• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Creator of Worms back at Team17

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
Thanks for all the nice comments, seriously.

In my head it's still just the little game I made for me and my mates. It is still hard to get my head round how many people have played it, and that they enjoyed it in the way it was intended. Makes me very proud of that little game indeed.
 
So many hours and hours spent on Worms back in the days.
Many angry shouts were heard.

Thank you for all these great hours~

(Really need some Autograph *lol*)
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
Man I loved worms (on dos) that I distinctly remember only having enough money for worms 2 and had no ride, didnt have enough for bus fare so I walked 10 km to the nearest Electronics Boutique to pick up worms 2
 

bishoptl

Banstick Emeritus
:)

I'd missed my baby, and after going back last week to see Revolution (and spend a good time catching up and talking about things in the pub!) it finally felt the right thing to do.

The environment at Team17 now is much closer to how I personally felt games should be made, and being self-published also means there is more freedom to be creative and take risks. Which is all I've ever wanted to do really. I feel the industry at the moment needs independent studios to be strong, and to foster as much creativity as possible.

Revolution is also very refreshing when you see it as well, the series needed a bit of life injected to it after all this time and I will help with that as much as I can.

I'm very conscious of keeping the feel and balance of the game correct, and this is the focus of the team over the coming months which I will also be helping with. One of the first things I did on getting back to Bournemouth was dig out an old document I wrote commonly referred to as the Bible Of Worms ;)

It's good to be back!

YES
 

dLMN8R

Member
Oh my god I spent way too much playing rope games....

-You start only with ninja rope (unlimited/unlimited re-shoots)
-15-20 seconds per turn
-Crates drop every turn
-You cannot move left or right
-You cannot jump

In your 15-20 seconds you need to maneuver through the environment with just the rope to grab a crate and quickly launch whatever it is at your enemy.


So much fun!
 

Kientin

Member
Thank you sir! I've wasted so much time on Worms Armageddon. I have fond memories of blowing up my siblings, playing the story mode and training, and throwing as many worms in the map as I can and making a massive tower of worms right by the edge of a cliff. Dropping a holy hand grenade and watching them all fly was easy entertainment for me haha. Good to see you back!
 

Pharoah

Member
"Born, made a game, got it published, had another idea, got a bar ................. (rest to follow) :) ........ "

I have been visiting your (butt-ugly, but hey, it's myspace ^^) page every other year, for ages... hoping for a sign, or something like this to happen...

AND IT HAPPENS RIGHT HERE ON GAF?
Also, around April Fool's day?

This is great. Cannot wait to see where you want to go now. First Mr Eric Chahi comes back from his volcanoes, and now you leave your bar??

Awesome.
:)
 
What I always wanted to know.

What are the names of the worms (by default) based on?


Edit: Ah. That sounds cool. Thanks for answering :D
 

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
What I always wanted to know.

What are the names of the worms (by default) based on?

There's a mixture, based on my mates from the very first days (especially in the Amiga versions) and people at Team17.

Boggy B was Bjorn's, who did the music. The Amiga one had Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks, they were mine. Palmer always seemed to end up in the water somehow ;)
 

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
bish-banned ray gun please

Oh there will be a banning move at some point, you have my word!

The worm will be unable to do anything for the rest of the round, when it scrolls to them it will just say BANNED and move on to the next player.
 
I knew something was strange after armageddon. World party never felt the same. Tried one more worms game after that (a 3d one for I think gamecube maybe?) and never tried another one. Still play my old armageddon discs. Excited to see what comes out of the creator again!

Edit: why isn't armageddon on gog?!?
 

Smallerz

Neo Member
Andy, I have you to thank for my interest in video games. Worms on the Amiga was one of the very first video games I played as a kid and the one that got me into gaming. So thank you! And I look forward to seeing what Team17 has up their sleeves now that you've returned!
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
I knew something was strange after armageddon. World party never felt the same. Tried one more worms game after that (a 3d one for I think gamecube maybe?) and never tried another one. Still play my old armageddon discs. Excited to see what comes out of the creator again!

Edit: why isn't armageddon on gog?!?

What I'd like to know is why Steam has the original Worms, but then nothing else of the core series timeline until Worms 4. The three games people want -- 2, Armageddon, and (to a lesser extent) World Party -- are conspicuously absent.
 

Raist

Banned
It started life as a bet with one of my mates as to who could make a game on a Casio graph-plotting calculator. It was just a simple Artillery clone, random landscape but you couldn't move or anything. I then rewrote it for the Amiga and made them move to see what would happen, and all the strategy started opening up. Put in water for instant kill, and then jumping and being thrown by explosions, and at that point it became a challenge for myself to see how deep I could make what was at its core a simple Artillery game that I'd typed into my C64 all those years ago.

At that point I also decided to not play any other game of that type, to ensure it evolved in its own way. I knew they existed, but I didn't want to know what they'd done to the formula.

I read somewhere (can't remember where, that was eons ago, probably some VG mag), that worms were originally lemmings. Is that true?
 

