Swirve Blog

I’m afraid it’s been much longer than I would have liked, since my last post - so I’d like to apologize for that. I’ve been caught up in general development plans for Utopia, and features for the next round. There is quite a lot of work that needs to go in to the game, so I’ve been incredibly busy!

First of all, I would like to address the recent deletion of a number of traded accounts, and the handling of reports we had received of instances of cheating within the game.

We took over existing tools for the game when we acquired it, and a policy of deleting accounts that were detected as cheating with these tools. However, it seems that we have applied the letter of the law rather than the spirit to which the community was accustomed to.

We are looking into the current reasoning behind all aspects of cheating that we have come across, and are considering putting in place a system more accommodating to players at all levels of the game, over the next couple of months. For now, there will be a moratorium on the deletion of traded accounts. Multiple accounts, x-logging, and coercing a player to give up their account information, are still considered offences, and will be handled as previously.

Players have also been deleted for abusive language recently, perhaps more so now, than in the past. In the future, players will receive a warning via the in-game forum system and via their registered email. Failure to cease this sort of behaviour, or excessive harassment of another player, will result in a deletion.

There have been a number of rumours flying around as to what OMAC’s plans for the game are currently. I’m not going to make vague promises other than to say we’re focusing on elements which are a viable long-term model for the game, that support new players as well as the old ones.

Finally, as I’m working on some of the more major features needed for the games, Genesis will probably run a little late - an exact end date has yet to be determined, but I’ll give you more news on that in a couple of weeks.

For comments and discussion, please use the forums, here.

As I’m sure you’ve all noticed by now, the Utopian frontpage has undergone some changes. I’ve been reading the comments and feedback left on the blog, and I would like to take this opportunity to call for any further suggestions you may have. I will be collecting them all and improvements will be made based on your input.

Currently, I’m working on some basic in-game changes, of the nature described in the previous blog post. In a few weeks, they may propagate in-game.

The Earth frontpage will also be getting a new look, in the near future, so if there are any Earthers out there with ideas or suggestions, now would be a good time to hear from you! I have created a thread for comments of this nature specifically, here.

The new forums have mostly taken their final shape now, so I would like to announce their official opening. In a few days, the frontpage links on both Earth and Utopia will be switched to the new forums. The old forums will remain online for the next few weeks, so that you have time to copy any material still wanted to the new boards. We won’t be reading the old forums any more, so I would ask that any bugs and suggestions especially, be posted in the jolt forums from now on.

We have taken a number of your suggestions into account over the past few weeks. Avatars, images, and signatures can be disabled on an individual level, we have added a quick reply feature, and adapted to some of your structural requests in order to resemble the old forums more closely. Requests and input may be still be considered, to the extent they’re realistic to implement.

Forum downtime remains an issue at the moment, which we’re still working on resolving. The downtime currently occurs at 07:30 GMT for between 40 - 60 minutes, and is a consequence of the database backup. The backup is to ensure that archive date is not lost if the database goes down, or becomes corrupted.

We’d like to announce the start of the Earth and Utopia Tools (EUT) program. Some of you have been working for a long time on some very cool tools which support the Utopia and Earth communities. We’d like to recognize this by having a formal list of the Official tools that we can point new players to and encourage to download/use. Anyone who is on the EUT program will also get advance schedules of our internal development plans, so that you can manage compatibility and add features as you see fit.

We’ve spoken to a lot of the developers already but anyone who’s interested should get in touch by mailing eut@omacindustries.com

The list will be up in the next week or two but we’d initially like to announce that Brother Green’s Utopia Angel will be one of the first on the EUT Program. We asked him for a quote and he was kind enough to say the following:

“After 9 years of existence, we are grateful to the new owners of
Utopia for officially endorsing Utopia Angel, the leading tool for
Utopia. This demonstrates OMAC’s intention to keep close relationship
with the community. We are honored to inaugurate the official EUT
list. This may not be a coincidence, as if you look closely you will
see that UT is a major part of EUT. ;-)”

We’ve been reviewing the current format of the Utopia homepage, and we’ve decided the layout could do with some adjustments, mainly to improve functionality and its visual appeal. This will hopefully help attract new players and make the front page more convenient to use for everyone.

