cullman wrote:We are still cranking on it. We were writing a new graphics engine, and then we decided that we bit off more than we could chew. Since then we have decided to abandon that approach for now. So we are resizing our new tiles for the old engine and started getting them plugged in this week. We should have a beta program soon. We have been at this over a year (granted not full-time), but we want to get it the door!
Cool. I shall keep my fingers crossed. I have recently made a house again on the App, but the neighbourhood is really dead now
Wait, what app?
]]>We are still cranking on it. We were writing a new graphics engine, and then we decided that we bit off more than we could chew. Since then we have decided to abandon that approach for now. So we are resizing our new tiles for the old engine and started getting them plugged in this week. We should have a beta program soon. We have been at this over a year (granted not full-time), but we want to get it the door!
Cool. I shall keep my fingers crossed. I have recently made a house again on the App, but the neighbourhood is really dead now
]]>Hey guys, just wanted to let you know we haven't disappeared. Been very busy with the day job. The day job just had a product release last week, so that should allow us to get TH over the finish line. I am targeting getting into Beta within the month, with our own dedicated server. Assuming the beta goes well, we will invest in marketing to try to attract a big enough audience to get the game back to it's previous glory!
Hows the testing going? I am still poping into TCD every now and then on the last android built you sent me. Hope it is going well.
Passive
]]>Hey guys, just wanted to let you know we haven't disappeared. Been very busy with the day job. The day job just had a product release last week, so that should allow us to get TH over the finish line. I am targeting getting into Beta within the month, with our own dedicated server. Assuming the beta goes well, we will invest in marketing to try to attract a big enough audience to get the game back to it's previous glory!
here you are, i was getting worried
]]>Here's an idea for free/premium: if you pay, you get Two houses! The biggest benefit to two houses is using one to build and one to rob/scout. With just one house it is very hard to do both at the same time.
The problem is that if a player does have two accounts there are many ways to cheat. These can be prevented by legitimate premium two house accounts. As you can have it set so that the two houses cannot communicate with each other: pitch it as owning two spaceships. You wouldn't rob your own.
Not only would this allow free players to continue playing indefinitely, but it would also hopefully reduce the desire to make two account for cheating purposes.
Here was my thought, originally I had this idea of neighborhoods, where you could play in different neighborhoods. This is because I recognize the best way to eliminate dual accounting is to eliminate the need to dual account. IE, you have an awesome house you are scared to lose, here is another way to keep playing the game. Otherwise, you are stuck either not being able to rob, or you end dual accounting not even intending to cheat in the beginning (then your house gets broken and you dump 1k of tools over from your alt to get it back up and running). Since then I have decided not to go with the different neighborhood/realms idea. The main reason is I think the first thing I want to return to is the long list of houses (the glory days), maybe if we eventually get tons of houses, we could look into the realm thing again, but I think it's a mistake now to fragment these things.
One thing that I talked about is with the elimination of the random names concept, how do we explain how you re-incarnate with the same name. One game dev guy that advised us, suggested the idea of clones. I sort of like that idea. So instead of different neighborhoods, I might start the game off with 2 clones. Let's say that my user name is cullman. My first clone's username might be "cullman's corp - John Smith" and my second "cullman's corp - Eddie Smith" (or something like that, if someone has a better idea of how to name, I'm all ears). Or it could be cullman #45 and cullman #46 (for which interation of clone they are) Now, here is the interesting thing (IMHO), Eddie Smith and John Smith are essentially clones of the same guy.
There are a few a recent (one last year, one in 2009) movies that I won't name as I don't want to spoil them where people run into their clones and it's is disturbing to them. So, one rule of the game would be you can't even see your clone's house/terminal. Also, you would share chills and force-ignores across all of your clones. This would allow you to keep up your good house, but keeping robbing on another account but not let you collaborate between the two accounts. I would start out with everyone having 2 clones and being able to buy more than one clone. The other advantage of this is it would increase the number of houses right away (possibly) without the downsides of dual accounting.
Other ideas are "for pay" one time anonymous clone, like if I want to create a player that doesn't have the cullman's corp name on it. Also, you could "for pay" buy additional clones.
So, AMWhy, great minds think alike, however, I still have to have a way to to charge for the baseline account (whether you get 2 players or one), because again, I need to make having being banned for cheating somewhat painful. I'm still thinking of ways to do it. My current thought is keep the baseline stuff free in the beginning, and then eventually make it so you start with 20 lives and then get 4 a day or something, if you aren't a "premium" player. I don't know I still don't have an idea for this I love. Ultimately, if the game got good enough traction and we a 10k+ active player base, I think I would just make it for pay out of the gate, again just $5 so people lose something for being banned. The other hope is that we will have long time leader boards and stats, achievement badges etc, so hopefully people would get more attached to their characters and names so banning would be a bigger deal. Additionally, adding more social aspects to the game like in game chat, would potentially make getting your name banned a bigger deal. Of course, when I talk about banning there would be a strong warning before we just kicked someone out of their account.
At this point the main thing is to get this thing released in my lifetime, so the first version may or may not have clones. It will definitely have the anti-cheating mechanisms, the changed graphics, Cylence's awesome single player mode tutorial, username and password vs download code and mobile versions. Things like clans, chat, badges, etc. Would be added later if we get any sort of traction.
]]>The problem is that if a player does have two accounts there are many ways to cheat. These can be prevented by legitimate premium two house accounts. As you can have it set so that the two houses cannot communicate with each other: pitch it as owning two spaceships. You wouldn't rob your own.
Not only would this allow free players to continue playing indefinitely, but it would also hopefully reduce the desire to make two account for cheating purposes.
]]>I'm not planning to make it IP based, but I don't want to disclose my plans, as it could potentially make them less effective.
seems legit
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