Poverty, Coding, and Politics

One of my ideas for expanding Wargames was with a newsletter, probably either fortnightly, or monthly. I would like to hear whether or not people would be interested in this and would sign up for it.

Wargames (especially the second) has got the highest number of votes in the previous poll. I do intend to make sure some of the others do get a mention though, I fully intend to reach 50 hub entries by the end of the year (roughly 6 are nearly ready for anything from a demo to a full release).

Wargames will most likely get the most of my limited coding time these days, however.

Edit: Does anyone actually know about the View Game stats in the game hub pages? Do they actually work yet?

I'm still working on it, honest.

I've been developing a few more thing which I plan to be included into Beta D download once all points have been completed.

I've also been attempting to alter the way land generation works, if you try it a few times, you will notice that the top row is almost always more sparse of land, if any land at all, than the other sides. This is down to the way I have developed the generator. I have been attempting to give this side more of a chance, but it does not appear as of yet to be working in a "random" way. I can get the top row ok, but then it does not wish to develop any more further down.

Anyway, back to what I did want to do in this beta:

1) Barbarians (Automatically released with C.b)
2) AI Players (Programmed in)
3) Government Types (Tribal programmed in)
4) Alliances (Nothing coded in yet)
5) Unit upkeep costs (Programmed in)
6) New units for Iron-Romanic ages (Iron age ships in)
7) Anything else I squeeze in before I release.
8) A help guide (Not yet).

I have since last time developed unit upkeep costs, depending on the unit, you will find food, wood, or metal draining each turn. Like those juicy Combat Archers? Better be grouping up as much wood as you can, as a dozen or so will probably destroy all your incoming wood coming in.

The Iron age ships are slightly better than the Bronze age ones; and can breach into sea tiles as long as they stay one square away from the shore, and also bring in a new feature: Wind.

Wind for the moment, will only effect sail ships from possibly moving an extra square per turn, but will also effect later, pollution (air pollution will travel with the wind), biological weapons (fancy catapulting the plague?), chemical weapons (mustard gas will be extremely irritating) and nuclear weapons (watch out for that acid rain in a atmospheric explosion!).

The new Iron age ships mean that the "Island" pre-set map generation option is totally playable, and few islands will be beyond your reach. Romanic age ships (which should be available perhaps in the same beta) will go further still. Dark age ships will be able to go across sea tiles, and Middle-Renaissance ships will be able to go across ocean tiles.

I will most likely go towards making more research and units to flesh out Iron and Romanic ages soon, which will let me finally start opening up Dark and Middle ages. I will also need to start thinking about that damn help guide, and developing alliances.

Just a quick post, I'll probably be hosting a wargames 2 game roughly every day, it'll be Public Beta D in development (not in full, just whatever I have done at the time).

I've spent about an hour on coding today. Today's update includes:

1) The start of AI Players. AI Players are intended to be Computer run nations will act independently (at least, for now, not ruling out AI or AI-Player gangups on you :p)
2) Host options to close the game to new players when the game starts, and to password protect games so new players must know your password you set to join (note the later is a subscription feature for now). This is just another addition to making Wargames 2 more in line with traditional multiplayer based games, and helps quite a bit.

AI players can be set based on personalities - the first is "Oblivious" - ie, free standing towns which don't develop themselves. They are free for the taking, as a whole town (a major resource and research bonus when you just start a game) or pillaging if you are an evil AI barbarian.

Beta D will be publicly hosted by me when I'm around (although I might not be playing/talking in it mind), and will be released about when the following features are done:

1) Barbarians (Automatically released with C.b)
2) AI Players (Programmed in)
3) Government Types (Tribal programmed in)
4) Alliances (Nothing coded in yet)
5) Unit upkeep costs (Not yet coded)
6) New units for Iron-Romanic ages (Not yet coded)
7) Anything else I squeeze in before I release.

Next I will most likely focus on the units, I would really like some sea-faring units available so that sea-maps are finally playable properly. Unit Upkeep will also be important.

Wargames, although it has hit a point in which updates are severely lacking, is still my "main" project on BYOND. This is because it is at a level where it can reach hundreds of players in a server (albeit not at once), it is a game that people PAY for extra features (and does help me - even though I now have a paid job - for now :p).

