DrDread

all messages by user

7/31/2016 Topic: Game Status page on main website Doctor Dread Administrator	There is a Game Status page on the main website we just added this morning. Its under the Home Page >> Game Status Game Status Page Link It should tell you whether the game is stuck on a turn because of an error or not. Also it shows some statistics on the game such as how many Active Corporations, Total Production by category and how many Military units are out there. We're probably going to add things like top players per industry etc.
7/31/2016 Topic: Playing the Beta, initial thoughts. Doctor Dread Administrator	Shooer wrote: A possible thing to think about adding would be a Do Once check box for orders. This would remove and order from the order list after doing it. Specifically so you could add a one time set of actions into a loop that would then be removed. How about an option on the Loop order to remove any orders in front of the order you are looping to. Sounds confusing but if you set 3 orders then set another 5 order that you want to loop there would be a checkbox on the loop order and when it fires it will loop back to the 4th order like you told it to then delete the ones in front of it. .... Perhaps just a checkbox for "Do Once" or "remove after completion" would be easier =)
7/31/2016 Topic: Buying Goods Doctor Dread Administrator	cooldude123456 wrote: Can someone explain why when I brought 100 exotic metals worth 45 credits each, they in fact cost me 9400 credits edited by cooldude123456 on 7/31/2016 He is right and I apologize. I need to at least display that fact on the Buy/Sell screen
8/1/2016 Topic: Kickstarter campaign link available Doctor Dread Administrator	ChaChaCharms wrote: I like the idea of limiting the impact that backing the game brings to the actual day to day gameplay. Otherwise you end up with massive lopsided groups who dictate everything and new players are shunned if not forced out. Do you think that there is any merit to rewards for top players of the week, perhaps 'Most Valuable Corp' (Highest NW), or the corp with highest positive change in NW for the week/month/year? Also, should the Quazar Dragon reward be +500billion credits instead of +500mil? The Star Lord reward is +1bil credits.. ... That IS a typo. I think it was meant to be 5 billion, not 500 billion. 5 billion is a LOT of money that's like plopping 20 monoliths down. As for top player rewards, I was considering offering the top players in the different categories of production, like by their titles, some kind of bonus, maybe in game credits. it would be like the top 3 or 5 from each category so it would be a lot of people. The bonus wouldn't be much but would be based on the total production being represented. Like if you're farming king of earth you would get a bonus based on the total farming production of earth. I was also considering giving more subscription time if you hold high rank, even if its a few days a month, which makes it almost "Get Paid to Play" =)
8/1/2016 Topic: Couple of Questions about shipping and production Doctor Dread Administrator	That's a great explanation =) It's also not that clear but under Corporate >> Research you can "unlearn" and re-assign your tech points into other industries. When you upgrade your Corp HQ it just ask where you want your new tech point to go. Increasing tech into a single product stacks, putting it into an entire category is half the impact but affect every product in the category. Stick with a single product until you start overwhelming the product volume of the cities you are selling to and the prices start to go down.
8/1/2016 Topic: Troops Stats Doctor Dread Administrator	cooldude123456 wrote: How do you see your troops stats like what units they are good or bad not On the main site under the "Guide" tab >> Combat there is a Matrix that shows all the combat damage the units do to eachother. There is also some explanation on the effect "size" has when damage is distributed in a fight. You should be pretty safe inside the cities of Sol System but the factories you make outside the cities are wide open to attack form other players. The Terran Federation ships respond to combat in a couple of turns and will camp your spot for a little while if it gets attacked a lot but expect to get raiding for products by other players on occasion.
8/1/2016 Topic: Better trading tools Doctor Dread Administrator	The Viewscreen >> Demand section is where it is displayed. You need to zoom into a city to get that citys demand price otherwise you're getting an average of the whole planet or system. You should really be looking at the Top 10 grid in the lower left though. If you're looking for the high demand on the entire planet again, drill down to the product you're interested in first. I apologize for the mobile problem. The viewscreen page must be zoomed out all the way on your phone to operate properly. This has been tricky to fix cross-browser. I want to make a different screen or possibly one of the first reports under the Corporate >> Reports page that takes some parameters and lets you see all the demand you are looking for at once.
