After we had previously dealt with the WoP news of the year 2003, now the WoP news of the year 2004 are in the focus. The whole work was really worthwhile, because 2004 is the year in which World of Padman was first released as a modification for Quake 3 Arena. In this respect, besides many interesting insights into the third year of development of WoP, there is also a lot of material that we can provide again on the current website. This includes interviews, reviews and videos that have been rediscovered and have now found their way onto the media coverage page. Take a look, it is worth it. 😉
With a few exceptions, we were also able to restore almost all articles in German and English, at least textually. As before, most of the news was written in German by ENTE and translated into English by Harmonieman, sometimes with the support of the community. Where the translations could no longer be restored, we added them later and editorially revised the news in a few places. Unfortunately, not much of the associated image material could be found. 🙁
In the following we want to review the year 2003 of World of Padman again.
- January: There were a lot of contributions to the player menu, to skins and effects of the various weapons, the powerups and the HUD was shown for the first time in action. Also, ENTE brought its PadWorld comic page about Padman and his friends back online.
- February: A small status update gave a brief overview of the current state of work on code, 3D intro, maps, GFX and map objects. Even a small WoP trailer has already been announced. The first internal online test ever took place and GIGA wanted to report about the PadMod, but still it did not come to it. Gogitason surprised the team, presented new images of PiratePad and Tenken joined the team to help with the animations of the player models.
- March: Right at the beginning officially started the first beta tests with a few action screenshots shown and a release of the PadMod was already announced for the month of April. The first PadMod review ever appeared before the first WoP release and the ingame HUD was presented in 10 different design variants. At the end of the month, a very positive beta test result was stated and the implementation of the Big Balloon game mode was quickly announced as an integral part of WoP.
- April: There was a great video with flights to all maps by Raptaker and the further planning and scope of a PadMod release for the last week of April was officially announced. The first TV presentation of WoP at GIGA Games was announced big, then cancelled and postponed, announced again and the recordings were then available for download. DoomDragon and Raptaker presented the first official trailer of the World of Padman!
- May: May started very quietly as the April release date could not be maintained. Only in the second half of the month, the team reported back with new screenshots to recent changes to Anteroom and Diner and Cabin and Kitchen. There were first glimpses into the music menu for selecting the WoP soundtrack in the mod. The team section of the website was redesigned, but WoP still took a while to come.
- June: This month, the WoP increased a little, because ENTE presented new wallpapers on the PadMod and the release date has been officially set. The CybBath received some updates, DoomDragon and Heiko Klüh presented the 3D intro for WoP and Dieselkopf’s first WoP music pack was released in advance. In addition to detailed information about the release shortly before, the PadMod was released on 18th June of 2004. At the same time a lot of WoP server went to the start, even if the mod had a few teething problems. This was followed by a second very detailed presentation at GIGA Games and also the recordings were provided for download. The month closed with the release of a first mapping pack that could be used to create custom maps for WoP.
- July: streetcup.de hosted a Big Balloon Cup, work on the first custom map for WoP was presented, Aquarius presented its WoP secrets page and GIGA Games was looking for the best mod to win GIGA Award.
- August: Despite the summer break, the work on an update for WoP was announced and the first time thoughts on the possibility to develop WoP as a stand-alone game came up. The Sunday PadDay is mentioned for the first time, announced and reported regularly in the following. The bot support was announced as part of the next update, the website got a few updates and GIGA Games awarded the GIGA Award, where the WoP unfortunately received nothing. Finally, HellPad was announced as the new “old” Padman skin for the next update, as well as a map objects package for creating custom maps was released.
- September: BioPad and SuperPad were announced as additional new “old” Padman skins for the next update and the first Big Balloon PadDay has been launched. ENTE released a small WoP shirts addon for the Sims and thanks to FEzzz, WoP-Server could be displayed directly on the website for the first time.
- October: ENTE released some WoP themes with the PadLogo for badges and banners of the game Warhammer 40,000 – Dawn of War and a large package with MightyPetes sky boxes for creating custom maps for WoP has been released. ENTE announced the PadShop for WoP and before the release of the planned update a quite detailed change log was presented. It also announced the first PadMod update for the beginning of November, but nothing came of it.
- November: In the PadMod forum, there were a few initial screenshots of PadShop, where the forum went offline shortly after a few days. Finally, there were some final screenshots of the PadShop and the PadDay became a TestDay for the announced update.
- December: There was a first editor screenshot to a certain refrigerator map (the later FridgeWars) and Sunrabbit unfortunately had to completely shut down his Server for the PadMod. The month closed with the obligatory Christmas greetings and a detailed interview with Hamonieman about the PadMod appeared shortly after.
Unfortunately, four posts of December could not be restored. These included the news on the release of the WoP Update01, an article in the UK edition of PC Gamer, about ENTE’s PadCards and a PadMod review by Raptaker on holarse.de, but that we could at least find in the web archive again. We hope that in the future we will be able to supplement missing articles, pictures and files and in the meantime we will deal with the news of the years 2002 and 2005, even if we already know that the gaps will be a bit bigger there. 😉
Finally a few impressions from the year 2004.
