Midnight Status are Open to the Idea of Doing a Swap Fire: Season 2 Preview for Swap Fire on Wii U

We promised some more Swap Fire coverage, so here’s us doing just that thanks to a new series of questions all answered by Midnight Status’ Jeremy Alessi! Enjoy:

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For players who are unaware of the Big Update coming to Swap Fire on Wii U, just what exactly does it entail?

Jeremy Alessi: – Exhibition Mode is now sequentially unlocked rather than players having to complete all cups with a gold medal first. This way, each time they complete a cup with a gold medal they earn 3 new exhibition game types. Some reviewers completely missed this feature and hammered us for not having a free-play mode so we want to make it more obvious that this does exist.

Capture the Flag and DropZone will be swapped in the play order because Capture the Flag ended up not being as easy to grasp as we had hoped. It was supposed to be introductory but it just ended up being confusing for many players. DropZone was moved to the end (Galactic Cup) because we felt it required more dexterity but in truth most people can pick it up with just a little practice and its gameplay proposition is more straight forward than Capture the Flag. The first cup only represents 6 minutes of play time but we have learned that it’s very crucial for that to be a carefully orchestrated balance of ease and surprise. Capture the Flag seems to be the weak point there and it’s 33% of peoples’ initial perception of the game.

We will be adding text to the pause screen on the TV that let’s players know they can select from 8 Display Modes on the GamePad.

We will be reinforcing that the Minus Button (-) can be used at any time to calibrate tilt on the Wii Remote or invert look on dual analog controllers. (Both of the above changes are things we display or show to players in multiple places already but they are being missed so people are really missing out on our intention to create a really easy “jump-in, jump-out” experience for players without fumbling through a bunch of menus)

The dual analog controls have been adjusted so they have more low-end precision and more high-end acceleration.

There is a crash that can occur after prolonged gameplay that we hope to track down. It seems to be tied to holding the laser down (which is encouraged) but somehow this is eating up memory in a non-traditional way (no slow-down before the crash etc.) so it’s been difficult to pin-point this bug. It should be noted that we did run the game all day before our initial 1.0 submission without any crashes so we also suspect that Nintendo’s final packaging of the game with Miiverse integration somehow put us over the threshold of memory usage by a razor thin margin that is only noticeable after prolonged play periods. For example, the game crashed on me the first time I played the eShop version downloaded to my regular personal Wii U, though I had played through all cups multiple times during development with no crashes.

There are some controller order glitches, for example if player 1 is using a Wii Remote and another player is using the GamePad as the Spectator/Commentator the two controllers conflict.

There are some other issues but the above are the biggest on my mind.

And how is work on the Big Update going?

Jeremy Alessi: Most things are complete, some are still unsolved. We have to find the time to focus hard to release a new version (can’t have distractions) but this can be difficult while we are working on other projects (contract work) to pay the bills.

Since you are working on both Swap Fire 1 and 2 at the same time, have you considered doing a Swap Fire: Season 2 Preview as part of the update for Swap Fire 1? (By this I mean either a feature that shows a trailer of how the newer version would look, or even a small demo like feature of Swap Fire 2 to be implemented into 1.)

Jeremy Alessi: That’s a great idea! That’s possible via video or a photo gallery perhaps. Work has started on more Swap Fire 2 3D models so it would be nice to connect this work with the update on Swap Fire 1.

Since your previous promotion paid off last time, (making Swap Fire 1 available for free in the NA Wii U eShop) will you be doing another one any time soon?

Jeremy Alessi: It’s possible, we have no concrete plans yet to do this but never say never!

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Just like we said before, this is by no means the last we’ll be posting about either Swap Fire game in the coming months, so expect to see some content real soon, including more exclusives like what we have above!

Until next time, keep on gaming!