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Topic Title: Fun Factor (Simple Topic)

Topic starter: Zerohours

Topic started: 20:58:17 19th Aug 2015

Posts: 13 Last post: 00:18:08 29th Sep 2015 by Gold Rush

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Zerohours Posted: 20:58:17 19th Aug 2015

Posts: 2443

Topics: 287

Location: Canada

Gender: Male



@IIRIDAYN would you mind just having a quick look through and listing which ones you would be able/willing to do. I for one am willing to drop some cash for some of these. Love you!


As has recently been discussed in the topic on planet scarcity, which assuming this is not a short term effect has increased activity drastically. Even if it dies down once nearbies are done it will have an overall positive effect.

Since my post that was TL;DR got Iiris attention I figured I would post a list of things I have been keeping since my first day back. All of these have no real purpose in the game other than old coding or old server restraints. They should mostly be easy fixes or small bits of code (Relatively speaking).

In short:
These features (in current state) add nothing in terms of gameplay and could easily be removed or changed to make Skylords more enjoyable.


1. When capturing a planet leave it so you can click space and still have the assault. Is there any logical explanation why this isn't how it works?
2. IRC or anything chat based really. I can find you one to put it if you would like. Would be good for the game to encourage conversations, keep things interesting and keep people active.
3. News should be a rolling 24 hour cycle. If someone probes my planet at 11:59 I will never know. Even if I log in at 12:01 without downloading
yesterdays news...Every day. Also in news nearby should tell you what planet was found, even if just in personal news.
4. Copy and Paste Coords into I-flight and Hyper. Please.
5. Change color of ships and planets for clan members.
6. Market should be by 100,000 as in to sell 15mil of something you would put 150. Not 15,000,000 just an annoying thing as you cannot post other amounts than 100,000.
7. Add a spot on the planets page that shows total resources on all planets so you know what you have without having to do all the math or take a guess.
8. Make planets page all one page. No real reason you should have to page through when the max is 50.
9. Add a like button to posts that will list who liked it. Anything to add interactivity.
10. Button for nearby all. Having to click on 50 planets and do nearbies adds nothing to gameplay and makes it less fun with no real purpose.
11. Allow people to buy stock planet names/names of planets Aliens invaded names for credits. Have it so it either spawns X number of planets or in cycle for an
amount of time. Would be another source to burn through credits. Would help market and maybe your pocket book.




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watupdogg Posted: 06:20:57 20th Aug 2015

Posts: 2391

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Location: Portugal

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12. Make ship training easier and faster..


Zerohours Posted: 06:40:31 20th Aug 2015

Posts: 2443

Topics: 287

Location: Canada

Gender: Male



They already reduced it by 10 times a couple years back lol.




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Cajin Von Sian Posted: 06:57:15 20th Aug 2015

Posts: 495

Topics: 79

Location: Angola

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1- I've wondered about this too, wondered if it was just a crashing/capturing issue
2- Chatting can be fun sometimes, and the live news feed was helpful for disrupting attacks
3- Would be helpful if that's possible on the 24 hour idea, but don't want it to say what planet was nearbyed, then you would know if I found that fat HW you've been hiding and I haven't gotten assaults into position yet
4- True dat
5- Nice, even have the other color ships already
6- Yeah, all those zeros make me dislike zero sometimes
7- Nice little sum up couldn't hurt
8- Ships page is 25, so understandable that need to break it at some point but would be convenient
9- Something to do I suppose
10- RBA use to comment about this and I'll go with him, then you might as well add a gather all button too, and... stuff- I figure it's the price we pay for keeping our planets safe, could get by with just 17-3 planet systems so would have to nearby less, but as I said, it requires effort to keep your empire safe
11- hmmm, a way to spend some credits and say Wyld Stallyns Rule
12. come on down to Cajin's Used Assault Lot where training is a thought of the past for you.


