Worms Forts: Under Siege

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

To do: 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#

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#

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

• April 29th - Sega Europe announces the development of "Worms Forts Under Siege"^{(<span style="cursor:help; border-bottom:thin dotted cornflowerblue;" id="tooltip" title="}

The preceding text has been transcribed exactly as presented in the original source ">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 published Worms 3D a few months prior, announces a publishing agreement for the North American release of "Worms Forts: Under Siege!"^{(<span style="cursor:help; border-bottom:thin dotted cornflowerblue;" id="tooltip" title="}

The preceding text has been transcribed exactly as presented in the original source ">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 August - An early Demo of the game is released.
• August 6th - Sega Europe releases a 2 minutes long trailer on their website, slotting September 2004 as the release date.
• August 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.
• November 3rd - Team 17 announces that the game has gone gold on all platforms. November 19 is set as the European release date. Dates for North America and the rest of the world are yet to be confirmed.
• November 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).
• November 26th - Worms Forts: Under Siege is released in Australia.
• November 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

• January 7th - The PS2 and Xbox release for the United States is announced for the 1st of March.
• March 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 containing all of the text used in the "About" page, only missing slight changes and the website's "What's New" section.

Notably, the "Fact Sheet" contains a bullet point reading "Online play for the PC and Xbox™ Live!" in the Features section which wasn't present on the website. The retail game did include online play for both PC and Xbox so it is unknown why this information was excluded.

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 that could still be seen in the Gamestop pre-release preview. Meanwhile, "bows and arrows" fits a piece of concept art 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", as well as a mention of "huge howitzers" later. 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 a "Resource management" mechanic is highlighted as a large component of the game, being scattered across maps and directly tied to the game's core building mechanic, no such feature is present in the final game. Though, with the way it is described, with the player needing to place buildings in order to grab them and keep them maintained with "supply lines", it seems that it evolved/was simplified into the Victory Points mechanic of the final game. Some cut concept art (Media Kit, documentation TBA) directly point to such a "Resource" mechanic.

The document also mention "The possibility of buildings becoming isolated", which suggests that unlike the final game, when a building got severed from the player's Stronghold, it would not be destroyed. Though it is unspecified whether said isolated buildings would become neutral.

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 get 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.

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 does consist of 20 maps with varying objectives. However, the "chapters" that would've offered more than 1 mission per map are nowhere to be found, limiting the campaign to 20 levels unlike what the interview claimed.

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 stated, 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 set 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).

As an aside, the journalist describes "spinning stars" scattered across the map which the developer calls "victory locations". This may suggest the "resources" mechanic had already been simplified away at this stage of development.

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, [...]

The interviewer calls to a "handheld [...] exploding fruit" weapon akin to a Banana Bomb, which does not exist as described in the final game.

It's unclear whether this comparison only stopped at the weapon being an exploding fruit, or if said exploding fruit produced clusters like a Banana Bomb as well, in which case this may have been a scrapped equivalent of the Cluster Bomb, a staple of the series. It's also unspecified whether it existed separately from the Grenade or if it simply was an early iteration of it, which is supported by Worms Forts' tier-based, family-based arsenal that would make a second handheld grenade weapon hard to fit it.

The concept of an exploding fruit weapon is very akin to the Cluster Launcher from the final game, the Tier 2 Grenade family weapon that splits into clusters upon exploding, akin to a Cluster Bomb or Banana Bomb.

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 "armouries" performing the function of the Weapon Factory from the final game. There's a chance this could refer to the cut "Siege Workshop" building with the anvil icon, rather than the final game's Weapon Factory that was once named "Refinery" (as per internal name and concept art) and doesn't look like a building one would call an armory.
• Hospitals are stated to "restore health" when their only function in the final game is to resurrect dead Worms.
• Worms "seem to take less damage in a well protected fortress". The writer seems uncertain about it, this impression could be led by the negligible damage certain siege weapons deal to Worms in spite of their size and explosion radius even in the final game.

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 phrasing that buildings losing their link to the stronghold would "become inoperable" supports the aforementioned "About" page from the game's website claiming that buildings would become disabled rather than automatically destroyed in such a scenario.

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 roster of buildings at this point in development is identical to the one in the retail version game, correctly listing them all with none of the cut buildings.

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 right of the text box)
  • An Anubis statue 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 at the bottom, partially hidden behind the watermark and weapon panel)
  • Inversely, the retail version possesses a lying Anubis statue on the topmost of the stair platforms in each corner of the map that is not present in the early screenshot. In its place was a Victory Location, which indicates that players could place a building there.
• 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.

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.