps it then became the Cluster Launcher?

Buildings

A better idea, with the makings of a solid fortress in place, is to build up armouries, which drop weapon crates around them on each subsequent turn to help with the war effort, science labs, which increase the power of our weapons, and hospitals to restore health to our worms (who will still lose the game if they're all wiped out - but seem to take less damage in a well protected fortress).

Three things to note:

• The writer mentions an "armory" performing the function of the Weapon Factory from the final game. This could refer to the cut "Siege Workshop" building, the one with the anvil icon, rather than the Weapon Factory from the final game that doesn't look like a building one would call an armory and was once named "Refinery" ("Rock Refinery" in the Media Kit).
• Hospitals are stated to "restore health" rather than be exclusively used for resurrecting dead Worms in the final game.
• Worms "seem to take less damage in a well protected fortress". The writer seems uncertain about it, this impression could be due to certain siege weapons dealing negligible damage to Worms, despite their size.

May 19 - GameSpot Hands-On Impressions

GameSpot reports on their time playing the game's demo at E3 2004 at Acclaim's booth.

Mechanics

There's a sizable strategic element to Worms Forts' building system, because the chain of buildings extending from your stronghold acts as a sort of supply line. If you destroy a particular building in a chain, any buildings beyond it that aren't otherwise linked to your stronghold will become inoperable. This mechanic will make sure tactically skilled players are mindful of the way they build their buildings--a straight line of buildings is a very bad idea, for instance, but a diamondlike configuration will make sure you can still use the maximum number of structures should you lose one of your buildings.

The writer may not have intended this, but the phrasing "become inoperable" in reference to buildings losing their link to the stronghold suggests that they would become disabled rather than automatically destroyed. This is supported by the aforementioned "About" page from the game's website suggesting a similar mechanic.

August 5 - GameStop Preview

This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this. Specifically: Replace the PC comparison screenshot by one from the Xbox version. (I believe the camera and lighting is different between the two versions)

A preview of an early work-in-progress Xbox build of Worms Forts: Under Siege! sent to GameStop journalists.

Buildings

In addition to the stronghold, buildings that we've encountered in Worms Forts: Under Siege! to date include towers, keeps, castles, citadels, weapons factories, hospitals, science labs, and wonders.

According to the article, the building roster at this point in development is identical to the one in the retail version game, with none of the cut buildings mentioned.

Maps

One of the screenshots attached to the article was taken on the landscape "The Necropolis". However, some key differences can be noted compared to the retail version.

Early GameStop Screenshot	Retail (PC)

• The map is set in the late afternoon, instead of at night.
• A good handful of golden statues not seen in the retail version are present in the early version:
  • Two lying Anubis statues were placed on both sides of the pathways leading into the water on the sides of the map. (seen in the screenshot right of the text box)
  • An Anubis status was present in the corner of the middle platform of the stair platforms on each corner of the map.
  • A big Anubis statue was present on the small platform jutting out the side of the seawall in the corners of the map. (seen in the screenshot at the bottom, partially hidden behind the weapon panel)
  • Inversely, the retail version possesses a lying Anubis statue on the topmost of the stair platforms on each corner of the map that is not present in the early screenshot.
• Players could place buildings on the elevated platforms in the corners of the pyramid. Not only that, it was the spot where the Strongholds were placed by default.
• The placement of the Victory Locations is different from the final version.
• The presence of a Victory Location on the highest of the stair platforms indicates that players could place a building there, which is not possible in the retail version because a large statue was placed there.

Weapons

That same image also shows most the weapon panel, everything seems as it is in the retail version, with the exception of a Molotov Cocktail icon where the Chili Con Carnage should be.

The very same icon could be seen in that one prerelease presentation video (documentation TBA) for a weapon simply called "Fire", where it was in the spot where the Siege Onager is in the retail version. This change in position is due to the Chili Con Carnage and Siege Onager swapping places late in development, as evidenced in Notes:Worms Forts: Under Siege.