Zerohours Posted: 07:19:15 20th Aug 2015

Posts: 2443

Topics: 287

Location: Canada

Gender: Male



3- I don't know why nearby doesn't tell the person what planet. Doesn't make sense that probing does.
6- Wildly offensive response.
10- Wouldn't moving all your assaults and taking the planets be enough grunt work? IT is something that makes you not want to play the game that adds no benefit to gameplay.




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Cajin Von Sian Posted: 07:27:53 20th Aug 2015

Posts: 495

Topics: 79

Location: Angola

Gender: Male



3- but probing doesn't tell you who found it... though not too tough to figure out sometimes based on statistics
6- Sheesh, all these zeros, there's nothing like having nothing bother me
10- That is a bit of grunt work, along with the training.. (see number 12)... so a convenience upgrade, like the nearbying your own planet upgrade, but more expensive- I wouldn't mind it


Zerohours Posted: 07:48:13 20th Aug 2015

Posts: 2443

Topics: 287

Location: Canada

Gender: Male



Valid point. I would have no problem paying 50 credits for it.
Anything that burns credits will someday put money in Iiris pocket...

(I think we owe him probably in excess of $10k just for the server at this point lol)




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Iiridayn Posted: 20:52:47 21st Aug 2015

Posts: 1643

Topics: 98

Location: United States

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1. When capturing a planet leave it so you can click space and still have the assault. Is there any logical explanation why this isn't how it works?

Yes - sort of. SL has a number of odd caching behaviors which made much more sense in the time period it was written for, and with a more substantial load. Modern caching methods have improved, but the code has been left as it was. Forgetting which ship you had selected probably fixed some caching bug or other.

2. IRC or anything chat based really. I can find you one to put it if you would like. Would be good for the game to encourage conversations, keep things interesting and keep people active.

Yeah, I should set this up again - keep thinking to do it. Don't really want to administrate an IRC server too though - stuff about channel ownership and control, services (ideally syncing with SL accounts), etc. My plan was to eventually integrate live news and chat into the website - though that would be a bigger project than resurrecting the newsbot and setting up a simple IRC server.

3. News should be a rolling 24 hour cycle. If someone probes my planet at 11:59 I will never know. Even if I log in at 12:01 without downloading
yesterdays news...Every day. Also in news nearby should tell you what planet was found, even if just in personal news.

News is stored in RAM only - another example of caching behaviors which make less sense now than at the time. As a result, if the server has to restart for any reason, the day's news prior to that point is often lost. The table is flushed to archive files as part of the nightly maintenance - but yes, making news more consistent and reliable is a high priority.

Not sure what you mean about the latter.

4. Copy and Paste Coords into I-flight and Hyper. Please.

Yes, I could use JS to expand the field and copy extra data over or move to the right with every color or just use a single input with the colon format instead - a large part of what has prevented this from being implemented is user interface concerns. This is important, but unclear how best to implement.

5. Change color of ships and planets for clan members.

Eventually, yes. Minor quality of life, probably relatively easy to do.

6. Market should be by 100,000 as in to sell 15mil of something you would put 150. Not 15,000,000 just an annoying thing as you cannot post other amounts than 100,000.

This is a user interface issue - how to communicate it clearly. The design was modeled after the ship to planet and ship to ship resource transfer, so I wanted to keep the entered units the same. The horizontal space was already pretty overused, or I might have a JS computed column or something - not sure how to best communicate it.

7. Add a spot on the planets page that shows total resources on all planets so you know what you have without having to do all the math or take a guess.

Sure, should be easy enough with the below, and useful.

8. Make planets page all one page. No real reason you should have to page through when the max is 50.

Seems feasible. I think one reason 25 is used is so the design doesn't stretch too badly, so your menu is always nearby. I'll have to test it and see if it doesn't look too horrible - modern screen resolutions are quite a bit taller than they were.

9. Add a like button to posts that will list who liked it. Anything to add interactivity.

The forums need a fairly substantial update. I'm really not sure if I should keep maintaining them or try to migrate to another solution which already has nifty features (with non-JS fallbacks) which I would integrate into the SL design. For example, how many people use the BBCode support SL has?