8/1/2016 Topic: Logisitics Doctor Dread Administrator	Blinkos wrote: In the assets page above the assets list the title reads "Logisitics" instead of "Logistics". Not sure if it is already reported or not. Still completely confused by the game. You have done an amazing job. Keep it up! lol, Confusion wasn't an intended measure of success =) Spelling errors have been quite common, thanks for mentioning
8/1/2016 Topic: Couple of Questions about shipping and production Doctor Dread Administrator	Vulpex wrote: Thanks to the both of you - very clear now on to planning how to make it all happen! Not to confuse you more but, there is a Contract system where you can have another corporation, one that is probably making too much of a certain resource, transfer products to you and have them supply what you need at the location. But because you can buy any product at double its value it hasn't been wildly popular. Perhaps when the industries become large enough to swamp the market.
8/1/2016 Topic: Kickstarter campaign link available Doctor Dread Administrator	ChaChaCharms wrote: The only down side I see to the idea of rewarding the top players, is unless something changes drastically, the kings, princes, and barons will probably remain constant, but since it will be per system, it shouldn't be too hard for someone to grow the same trade in a separate system. Has there been any thought as to having a title for the top producer in a sector, quadrant, galaxy? That would be a tough title to keep imo. You mean like titles beyond System level? like "Galactus"! I think I've run out of title names =) I actually don't like the idea of having some grand top 10 of players because that's just an ego board for a very small number of people. I prefer to have 20% of the players to be on a top 10 chart somewhere. I almost brought the titles down to the product level so you could be the "Sugar King of Mercury" but I made it the categories instead so it wasn't so out of control. I think having the Government positions or even just the Star Lords per system on a grid on the home page would be great. Maybe every system we show the star lord the emperors and all the city rulers. can have a list of the biggest producers per category as well . There is no way straightforward way to determine a #1 guy, Maybe by Net Worth?
8/1/2016 Topic: What is the game written in? Doctor Dread Administrator	justing25 wrote: Just wondering if anyone knows what coding language the game is written in, I'm guessing it uses html and mysql (or some other type of sql database) along with javascript other things. VB.NET, almost no javascript actually. MSSQL database.. Its what I do for a living so that's what this was built in =)
8/2/2016 Topic: What is the game written in? Doctor Dread Administrator	CmrdRowen wrote: Please, don't tell me you're full microsoft on your server, that's an awful thing to do ! I am FULL LICENSED MICROSOFT ON THE SERVER play darth vader music
8/2/2016 Topic: Rounds left message consistency Doctor Dread Administrator	Blinkos wrote: Aaaaah amazing. Thank you very much for the info. Do you happen to know whether I must complete the tutorial again? If that is the case it sounds a bit compelling :P The tutorial is linked to your corp and can only be done once because it hands out a lot of money. Otherwise people would liquidate and run it again over and over. There is no way to outright DELETE your corporation right now. Eventually it will auto delete if you've become liquidated and haven't logged in for weeks.
8/2/2016 Topic: Rounds time and number of rounds Doctor Dread Administrator	Blinkos wrote: I wanna talk round time, number of rounds and new player experience. I am a new player. I created two accounts and played the tutorial both times. Some things I would like to note before I go into the rounds and time conversation are: - Completing the tutorial should award a bit more credits in the end (basically sending you off to do 1-2 more things after you are done) - When someone completes the tutorial he can only quit and wait for credits to increase before he does anything else (pretty much). - I realise that an old player has more things to handle but newer players should be able to handle less things faster to keep them engaged. The last point brings me to the core of the post. Rounds and round times. The tutorial requires about (calculated it a bit but not sure it's correct due to some distances taking longer to cross with the transport) 20 rounds to complete. (Given that everything is done on the spot and no blank rounds are present) This means that a new player must spend 200 minutes (3 hours and 20 minutes) to actually figure out what the game plays like. And that is only the basics. I know I wanted to see much more when the tutorial was complete. Now, I am a freak for games like this and was also watching Stranger Things while waiting for rounds to pass so the process went by faster than I expected. But that won't be the case for everyone. Many people will quit the game the moment they see the first 10 minute counter. (2 of my friends already did. I am not making this up.) Also, when you are done with the tutorial the things you can do are: - Wait to gather enough resources (will take a whole night to make a million or so) - Start upgrading stuff (in the count of 5+ hours each this is insanely repeling) - Create a second account, complete the tutorial, go to step 1, loop indefinitely :P Based on that I think that round times should be shortened down to 5 or less minutes. Given I read the post about the time it takes for everything to upgrade every time the round ends I think that 5 minutes is good enough. Also, the tutorial should expand on some stuff while people are waiting for 4 rounds to pass so that the cargo transporter sells some water to another city. I mean, they are waiting 10 minutes. Give them something to read that will keep them in the game. Or include