New changes for signup.. what took so long...

5 Attachment(s)

Ok, I know I haven't said much on the forums as of late, but I've been quite bust with coding, so my focus was elsewhere.

Anyhow, now that I am here I'll explain. We didn't think the app was going to be rejected, and we had already started on working on the upgrade. For those that play in beta I am sure they all know about the top level galaxy map and how you couldn't see where you had ships easily. The only system that would get highlighted was your home system.

This is no longer the case. When we we notified of the rejection, We were already quite far in refactoring the code to support the new galaxy engine. We had a choice. We could either do a quick hack to support consumables, or do things right.

We decided to push the galaxy engine in the next build, along with the new front end we were developing for accounts.

Here are some screen shots of the new galaxy engine "unexplored" and "full Map":
Attachment 58 Attachment 59

The first image shows only the home sector that I am in, along with the new "unexplored" tile graphic. ( square with a dot in the center). The second is a full map that is completely open. You can see a shaded sector a few tiles over from my home sector. That tells me there is someone there that I have uncovered. The tiles are the same for the Galaxy level as for the sector level. So you can easily see where you have ships, and in what sectors. As well as if you have uncovered other civs in the sectors, just as the map above shows. I'll see if I can get someone to post a "tile" listing and what they mean. I don't recall if one of the videos goes over that.

Here is a sector level display, unexplored. It shows the unexplored tiles:
Attachment 60

Now for the people that were in beta something else you may have noticed is you can now tell how much of a sector level has been explored from the galaxy level. The new engine can do a lot, and we have a lot of future plans for it. Including displaying combat locations, and event locations. That will wait till the next release though... Need to save some things. :)

Here are some new pics of the new signup screens, and character selection screen:
Attachment 61 Attachment 62

Under the new signup system, you create a "Main" log in similar to any MMO you have played out there (WoW, EQ, LotR, StarWars.. etc...). Then you get to a character screen. You will create a new character in game by clicking on the "CREATE NEW CHARACTER", give the character a name, and that will be a character you play in game. It is the name seen by other players. They won't know your account name.

You will notice the push option button. If you press that after you have a new character you will be presented with a list of configurable push options. The list is as follows:

Build Complete
Combat Events
Game Start
Got Mail
Lost Home World
Move Complete
Skill Complete
Status Change
Subscription Expired

You can set those events for each character you create.

That's a big part of what's been going on behind the scenes. Hope you all like the changes, and we look forward to seeing you all in game, and getting feedback on what you like, and what you would like us to improve.

This looks great! Its great to see you were able to make progress on the game even while retooling it. Thanks for the update, Zarkwizard.

Awesome, thanks for the great overview.

I assume you will not allow one player to use multiple characters in a single game, correct?

These look like good improvements. Looking forward to seeing this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ravenzachary

Awesome, thanks for the great overview.

I assume you will not allow one player to use multiple characters in a single game, correct?

Currently you are capped at 5 characters. Obviously each one requires it's own game time. We went back and forth over that quite a bit, and for now we will probably allow it since you could have more than one person playing the game. It doesn't mean you have one person playing all 5. We are not too sure how someone would manage 5 accounts.. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it will be watched. Depending on how things play out we may do other things.

For now you could buy 5 accounts, and play them all in the same game. The odds of starting any where near each other is pretty slim. We'll be keeping a close eye on it. We'll look at what we need to do if we see this being abused.. Maybe something that will show in game if there is someone with multiple characters from a single account.

Telling people who those people are, and then let the people kill that person early. :) No idea.. Guess we'll have to see how it goes.