We feel that the layout is currently a little confusing for anyone not familiar with the game, and want to give the home page more focus. We would like to display up-to-date information on the games, game changes, and news items, in one convenient place. In conjunction with this, we would like to update some of the graphics for the site, to give it a more unified look.

Some of the current changes/ideas we have in mind are:

• Maintain the current format: menu on the left, banner on top
• Maintain the current width of the home page
• Remove some obsolete links - e.g., the Swirve links, on the top bar.
• Remove the “New to the Game?” box, instead advising new player as they create an account
• Move the account creation option to a more prominent position, and have only one choice - i.e., currently both Gen and WoL have a “Create Account” option
• Allow login to the games via the front page - perhaps with a small login form beneath the menu
• Reduce relative width of the menu, leaving more space for content
• Change aspects of the menu/banner colour scheme - background will still be black, but we may change from grey/white to a darker colour
• Introduce a blog feed/news/information box to the front page

The home page changes will have very little impact on the current in-game interface, as the in-game layout and homepage are very different in terms of both style and function. Initial plans are to make minor in-game adjustments, such as removing some of the frames, reorganising the menu a little - e.g., Send & Receive Message should really be one screen, that sort of thing. We would also like to make other small changes, such as adding acres to the top bar, perhaps clickable locations, and adding fortified ME effects on the Military Advisor page, amongst others. Later we will be making more advanced changes, and adding some useful features that have been much requested.

These are our ideas so far - we’d like to know if there’s anything in particular people would like to see - or not see - on the front page. We would also like to hear from you on suggestions for in-game UI improvements. I’ve already received quite a few good ideas via email and by reading the forums, so now I’d like to encourage people to specifically direct their suggestions toward these sorts of changes. I have created a thread in the B&S forums specifically for this purpose, here.

Generally, we want to ease entry into the game for new players and encourage them to get in touch with their kingdom mates and the rest of the community - hopefully they’ll want to continue to play! Any initial UI changes will try to reflect that sentiment, and we’ll be working toward this goal - making improvements to the game manuals, and making it easier for players to communicate in-game, amongst other things.

We would hope to start making the front page changes over the next week, and then start working on the in-game UI changes that you suggest, afterwards.

Róisín

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I would ask you not to use the blog comments section for game suggestions/improvements. Just use it for personal comments or comments on the blog in general - keep game suggestions in B&S please.

Hey everyone -

So, at this point, I guess you’ve all been wondering what’s going on over here at OMAC, in regard the games. With that in mind, we’ve set up this blog to keep you updated on the day-to-day goings on. The blog, in conjunction with the forums, will be prime sources of information for anything and everything to do with the development of the games.

Our first priority will be to update the user interface and manuals somewhat, to ease entry for newbies. Then we’ll start to advertise, and hopefully bring fresh players to the games - we expect the games to grow quite rapidly over the next year. Once we’ve reached that point, we’ll begin to make more major updates to the games - adding some of the features you’ve requested, and some we think you may enjoy. We intend to work closely with players, so we expect plenty of suggestions and thoughtful input ;)

As you can see, we’re starting out slowly on some of the smaller things - this is to give us a chance to play and get to know the games, before we make any major game altering changes.

I’ve been playing on both Utopia - WoL and now Genesis - and some of the Earth servers, and am really enjoying both. The everyday interactions with people I have found to be one of the most rewarding aspects of these games so far. I think at this point I’ve made almost all the nub mistakes - and my nwpa is finally looking a little better! I’ll tell you more about my adventures in future posts, provided I’m not PKed, or worse…

I’ve talked to a few of you now both via email and IRC, and we’re hoping - at some point - to talk to more of you on IRC, in the future - but more of that later.

Right now we’re finishing up a full development plan for the games, and were setting up some ancillary resources - like this blog, and the new forums. We’ll try to keep you updated here, as we continue to work on the games - and if you have any questions that need answers, or would like to see us talk about something in particular on the blog, let us know, and we’ll try to accommodate it!

Róisín