videos that explain stuff like that. Lastly, I think that many upgrades, constructions and other stuff in the game should have their round counts shortened. First thing to do took over 4 hours of waiting. And that's a building upgrade. I can't really call this engaging. I would love to see more levels of upgrades and less time between. Starting with 2 rounds each and going up to days of waiting. Things should flow much faster when you are new. This maintains the balance of things to do and time it takes for them to complete. A new guy has less to do but they are done faster. An old guy has more to do but they require more time. I hope my english wasn't terrible and I made my point. Always open for conversation. I am waiting 20 more rounds for that first upgrade either way... Your points are valid. Because this game isn't a "tick" game where everything you do gets it own little timer it's difficult to make things happen in seconds. The entire game moves at once on a turn flip like a giant board game and we have to pick a single timer that works for early game as well as late game. 10 minutes seemed like a long enough time for something to happen, for you to get notified (coming one day) get into the game and change something. We're also worried that the turn flip itself might start to take a long time to flip with a lot of players. right now its happening in seconds and if it stays under 20-30 seconds even with thousands of active players (something we're going to try in a test environment) than we can probably bring it down to 5 minutes. I think the more important issue is to try to make the tutorial and the things to do early in the game happen faster like you mention. That's tricky also, when you upgrade a structure from level 1 you are essentially doubling it (x2) and it has to take at least half the time as building a new one. we don't have to deal with fractions and we don't want to drop the actual build time of a new structure too low. We don't want to break the mechanics of the game just to get the first day activity up. this game is to be played on a long haul but we'll try to do it both ways =)
8/2/2016 Topic: What is the game written in? Doctor Dread Administrator	Blinkos wrote: Apparently I am going to use this conversation to state that some loads (when choosing what something does, product lists, subproduct lists etc) should be done asynchronously. Dunno how server-stressful it is but it is insanely better user-experiense wise. I agree, a lot of the pages are currently done in a non-optimal way from years ago. Once the UI stops changing It will get an overhaul in the back end
8/2/2016 Topic: Transport orders (Transfer Cargo) Doctor Dread Administrator	Filipian wrote: Hello, on start i just want tell you i don't speak english very well, but i find i "bug" (i think it's a bug) and have to report that. I hope you can understand me Ok, so i think transfer cargo get a little stuck when we set to pick up all products from one place. Like this http://screenshot.sh/mKRvEKq1EbRIg couse when we mine 2 different raw products he pick up in one turn first product and in next turn second product and then again first, and again... I hope you understand me I understand you! I think this is ok and not a bug. It is a funny situation though. It can only pick up one type of product at a time and every time it picks one up there is still another type of product there to pick up so it tries again next turn because you have it set to pick up "everything". When its cargo is full it will move on. If you want the transport to only pick up one product type you should set it for that one product, if it picks up all of it and there isn't anymore of that product left, it will move on.. If you want it to only pick up a certain amount and then move on, you can try to set the "Qty" field.
8/2/2016 Topic: Transport orders (Transfer Cargo) Doctor Dread Administrator	Filipian wrote: Okay, but i have to pick up 2 different type of products. I just make another transfer cargo order for second material. Yes that will work also. Some people make separate transports that only trade with one product. It's difficult to program the transports to pick up or sell several producst at once but hopefully I will be able to make that change in the future
8/2/2016 Topic: What is the game written in? Doctor Dread Administrator	CmrdRowen wrote: Doctor Dread wrote: I am FULL LICENSED MICROSOFT ON THE SERVER play darth vader music Arch, not that underperformance set ! NOOOOOOOOOOO ! @Blinkos: Depends, JavaScript completely exploded lately so there's a lot of better stuff coming in (jQuery and Node.js, great stuff, Processing.js and p5.js looks promissing too) so AJAX (or AJAJ) is more and more used (browser games like Illyriad do use that for example) Don't worry I plan to overhaul the site once things stabilize, if anything I should be using .NETs UpdatePanel in a few places and I need to turn off VIewState on half the site, turn on IIS7 compression etc...
8/2/2016 Topic: Game has stop at turn 500 Doctor Dread Administrator	I just fixed this. A bugged out structure got created in the database. I'm not sure what it was or how it got in there but It was on "Blackmesa"'s Corp HQ. I asked if he was hacking =)
8/2/2016 Topic: Homepage Guide section updated Doctor Dread Administrator	We added a couple more section tot he guide on the homepage. There is a Production section that explain base production and tech bonuses. It also has the list of all products and what components it takes to make them. This is the same list that is displayed in game under your Corp HQs More Info tab. We also added a section for Artifacts. Artifacts are not implemented yet and how they operate is subject to change. You can actually create artifact items but you cannot deploy them for any effect yet. The effects can change and may be added to over time.

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