Wii Compatible Chat
October 19
Spring Season Achievements
As you can already tell, we've not received our Spring Season "achievements" (lol), for World at War playoffs. I sent the admin in a ticket, to see if I could get this all resolved. Apparently, it's their fault and they can't do anything about it for the following reasons:
- 1: If you look on our roster page, you will see that our rosters are screwed up. Our Winter and Spring roster is in reality our Summer roster.
- 2: Because of that, they are unable to give us award. Apparently it's impossible to just have the achievement on our team page (yet that's what it's like for our Winter Season), and if they were to give us our Spring achievement, our Summer squad would get the achievement on their profile page.
Kick in the balls much? Yes. That's alright though. I replied to the ticket, hopefully we're still able to get our Summer season achievement. I don't see why not.
October 15
COD:MWR FAQ By Treyarch Developer
Q: Who are you?
A: I'm an engineer from Treyarch who worked on the game. I am not a PR representative or anything like that. I can't speak officially on behalf of Treyarch or Activision.
Q: I don't believe you.
A: Gamespot has me listed as a game rep. If you still don't believe me, that's okay, don't expect me to bend over backwards trying to convince you.
Q: Is this Modern Warfare 2?
A: No. This is a Wii port of Call of Duty 4.
Q: Is there going to be a Wii version of Modern Warfare 2?
A: I have no idea.
Q: Where's my trailer?
A: I don't know. I think the trailer people need to get with the program, but that's just me, and I don't have any say in it.
Q: How are the controls different from COD:WAW?
A: The main thing is that there is a lot more customization possible. I personally did the controls for this game, among other things. I gave you control over everything I thought would be useful, and most options are sliders rather than preset values. Your main categories are aim styles, camera turn speeds, sensitivity controls, deadzone proportions, button configuration, and then some miscellaneous options. Each of these catergories has 4-5 tunable options in it. You can set almost everything separately for whether you are firing from the hip (normal fire) or aiming down the sight (ADS), and there are additional parameters for when you are using a scoped weapon, a turret, or the ac130.
Q: That sounds too complicated. I just want to play the game.
A: You don't have to diddle with any settings at all if you don't want to. I give you 6 presets, from total noob to completely bonkers. When you create a new game, the first thing it asks you is which control preset you want to start with. The presets are just starting points, and you can fine-tune them whenever you like from the pause menu. But we spent a lot of time testing and tweaking these presets to make sure they are all actually useful straight out of the box.
Q: What is the Marksman preset all about?
A: The Marksman preset is special. Marksman is designed to make the game feel as much as possible like a PC shooter when you aiming down the sights - "precision aiming" is turned on, and the gun stays in the center of your screen while you are in ADS.
Q: What is Precision Aiming?
A: Precision aiming mode is brand new for this game, and as far as I know, no other Wii games are using anything like this. I'll spare you the math behind it, but basically, with precision mode OFF, where you are pointing your wiimote determines how fast the camera rotates. If you point at the edge of the screen, the camera is going to rotate pretty fast until you move the wiimote back toward the center of the screen. This is how it works in WAW and most 3d wii games. People have gotten used to this. But you end up in a lot of situations where the camera just keeps spinning, or where you overshoot or undershoot your target. Precision mode fixes this - instead of moving your wiimote to turn faster, you move your wiimote to point directly at THAT point. It is very much like how aiming with the mouse works on PC shooters. Gives you a much finer degree of control over where your camera goes.
That probably didn't make much sense, but just check it out. You can enable or disable it independently for scopes and ADS. I personally think that someone who really masters precision aiming has a huge advantage over the people who don't use it.
Q: In World at War, how come the gun moved around the screen so much faster in MP than in SP?
A: Because that's how people liked it at the time, during the play tests. But in MW Wii you now have a slider called "ADS Reach" that gives you total control over this. Set it to zero and the gun is in the center of the screen at all times. Set it to maximum and the gun will move to all four corners of the screen.
Q: How does scope aiming work?
A: You have three choices for aiming the scopes: standard, precision, or analog stick. Standard means you aim the scope the same way you would aim any other weapon. Precision turns on the precision mode I talked about earlier. Analog stick means you use the analog stick on the nunchuk to move the scope around. If you are aiming with the analog stick, you can move using the d-pad.
Q: I heard there is some scope sway now.
A: The camera will sway a bit while you are looking down the scope. This is to keep you from camping on one pixel by setting the wiimote down. If you are in standard or precision aim, it is nowhere near as strong as the camera sway on the other versions of cod4 - i'd say its about 10-20% of that. If you hold your breath, the scope sway temporarily goes to zero. The iron lungs perk in MP increases the amount of time you can hold your breath. If you are aiming the scope with the analog stick, then the scope sway behavior is identical to the other versions.
Q: How does nightvision/killstreaks/grenade launcher/claymores/c4/etc. work?
A: These functions are all on the d-pad on the xbox360 and ps3. I would have liked to put them on the d-pad on the wii, but then we wouldn't have had enough buttons for everything else. So the way it works is that you have a single button mapped to "inventory" - this is dpad-left by default. When you hold down the inventory button, your special item icons will light up. You select one by flicking the analog stick in the direction of the item you want. This is really fast once you get accustomed to it.
Q: How does the button customizer work?
A: It's similar to the button customizer in the PC version. There is a list of game functions (attack/jump/ADS/whatever). You click on the function you want to remap, then press the button you want it attached to. You can also assign some functions to a gesture, or to twisting the wiimote and then pressing the button.
Q: Can I really customize everything?
A: Use, Sprint, and Lock Camera have to be on the same button. The fact is that the wiimote just doesn't have enough buttons for all of the commands in call of duty, so we have to double (triple) up on use/sprint/lock. You also can't move pause off of the 1 button. Everything else is up to you.
