Mars /

Yesterday i went on a short visit to Raywall. Unfortunately Tony was not in town, so i couldn’t speak with him too. Our main point of discussion was the bugs, erm features, in the game. We analyzed almost every aspect of the game and realized that we have some interesting bugs like merchants who suddenly disappear in thin air instead of returning home, buildings that are demolished but the upgrades or the resource bonus remain there and so on. Raywall`s biggest concern is the demolishion of a building. Another issue is the periodic database backup, but he said this is quite easy to implement. He`s quite optimistic and says that in 1 month they will be able to fix all the known bugs and that we`ll probably have a launch in August(if all works well).

My biggest concern is the security. On this closed alpha we got some new and interesting viruses which basically brought our server to 100% CPU load. Yeah, it`s a windows server and although it is a windows 2003 server enterprise edition it can still  get new viruses and trojans. The tests for this week will be mostly security related, since i need to know exactly how a few things works in order to be able to implement the right polices in the firewall.

This i will do mostly from work when i have a few minutes free. After work i`ll probably be at Alex`s home finishing the manual of the game for the programmers.

First, we found our designer. She’s a very good friend of mine and she’s finishing the university on June 17th, so after that she’ll begin working on the game design. Hopefully she’ll finish by July 1st with it so we can launch the open alpha test. I say that but I have no actual idea on the amount of work we will need. We’ll see then.

Second, Mars is almost finished with the icons for the military units. Tony is working on the statistics and the user profile and Rico on fixing bugs and stuff that isn’t written in code yet.

As for me (Alex), I’m still writing on paper different stuff (started working on the game administration area – what we need to have there).

Alex /

We’ve decided to go the payed route for the graphical interface to make sure we have something of quality. Though Mars knows a thing or two in Photoshop, he’s not perfect in this department. We realized that we need to make an investment here and pay someone to do the graphics for the game with as much detail as possible.

Hopefully it will be something truly remarkable. The units will still be made by Mars, but the general look of the site will be done by someone that makes a living from graphics.

I for one am really excited about the future look of the game. We already have an idea on the level of detail that we want from the game, and if the designer will be able to do what we want, then it will be the kind of look that makes users want to subscribe even before they know what the game is about. Then again, if it doesn’t come out looking ok, the previous statement might come and bight me in the ass. Time will tell :).

Alex /

We’ll probably launch an internal testing round in the next 24 hours, mainly to take out the bugs. Some sort of pre-alpha if you will :).

It’s the first time we actually get to play the game, albeit unfinished, so I’m sure there will be a lot of bugs. As soon as we sort them out, we’ll release the alpha (hopefully in 2-3 weeks) to find the bugs that are harder to find.

Mars /

After a long period of time,due to different factors, I`ve managed to complete an alpha version of the graphics. It`s not much and definitely its not what I`ve imagined it would be, but at least we can understand what`s happening in the game and mostly if the game is working as it should. Now, the programmers are working to implement the graphics into the main game, so in max 2 weeks we`ll have a closed alpha test of the game. It will take this long, basically because the programers didn`t saw, until now, a lot of small options which need to be implemented ( countdown timers, auto-refresh, etc). I didn`t start working on the statistics page, or the alliance page, and I won`t until we are sure that the game is working at least in an acceptable way. Our biggest concern is that the game will be totally unbalanced, or that the main things won`t work as they should. We have some reserves on the battle system, which should be pretty realistic and fair but we still need to test it and see if it works as it should be. Another big thing is the general work of the game, automatic gathering of resources, raids, etc.

For now, the programmers will do they work, i`ll continue improving the graphics and Alex is still thinking on some new ideas. YES, every time we finish implementing an idea a brand new one just pops up from nowhere. Some of them are really nice, some are acceptable and some are impossible to implement, but we are trying to have a game oriented on user experience, and for this reason a lot of new ideas are implemented every month.

More news in a short time.

Alex /

I took a small break from blogging during Easter and now I’m back.

Mars continues to work on the graphics of the game.

Tony worked before leaving the city on the mass messaging system that we’ll use for important announcements ingame. Right now he’s working on making the connections between the design done by Mars and the backend that they created so far.

Raywall is still working on the battle system. This one is a biggy. We really went out of our way to make it .. “special”. He made a combat simulator for testing purposes and he’s already fixed the bugs I found so far.

I have to try every possible scenario in the battle system, check on paper if the combat simulator spits out the right results, and report to Tony anything that goes wrong. I also need to finish some buildings on paper in the next period.

Alex /

Due to the rather repetitive nature of the posts here (we finished that, going to start on the next task, etc), I’ve decided to post from now on some articles on different subjects gaming related. They’ll start showing up next week when I have some time.

As for the current status of the game, I finished the promotion plan for the game, Mars finished the resource page and is now building a version of the game to be played by the four of us, before the alpha version. Raywall is working on the battle system and Tony, I didn’t talk with him today, so no idea what he’s working on right now :).

Mars /

Well, for the past 2 weeks I`ve been working on the graphics (including CSS). Unfortunately it`s still far from completion, and i hardly have time for anything else(like playing C&C 3 ). A small preview on how the game looks now can be seen in the picture below. It`s still a rough graphic and the final will be much better then this one, but at least you can make a general idea about the game.

Like I said, it’s far from the final version but it’s a start and for the first time someone can understand what is happening. Until now it was just some text and some really silly images.

Alex /

Well, Tony finished the chat system yesterday and we tested it for a bit. It works and its in real time with updates at 1 second. The private chats we decided to leave them for now, due to the load on the server. Maybe in 3-4 months once the game starts we’ll implement that also if the server and the bandwidth consumed allows us. As for the alliance chat, you can’t change your nickname, it just uses the username of the player, and can only be accessed by those in the same alliance.

Raywall is working on the battlesystem and its giving him a few headaches. The 8 pages of text we gave him were the result of 4-5 excruciating days of throwing ideas around with Mars and its very complex. You can finish a battle by loosing all your infantry and only a small part of the cavalry, you can loose all the infantry and cavalry while the archers survive the battle, or you can loose only 2% of your army and your general would die anyway, due to injuries from previous battles that haven’t healed yet. To be more precise, the general will lose 30% of his life if he loses 30% of his army on the battlefield. If he is at 1% life and he loses 2% of his army, then he dies. He can be revived after that, but a general that dies doesn’t receive any experience from that battle.

As for Mars, he is locked in mortal combat with the design of the game. Still a long way from the final version, but something that can be used for internal testing of the game, before the alpha test.

I’m working right now on the small details, what should be written on each page of the game, what options each page should have, etc.

I’ve setup a yahoo messenger id for the game in case anyone wants to contact us. We’ll probably provide support for the game also from this yahoo id.

You can add this id in Yahoo Messenger if you want to talk with me about the game:  ImperialAges@yahoo.com