I have a target of £240 (Roughly $480-500 USD) from BYOND in 2008, this is a target I have set myself to attempt to reach in order to prove to myself a) That it is totally possible on BYOND and b) That it would open the way up to do BYOND almost as a living at least one day a week (meaning, most likely, weekly updates again).

In order to say, "work" one day a week on Wargames completely (as in, 8 hours a week) I would need ten times the amount I'm aiming to get this year, so its not something I'm committing myself to yet.

What I would like to do however, is to base how much time I would definitely spend on Wargames development in relation to how much money I'm making (harshly put, I know :p), which at the moment would be roughly 15-30 minutes a week. That is not to say I wouldn't do more, but to commit myself to doing at least that amount per week (which btw, is actually more than I'm currently doing).

To really grow however, and make this idea more of a reality, Wargames has to sharpen up, become more professional, and try to spread beyond BYOND to draw new players in. My priorities would be in both games then, to develop a 4.0 interface, and proper, detailed help guides. I like what I've done with the second game on the wiki - but even that is just table appendix and not a game guide. After that, I can start breaching again back into the outside world, and try attracting new players in. The fact that the first game is based on browser-based games, and the second on Civilisation there is a lot of potential players to draw in (and players of the first are strangely more likely to pay for a subscription service).

What I'm really interested in, if I haven't bored you yet, is input on the following ideas to expand into:

1) An email newsletter regularly sent out on updates, tactics, game play guides, tournaments etc
2) A proper website (or expansion of the wiki) to present a decent online presentable front
3) Regular tournament/theme based games
4) Regular hosting by myself again (a possibility)
5) A ranking system
6) More customisation in game settings for hosts
7) Podcasts again (ugh my voice sounded terrible before, remember? and I used to mess up so much)
8) Anything else?

I'd really like some input on some of those ideas.

FYI, if I cheat a tiny little bit, I'm actually on target for my £240 this year.

Just a simple poll to replace the old one.

Which game would you like to see developed in the near future. I've gone for my four "main" projects really, and other (please state which in the comments if you pick this one).

I'm just interested in what games people would like to see receive updates. They could all do with one really.

UPDATE: Wargames 2 had a critical bug, which needed a immediate fix. The bug prevented all other players from joining a game. Because this is a quick fix, it also contains some other features which I was in the middle of developing, hence, the Barbarians are now in the game to use, and there is some minor alterations:

Bugs and Glitches:

* A bug in which everyone would benefit from Foraging when it shouldn't have (to a point of actually increasing food) has been fixed.
* A nasty bug which I seemed to have completely unoticed for ages; the "fix" to stop people logging in when generating a map didn't work correctly: because I forgot to set it off once the map geneation is complete; fixed.

Map and Game Generation changes:

* Barbarian option makes it so that barbarian AI units will appear. There is a 0,1,2,3 option, in which the figure is multiplied by the number of tiles/361.
- This means that under a 19x19 map setting, under "few" (1) Barbarians, there will be one barbarian unit on the map.
- Under a 40x40 map setting, this will be 4, under "some" (2) Barbarians, this would multiply to 8,
- Barbarians will, for the time being, follow this list of units:
-- Prehistoric: Caveman
-- Stone: Archer
-- Copper: Axeman
-- Bronze: Superior Axeman
-- Iron+: Maceman
- Barbarian rationality will follow this code for the time being:
-- It will act as one nation, and automatically know foraging, and not move in the first 10 turns.
-- If it is running out of food, it will search for the nearest Oasis or Mountain, where its food will increase by one.
-- If it has sufficient food, it will search for supply wagons, workers and settlers to prey on.
-- If there is a city which does not have any protection, they will aim to overun it if the nation has more than 100 food.
-- If it does not see any nearby units of this type, they will find the nearest Hill, and wait there, where their food will not decrease.
* As a Warning * Lots of Barbarians will most likely cause a lot of lag. This means its not a smart idea to have loads unless you are playing on a turn based game.

Other Changes:

* The Government type and interest groups have been added to the nation stats.
* The Government type has been added to the players online.
* The default tick speed has been reduced from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
* The default ending age has been stepped up from Copper age to the Iron age.
* Nation and Town stats have been squished a bit more to fit more in.