Its that time of the year again. The 2nd season of the Hogs of War League will be commencing from the 4th October, and with it we have a whole host of new and old players who are ready to battle it out for the bacon! Last season the league had one giant system, consisting of 10 players in a single group. This time round however we've increased the number of participants to 14 and have split them into two groups of 7. Progression remains the same, with the top four players from each group going through to the Live Playoff Finals, which by rough calculations will take place sometimes in November.
Splitting the players into two separate tables has helped reduce the feeling of fatigue, as last season it was 9 straight weeks of hosting, organising, playing, recording and uploading the matches. With this new format we have reduced that time down to 6 weeks, with an added rest week for all players.
Alongside a new format - we have also made some changes to the map pool for this season. There were four maps in particular that seemed to be stuck in the same 'basic' category, in that they had very little to offer the player in the way of crates, environment hazards and spawn placement. Wasteland, Porkchop Temple, Headquarters and Hilltop all suffered from non-slippery tiles, meaning that all pigs could walk on any part of the map without falling off, and in competitive that can cause several issues when it comes to balancing. I mean first off - it can be pretty boring to watch, and second - the player who ends up going first will usually always have the advantage.
The hope with these map changes is to provide a more dynamic approach for competitive players, rather than starting a match and immediately being able to walk up to your target without having to think about the terrain around you. Maps are incredibly important to both players and viewers of the league, and I feel we take a good deal of pride and effort in choosing the map pools. At the end of the day we just want to provide the best experience for everyone, for everything to feel fair and ultimately - to have fun.
So feel free to join us over on the Hogs of War League channel for the upcoming Season 2 fixtures, of which you can check out over on the League's toornament page which lists everything you'll need to know. Castor is of course the raining champion from Season 1, so the big question this time around is whether he can maintain his unbeaten run going into Week 1!
Alternatively you can also check out the League section of this site to get involved in upcoming competitive events, and if you feel like playing like the Pros do - you can download the updated Hogs League ISO as well. Good luck to all participants, I'll be seeing you on the battlefield!
An update for the Hogs of War Website has been released. The major changes include:
> Updated Home Page
> Removed links to Steam PC game version and replaced with New affiliated links to Seven Squared store
> Updated Workshop Page
> Added most recently created community mods (Pins Mod v4.0 & Bobby's Mod v2.0)
> Updated League Page
> Altered information regarding joining Grunt/Pro League, Note: Players looking to register their interest for Pro/Grunt League can still do so, however please be aware that this will be for next years league's as the first Season of GL recent finished and Season 2 of Pro League is due to start in October
> Updated Card/Miniatures Game Page
> Release date info updated, added video guide series that explains each phase of Miniatures Gameplay
Good News Everyone! The site has recently teamed up as an affiliate of Seven Squared! You can now find Officially licensed Hogs t-shirts and hoodies linked on the home page! Seven Squared are a collective group of gamer artists, designers, illustrators and licensing professionals who create designs for old Retro Games. They share our same goal of wanting to keep these old games (including hogs!) alive, and what better way to do that than by working with original game owners to create official merch!
Based in the UK, the guys over at Seven Squared have also teamed up with video game mental health charity - Safe in Our World. Every time you buy a tee, you are making a contribution to their awesome work. Plus - some tees and hoodies are Safe in Our World exclusives, which means that 100% of the profit goes directly to the charity. Get yourself some official hogs merch today!
You'll be pleased to know that Pinstripe's Mod v4.0 is currently in development. Or maybe you won't be pleased, maybe you were expecting some news that was better than that, Reheated perhaps? Well regardless of what you were thinking, my aim once again is to bring you, the player, yet another new hogs of war experience.
This time around I wanted to step things up a notch, not just in relation to difficult, but in regards to storytelling. Each mission in the original singleplayer campaign offers up some kind of vague synopsis. What I wanted to do in v4.0 was link each mission and island together through setting & story telling, so you feel like your actions in one mission can help affect the next one, all culminating into an ongoing tale of destruction and vengeance. I won't give away much here, but you can watch the intro cutscene below to give yourself a preview of whats to come.
There will be six cutscene videos in total that will come alongside the mod download itself. It would be great if I could, but obviously I can't put my own cutscenes physically into the game, so you'll have to watch them separately. Each video will be labelled, so you'll know when you should watch it in order to understand what is happening in game. The cutscenes will go hand in hand with the mission briefing screens, which I'm also remaking in v4.0. The biggest challenge with creating a brand new story in hogs is the fact that I'm not directly able to mention any of the teams/nations. If I did then things would get messy and not make much sense, considering how the game will randomly sequence which team you will fight against on any mission. The same goes for individual pig names. To get around that I've ended up using codenames instead that are used to generalise the specific pig in question, just as I did with 'The Wolf' Tank Commander on Mission 12 in Pin's Mod v2.0. So all the enemy nations you fight against are referred to as 'The Coalition', who are basically a group of nations that banded together, thinking they are better than everyone else. Oh and they control the worlds Swill supply, I know its kinda the same thing you've come to expect, but it does have more depth than that I promise! The story also continues into/provides context for Hard Mode, but really only from Mission 25 into Mission 1, then it just repeats itself as it usually does. Nevertheless, the story up until that point will have expanded on all the topics & characters, so it should all still make sense. I really do want to go into specifics but I'll hold my tongue... for now. I wonder if any of this would be considered canon?
Sadly one of the things I've realised when planning out this next mod installment is that my map pool has all but dried up. You can still expect 11 new/old maps in v4.0, alongside existing multiplayer maps, but after this mod is finished - I have no new maps to showcase, which makes me sad. Sure I can still mix up all the maps I've used previously on different missions, but new maps have consistently been at the centre of my mods, so where I go from here is unknown. There are still other areas that can be focused on, such as new classes that are given different weapons, but at present that feels like something thats just over the horizon, ever so slightly out of reach. The same can be said for the creation of brand new maps from scratch. Hogs modding does have a bright future, but its just going to require us to wait a little longer in order for it to reach its full potential. Till then I'll continue to try and create new & exciting campaigns for the community to enjoy, even if the next one takes me a million years to make.
