feedback

Digg, Tank Ball 2, Ignore, Shadows and other Random Ramblings.

It's been a busy two months since my last post. Yesterday I integrated Digg into the site

so each game has a "digg it" link under the start icon on the main page. You can show some

support for the games and leave a comment if you wish. I will check these on a regular

basis to see what players are saying. I see Digg as an important way to collect more

feedback and drive new traffic to the site. I even put Digg on this Developer's Diary to

see what comes up, particularly if there are developers out there who wish to leave some

public feedback.

I created a new updated version of Tank Ball, now called Tank Ball 2. This new version

cycles between three environment styles (Snow, Forest and Tropical) and includes weapon and

speed power-ups. Thank you to those who sent me email to provide early feedback. I put in a

number of changes based on these comments and made sure to retain the original Tank Ball

for those of you who preferred the older version.

For Sherwood Dungeon, I implemented a landing page with instructions and screenshots. This

adds one more mouse click to get into the game, something I didn't take lightly, but I

thought it was important to give new players information about game and what it looks like.

I added a player list and ignore feature to Sherwood Dungeon. On the Character Panel, which

you get to by clicking on the hit-point bar or by pressing <esc>, there is now a Player

List button. When you click on a player's name, it brings up information about their

health, team color and weapons currently equipped. The <Ignore> button on this page allows

you to ignore future messages from this player. So if there is a particular person you'd

rather not interact with, ignore them. I've also implemented a new shadowing system for the

outdoor environments. The difference is subtle, however trees now cast shadows. For

shockwave developers out there, this was done with Imaging Lingo. Thank you to those of you

who caught bugs related to this upgrade (white ground on some video cards and black shadows

in Ancient Sherwood). These issues are fixed now. Other visual upgrades related to the

characters in Sherwood are in the works.

The support for the Microsoft Vista operating system has been getting much better for the

games. Adobe released two new version of Shockwave last month to help with slow frame rates

under Vista and to solve problems with certain keys in the game that were affecting both

the game and the browser (like the Tab and arrow keys). There are still issues with certain

video cards under Vista, but for most players it runs the same as with Windows XP. As

graphics card drivers improve for Vista, I expect these issues to go away. Adobe is working

towards an updated version of Director early in 2008, and this will likely result in

improved frame rates, Intel Mac compatibility and allow me to explore some new visual

updates to the games.

Work is underway on a new version of Marian's World with many new features, avatars and an

updated look. I'm not going to talk much about this as I'm in the middle of development and

the feature list has not been locked down yet. The new version will not replace the old

Marian's World, more like it's spiritual successor and I'm still trying to come up with a

name for this new game / social hang-out.

Work on the new multi-user game server software has been going slower than anticipated,

however this is progressing and I expect to begin the process of transitioning the games to

the new servers in the coming weeks. This software is the first step towards implementing

an opt-in account system down the road. I'm not committing to a timeline for the account

system, but once the new servers are up and stable I'll be looking at this.

I presented in a round table on design for massive multiplayer games at the Vancouver

International Game Conference early last month and will be leaving to present at the

nextMEDIA Conference in Banff, Alberta in a few days. I'm going to do more game conferences

over time as I really enjoy interacting with other game developers, something I miss from

my Radical Entertainment days.

Well, you're up to date. Thanks for reading my ramblings.

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