09-11-2015, 11:33 PM (This post was last modified: 09-11-2015, 11:43 PM by unclemike.)
I have to say one of my favorite parts of 3rd Cycle are some of the improvements made to the kingdom reports. See the following attachments for:
New Regional Section with color for higher regional levels (green for control, bluish-green for substantial, blue for signficant)
New Group Section with leader medals, artifact listings, and encounter/foreign group notices
New Naval Section with ship names based on quality and the Elite ship (helps with avoiding sea patrols)
New Popcenter Section that lists special buildings and artifacts at the pc
New Artifact Section that lists the artifact description on every turn (the 0 status points for Scrying Mirror is due to it being a special artifact that the player spent points on creating back on turn 1)
I agree, UM. The changes make the turn report much easier and more interesting to read. The artifact abilities list is especially welcome. Great job!
Lord Diamond
Please do not take any of my comments as a personal insult or as a criticism of the game 'Alamaze', which I very much enjoy. Rather, I hope that my personal insight and unique perspective may, in some way, help make 'Alamaze' more fun, a more successful financial venture, or simply more sustainable as a long-term project. Anyone who reads this post should feel completely free to ignore, disregard, scorn, implement, improve, dispute, or otherwise comment upon its content.
I'm happy for the initial reactions from players on what we have done with the turn results. Sometimes I think players don't care about the aesthetics much. In that regard, we have come a long, long way from when I first got back the existing Alamaze code back in 2013 and the results and rules were in a .txt format, like you would see from a 1980's dot matrix printer. We invest in art even though we don't hear much back about it (like the king portraits). I just think today, with a text based game, the standard for presentation has to be well above what we used to have years ago or what you see in other PBEM. In the massively popular games, like World of Warcraft, their main focus is on the graphics. We can't just ignore the presentation, although 90% of our effort is in the depth and variety of game play. We are proud Alamaze has been available for 30 years now. That puts us in a rare category. Thank you for enjoying Alamaze!
This is all on me. Various distracting things have come up.
Basically, I came up yesterday with a list of 14 major design categories that still need to be addressed. So for example, the Artifact Revisions is one category. Detailing the spells I leaked is another, along with re-aligning spells by power level by kingdom. Everything changed or new needs text results. That is a pretty major overhaul. What players might consider minor is name changes, as for example the gender and relativity to the kingdom have not always been matching up, which bugs me. I guess I want to say, if I put my name on it, I want it to be Game of the Year quality, as with the two previously published and awarded works. The good news is Mike is forging his own path in the meantime with the interface.
In summary, when The Choosing comes out, I want it to be incontroversially the best multi-player, deep strategy game yet put out. So I still have some work to do.
I think it would be just fine to release a game that isn't 'perfect' right out of the gate, but is still good. Regular scheduled updates with new features would be a draw that keeps players excited about that next game. "Oooh, the new Goblin kingdom coms out next month! I need to bump my subscription so I can claim it in the first game! Man, I sure do love giving Rick my money every month. He's awesome!"
That looks very realistic,
Lord Diamond
Please do not take any of my comments as a personal insult or as a criticism of the game 'Alamaze', which I very much enjoy. Rather, I hope that my personal insight and unique perspective may, in some way, help make 'Alamaze' more fun, a more successful financial venture, or simply more sustainable as a long-term project. Anyone who reads this post should feel completely free to ignore, disregard, scorn, implement, improve, dispute, or otherwise comment upon its content.