DECK'ARD

The Amiga Brotherhood
Andy, I have you to thank for my interest in video games. Worms on the Amiga was one of the very first video games I played as a kid and the one that got me into gaming. So thank you! And I look forward to seeing what Team17 has up their sleeves now that you've returned!

Cheers!

I always wanted the game to have that effect, I wanted to get people into games. Even if they hadn't played them before, or didn't like them, I wanted to try and capture their imagination and give them something they'd enjoy.

I read somewhere (can't remember where, that was eons ago, probably some VG mag), that worms were originally lemmings. Is that true?

Yeah, in the period where I was still at school and had ported it to the Amiga. As it was evolving and I'd made the tanks move, jumping obviously looked stupid. I'd also been teaching myself to code in assembler because of how much I liked the demo scene, and understanding how memory was used to store everything made me also write a program called Jack The Ripper, which let me view graphics, find music, and just mess around with memory really.

The game was just for me and my mates at this point, and small characters were needed so I bunged them in there to make all the moving around and jumping look right. It also made the whole thing quite funny, the game was now called Lemartillery at this point.

When that got banned and I quit A-Level art, I started a complete rewrite of it all called Total Wormage. I picked worms as what the characters should be because at that point they were about the only creature that hadn't been in a game! This was pre-Earthworm Jim time. I also thought I could get a lot of humour into their animations, such as sticking into the ground like a ruler, spinning and things like that. I'd always been so impressed with the amount of detail and character they'd got into the animation in Lemmings, so that became another little challenge to myself to see if I could draw things that small that had the same effect.

Drawing all the worms also started a chain-reaction where loads of new things started going into the game, just because I could. I always remember after I put the spinning worms in, to make it look funnier when things were thrown by explosions, I then thought worms should knock other worms as well and with the spinning animation it would look correct. So I changed that and then absolutely loads of extra strategy started opening up. Also leading to things like Kamikaze, which I was very chuffed with :)

The rewrite and all the additions took about 2 years, and Total Wormage was the game I showed Team17 in 1994. As a whole game it was about 80% done at that point, the last things to go in the Amiga version over the next year was stuff like new background graphics, and custom levels where you could play on pictures and import them.
 

bishoptl

Banstick Emeritus
Bishop-approved means a lot :)

I think it would be only right for your avatar to make an appearance in a game at some point in the future ...
Considering the amount of money I've plowed into your franchise on different platforms over the years, I think it's only right and fair.

seriously, this is great news. I'm really, really pleased you're back on Worms. Best go warm up the wallet again...
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
Cheers!

I always wanted the game to have that effect, I wanted to get people into games. Even if they hadn't played them before, or didn't like them, I wanted to try and capture their imagination and give them something they'd enjoy.



Yeah, in the period where I was still at school and had ported it to the Amiga. As it was evolving and I'd made the tanks move, jumping obviously looked stupid. I'd also been teaching myself to code in assembler because of how much I liked the demo scene, and understanding how memory was used to store everything made me also write a program called Jack The Ripper, which let me view graphics, find music, and just mess around with memory really.

The game was just for me and my mates at this point, and small characters were needed so I bunged them in there to make all the moving around and jumping look right. It also made the whole thing quite funny, the game was now called Lemartillery at this point.

When that got banned and I quit A-Level art, I started a complete rewrite of it all called Total Wormage. I picked worms as what the characters should be because at that point they were about the only creature that hadn't been in a game! This was pre-Earthworm Jim time. I also thought I could get a lot of humour into their animations, such as sticking into the ground like a ruler, spinning and things like that. I'd always been so impressed with the amount of detail and character they'd got into the animation in Lemmings, so that became another little challenge to myself to see if I could draw things that small that had the same effect.

Drawing all the worms also started a chain-reaction where loads of new things started going into the game, just because I could. I always remember after I put the spinning worms in, to make it look funnier when things were thrown by explosions, I then thought worms should knock other worms as well and with the spinning animation it would look correct. So I changed that and then absolutely loads of extra strategy started opening up. Also leading to things like Kamikaze, which I was very chuffed with :)

The rewrite and all the additions took about 2 years, and Total Wormage was the game I showed Team17 in 1994. As a whole game it was about 80% done at that point, the last things to go in the Amiga version over the next year was stuff like new background graphics, and custom levels where you could play on pictures and import them.

Awesome history. Thanks for sharing that.
 

Cramoss

Member
All those countless hours playing Worms Armageddon with some bros ain't enough. I'm interested on this!
 

ToD_

Member
Well, this thread turned out to be amazing. Nice to read some history of the game as well. I have very fond memories of playing the first worms on my PC. I believe the special CD-ROM edition had CG animated intros, was all rather new to me at the time.
 

dLMN8R

Member
Please just reassure me that I'll be able to configure a game like the rope games I described above and I'll preorder the game yesterday!
 

Marven

Member
My brother and I played Worms back in high school on, I think, our SNES. I was so good at the ninja rope that he refused to play me unless we turned it off. Ah good times.

Anyways I'm glad you're back working on your creation, Andy and look forward to the next Worms game.
 
Top Bottom