ID:20514
 
After writing a comment in Developous' blog today, I realized that I had just explained how to play his Armies game. If anybody else wants to try, they may find the comment useful (copied from his blog):

I played Armies today and liked it. It took me an hour and a half to figure out how to work it (I was bored enough at the time to make the attempt), but I like puzzles, so I enjoyed that. There are still portions of it that remain mysteries to me, but I can see that you put a lot of work into it, and that it could potentially be fun if multiple people who understand how it works played together.

The real problem (as I see that you recognize) is incomprehensible documentation. The source of that problem is that your writing makes assumptions about what the reader knows when in reality, he probably doesn't know it. Pretend you're writing for a newborn infant who needs everything spelled out. You might think that some of what you're writing will be obvious, but really, it won't.

For example, you say things like "have your villager build a burrow." Instead, explain it like this:

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Every tile in the world of Armies has a property called "energy." The energy of a tile can be found by standing on the tile and looking at your statistics verb panel.

Every time you want to build something on the tile, it requires the use of a certain amount of energy from the tile depending on what's being built. Every time you the player spend a turn standing on a tile, that tile's energy increases by 5.

As a player, you have something called "spare energy." Spare energy increases on every new turn. Using the command "give energy," the player can transfer a chosen amount of this spare energy to the energy of the tile on which he stands.

The player has three different "modes," which allow him to fulfil certain roles. Two of these are for attacking enemies, while the "builder" mode is for building up your base. At the beginning, you probably want builder mode. Select builder mode by right-clicking on your character, choosing the "Change Mode" option, selecting "builder" and pressing OK.

The first time you do this, because it is the beginning of the game, you are given a free villager unit. This unit is created while you are standing.

A move consistents of a movement one tile up, down, east, or west. Each unit has two moves per turn. Each unit has a "specialty." Villagers have the specialty, for example, of building on tiles and upgrading pre-existing buildings. To use a unit's specialty, right click on the unit, and select the "Specialty" option. In the villager's case, a menu filled with element names (eg, "fire," "earth," "water") will come up. These represent types of buildings [Developous, there should be a -detailed- explanation somewhere of what each building does].

The "earth" building is called a "burrow." With it, the player can create wolves. To build one, using the "give" command, transfer 15 units from spare energy to the energy of the tile on which you want to build the burrow, move the villager on top of that tile, right click on the villager unit, select "Specialty," select "Earth," and select OK. Now you've created a burrow!

To create a wolf with this burrow (wolf creation, after all, is the function of burrows), stand on top of the burrow. In this position, a new verb panel entitled "Hiring" will appear. Transfer 25 spare energy to the tile's energy using the give command (25 energy is the amount needed to build a wolf), and press the MakeWolf command in the Hiring panel. Now you have a wolf!

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When writing documentation, you need to be -at least- that detailed (probably more!). In fact, if you wrote that way even in writing blog posts, I think everyone would understand what you're trying to say much more. =)
*winks*

Actually, I want the buildings to be a surprise. And there are plenty of tricks.

One more lesson I should give in THAT matter is that each space produces it's own supply.

If you look at the burrow, then pass 1 turn, you will see it gains normal energies. Your personal energies are 5 per turn.

But some buildings can upgrade further.

Try the burrow again. Wind and Water works. Just remember that it references BUILDING CLASS. If at any time you see a same class, it has the same upgrades.

Oh and, you really should save 1000 energy on an energy pyramid. Just upgrade the house via lightning(100) then save 1000 on that space.
See what happens when you keep working on games? Some very intelligent people have liked the game.

It's just friggen hard to figure out how to work it and I don't get why you can't switch your mob to the other units instead of moving them one at a time. Upgrade your user interface (how users interact with the game) and you may have publishable material.
Developous wrote:
Actually, I want the buildings to be a surprise.

First principle of user interface design: Don't surprise your users. =)

The game might be the best game ever in the entire history of the world, but nobody will ever find out if they can't figure out how to play it!
Let's have Armies be a game to play for Kool Boiz' Night. :)
Hahah most def.
Kunark wrote:
It's just friggen hard to figure out how to work it and I don't get why you can't switch your mob to the other units instead of moving them one at a time. Upgrade your user interface (how users interact with the game) and you may have publishable material.

I did it in that method to have better control over the game. How would you like it you could not manage the ENTIRE empire? It's a necessitty.
If you have put in something else lately, I haven't seen it so forgive me if you've changed it since, but if you still have that system where you run around as one guy and you have to right click another unit, left click on "move" or whatever, then hit the direction you want to go.... Then repeat the whole process to move the unit another tile, that is WAY too much work to move just one tile. In a TBS, your mob changes to the other mob automatically, and the controls/view becomes that mob's. In an RTS, like what you appear to have, you freely click a unit, and when you do so, the controls and view become that of that mob's.
The point is that the empire you may control could become rather extensive. I do not now how to manually change views and switch mobs yet. It's a level above my skills so far. Sorry.
client.mob = newmob
client.eye = newmob


With view, I believe that's all there is to it.
... Even then, srry, there's the issue of doing ALL the buildings in the entire world.

Sorry, I just lack the skill to make it equate to that of [forgot name]
... Failed due to lack of cohesive structure.