Swirve Blog

Time for another blog entry from Brian and Sean - please comment Here as usual:

We’re tight on time this week, so let’s get straight to Q&As.

Ezzerland: So you’d only consider mergers of kingdoms that are without enough provinces to handle the merger? In the hypothetical situation that this is true, would it be against the rules to kill people off in your kingdom until you are small enough to merge with the kingdom you want to, with the players you want to? … Is there any possible consideration on how the game should be fit to expand?

The mergers idea isn’t decided on or finalized, so everything regarding them is, for the moment, hypothetical. We imagine that if we implemented them, it would be to help out very small kingdoms. On that basis, only two kingdoms that can fit together into one kingdom could merge. It sounds like you want to instead do something about the problem of in-actives. That’s a different problem, and not one that we’re talking about solving with mergers.

DHaran: Sean and Brian, can you comment on this? What are the chances Jolt takes UC away from you and closes up shop like NS? The player base is already dying, what realistic time frame are they giving you to rebuild the community?

So far as we’re concerned, there is zero chance of this happening for as long as we’re here. And there’s no time limit set for rebuilding the community. Fundamentally, so long as the game can be run without losing money, no one will want to shut it down.

Luth: and i’m a bit disappointed that this much time has elapsed and we still have no definitive (or even possible) dates. Are we looking at 2 weeks? another month? another 6 months?

Ezzerland: In terms of coding the game itself, dismissing plausible bugs or other errors that may set you back, on a percentage scale, how much of the games recode would you say you have complete? 75%? What area’s are left to cover?
Ezzerland: If the game is intended to head on genesis for testing first, with the new code, how long do you believe the testing will last? May this delay the WoL age further?

We’ll take these three questions together. In terms of code completion, we are about 98% done. Left on the board are:

* Changing/resetting account password
* Defecting
* Site styling/layout/graphic design
* Production server setup and deployment

We’re hoping to start inviting alpha testers in next week. We’ll then be busy with fixing bugs and optimizing site performance for a while. It’s hard to say how long that will take until we see how the first week or two of testing goes. We’re keen to get the game onto WoL as soon as possible, but at the same time (as we said before), don’t want to comprise on quality. You should assume that the current WoL age is going to continue for at least another month, while we get all this testing done.

Ezzerland: Is it acceptable that the community and the community support team work together to revamp the forums for a more productive outcome, possibly benefiting your development processes and the environment of which we currently live?

We’re afraid we don’t know what you’re referring to here. Is this in relation to a particular suggestion already made? In any case, the forums in Lydias’ jurisdiction, so if you want to change something about them, you should probably direct your question her way.

Ezzerland: Will the games current functionality change in any way? Are you intending to keep the game on track with its original core purposes?

As we’ve said before, none of the game play is changing at all, at least not yet. Some functionality will hopefully be improved, with a better sign up and log in process, cleaner navigation, no frames or MIDI music, and an improved version of trading/moving based on invites instead of copy-and-paste codes.

Instead of move codes, a monarch can send invites out for empty slots in a kingdom. Instead of trading, a monarch can send out invites to take over abandoned provinces in the kingdom. Both of these have the same limits in place as moving and trading, for the moment at least. We know that moving/trading is perhaps one of the most contentious issues in the game. This new implementation is at least more streamlined and easier to use. We’ll know we’ll eventually need to revisit the broader topic of kingdom formation, getting into a good kingdom, balancing kingdom skill levels out, creating a nurturing environment for newbies, and keeping it all fun. For the moment, the invite system works nicer than passing codes around while basically achieving the same thing, and will be a good basis for future improvements. Soon enough you’ll get a chance to try it out and give us feedback.

Ezzerland: Do you believe you know enough about the game or the history of the game to discern what is a good implementation and what is not?

Toadi: Do you think you master the game well enough to analyze these suggestions and determine whether or not it is something that would be good for the game or not?

We’ll take these two together again. Apparently there’s a real crisis of faith in our abilities! It’s a broad question, and its impossible for us to say that in all circumstances we have an immediate intuition on what the right direction is regarding an issue of game design. However, in most cases its pretty obvious. We’ve been steeped in things utopian for 5 months now, including having completely analysed every line of its source code, and have a very strong understanding of it. But don’t worry, if we don’t have a confident opinion regarding a particular suggestion, we have no problem looking for other opinions. And before you worry about the quality of the opinions we might receive, accept our assurances that we can also tell the difference between the good, the bad and the ugly in that department too :-)