Q: I don't feel like customizing the buttons.
A: There are 6 button presets to pick from - they are basically the same as in WAW, with a new one: Foxtrot. There is a special preset for the zapper if you want to use it.
Q: What is the default button layout? Same as in WAW?
A: More or less. Compared to the last game, Alpha and Bravo are switched, and Charlie and Delta are switched. So the current default layout is Bravo from WAW:
B: attack
A: use/sprint/lock camera
C: change stance
Z: ADS
plus: frag grenade
minus: special grenade
dpad up: jump
dpad left: inventory
dpad right: cycle weapon
dpad down: melee
shake nunchuk: reload
1: pause
2: MP scoreboard
Q: I hate gestures. I also hated it in WAW where you had to twist the wiimote to throw a smoke grenade.
A: I don't like gestures either. You can turn them off as long as you don't have anything important on a gesture only. You can also switch to a preset button layout that doesn't use them. For the wiimote twist, the only reason we had that is so we could fit all of the commands onto the wiimote without making you use gestures or making you use the 2 button for something. 3 of the preset control schemes still use the twists. With the button customizer you can set it up however you like, although remember that every command has to go *somewhere* and there are only so many buttons available.
Q: Is there classic controller support?
A: No.
Q: Is there gamecube controller support?
A: No.
Q: Can I play with the zapper?
A: Sure. You can use the zapper button layout. It's been improved a bit since last time - you still have to twist it left and right (remember we basically only have 3 buttons, B/C/Z, that have to control everything in the game), but we got rid of where you would have to double-tap the analog stick to jump or crouch.
Q: I heard you can lean now.
A: It's off by default, but if you enable it, you can lean side-to-side with the nunchuk.
Q: Isn't that going to unbalance the game?
A: No. Leaning has been in the PC versions of call of duty for years, and it definitely hasn't unbalanced anything. We just brought it over from the PC without changing any of its functionality.
Q: oMG gangsta shootin'
A: All I ever said about this was that you can twist the guns a little bit by twisting the wiimote, that some guns twist more than others, and that you can hold your uzi "gangsta style" if you like. People kind of took this statement and ran with it. The uzi is the only gun that has a one-handed firing animation, so its the only gun that is really going to look "gangsta" when you twist it. All other guns have two-handed animations in the other versions of cod4, and we weren't allowed to change them to make them look better with the weapon twisting.
It's a cool feature, but its pretty minor and purely cosmetic. If you got the idea that you are going to look like ice cube running around with a sniper rifle, you're going to be disappointed.
Q: Aim assist sucked in World at War
A: It's been fixed. It's really good now. You can still turn it off.
Q: Isn't it going to break MP with all of these aim assist noobs running around?
A: Aim assist is scaled WAY back for multiplayer. All it does is nudge you toward the guy you are aiming at when you go into ADS. It doesn't follow the guy, and you have to be aiming pretty close to him in the first place for it to kick in. That said, if it still bothers you, hardcore game modes don't let anyone use aim assist.
Q: What's the best thing control-wise about this game?
A: I think the stability of the cursor is what sets it apart and just makes things feel good. I spent a lot of time figuring how to filter the wiimote data to make it feel smooth and stable, while still being quick and responsive. I can't discuss other wii games by name, but I recently played another wii shooter where the cursor kept jittering and jumping all over the place. This particular game had a lot of control options, but there was just no way to get rid of the jitteriness. MW Wii does not have this problem. Controlling your cursor shouldn't feel like you are playing Operation.
September 5
CoD4 Updates from Developers
No Killcam
No killcam (RAM constraints), and we had to swap out one of the unlockable cheats from the original version - I think you guys will like the new one better, anyway. Lower player count in MP, no offline multiplayer. That's all i can think of right now. Like Shonuff said - other than a handful of things that we simply weren't able to do on the hardware, it's the same game through and through.Controls
- - All of the actionslot commands (everything that was on the dpad in the xbox version) are now activated with a single "inventory" button. You hold the inventory button, then select which actionslot command you want by using the analog stick. So for nightvision, you would hold the inventory button, then flick the analog stick up. It's actually really quick and easy once you get the hang of it. Obviously we're kind of cramped for buttons on the Wii controllers, and this helped us free up controller space for more frequently used commands. (The inventory button defaults to dpad-left, but you can reassign it.)
- - Use/interact, sprint, and lock camera are all on the same button (A by default, you can remap it)
- - We're not doing a grenade select thing - too slow. Frag grenade and special grenade each have their own button. You can map either grenade to a gesture if you like, but putting a grenade on a gesture means you can't cook the grenade.
- - Compared to world at war, the alpha and bravo presets are switched, and the charlie and delta presets are switched. So the old bravo is the new alpha, and the new default config. This is because having to twist the wiimote to throw a special grenade got some serious hate in the focus tests. So if you got used to playing on alpha in world at war, you'll want to start with the bravo preset.
- - The button customizer is pretty flexible (you can assign most commands to gestures, or even to a "twist-button" if you like) so you shouldn't have much trouble finding a button config that works for you.
- - You can lean side-to-side using the Nunchuk. You have to go to the options menu to enable this, it's off by default.
Additional Controls
I think Activision briefly mentioned that cod4wii has a new scope aiming mode - this is actually my favorite new feature of the game. It's basically an emulation of how PC aiming works, and you're going to notice a huge improvement in how precise your aim is. (You can enable this for ADS with any weapon, not just scopes.)There is a daunting number of tweakable control options, so we created six "presets" to use as starting points. You'll choose a preset when you start the game. The "marksman" preset is designed to make the controls feel as much like a PC shooter as possible. Hope you guys like it.