10. Button for nearby all. Having to click on 50 planets and do nearbies adds nothing to gameplay and makes it less fun with no real purpose.

It's feasible, though it'd be one of those credits sinks, as others have noted. Displaying the information nicely could prove a problem, if you would care which planet has which nearby.

11. Allow people to buy stock planet names/names of planets Aliens invaded names for credits. Have it so it either spawns X number of planets or in cycle for an
amount of time. Would be another source to burn through credits. Would help market and maybe your pocket book.

Can't have this without human moderation, can't have that without some kind of moderation qualification system, which I'd like to build some day. Certainly I'd like to someday track down where Zygi got his planet names list so I can figure out what thematically appropriate names to add to it which might have been overlooked. Seems to lean pretty heavily on Greek gods. Ultimately, I can't think of many names I'd feel comfortable approving which I wouldn't put on the rotation for free anyway, when I have some time :).




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Zerohours Posted: 22:39:42 21st Aug 2015

Posts: 2443

Topics: 287

Location: Canada

Gender: Male



1. When capturing a planet leave it so you can click space and still have the assault. Is there any logical explanation why this isn't how it works?

Yes - sort of. SL has a number of odd caching behaviors which made much more sense in the time period it was written for, and with a more substantial load. Modern caching methods have improved, but the code has been left as it was. Forgetting which ship you had selected probably fixed some caching bug or other.

:pie: So you can fix it?
2. IRC or anything chat based really. I can find you one to put it if you would like. Would be good for the game to encourage conversations, keep things interesting and keep people active.

Yeah, I should set this up again - keep thinking to do it. Don't really want to administrate an IRC server too though - stuff about channel ownership and control, services (ideally syncing with SL accounts), etc. My plan was to eventually integrate live news and chat into the website - though that would be a bigger project than resurrecting the newsbot and setting up a simple IRC server.

:pie: Was thinking something easy for you for now

3. News should be a rolling 24 hour cycle. If someone probes my planet at 11:59 I will never know. Even if I log in at 12:01 without downloading
yesterdays news...Every day. Also in news nearby should tell you what planet was found, even if just in personal news.

News is stored in RAM only - another example of caching behaviors which make less sense now than at the time. As a result, if the server has to restart for any reason, the day's news prior to that point is often lost. The table is flushed to archive files as part of the nightly maintenance - but yes, making news more consistent and reliable is a high priority.

Not sure what you mean about the latter.

:pie: I meant if I log in at 12:01 and someone found my planet at 11:55 I have to download the news to find that out. However, small enough issue don't worry about it.

4. Copy and Paste Coords into I-flight and Hyper. Please.

Yes, I could use JS to expand the field and copy extra data over or move to the right with every color or just use a single input with the colon format instead - a large part of what has prevented this from being implemented is user interface concerns. This is important, but unclear how best to implement.

:pie: PLEASE! <3

5. Change color of ships and planets for clan members.

Eventually, yes. Minor quality of life, probably relatively easy to do.
:pie: K

6. Market should be by 100,000 as in to sell 15mil of something you would put 150. Not 15,000,000 just an annoying thing as you cannot post other amounts than 100,000.

This is a user interface issue - how to communicate it clearly. The design was modeled after the ship to planet and ship to ship resource transfer, so I wanted to keep the entered units the same. The horizontal space was already pretty overused, or I might have a JS computed column or something - not sure how to best communicate it.
:pie: Not a large issue at this point that would require you time to figure out, don't waste your time :)

7. Add a spot on the planets page that shows total resources on all planets so you know what you have without having to do all the math or take a guess.

Sure, should be easy enough with the below, and useful.
:pie: Looking forward to implementation :)

8. Make planets page all one page. No real reason you should have to page through when the max is 50.

Seems feasible. I think one reason 25 is used is so the design doesn't stretch too badly, so your menu is always nearby. I'll have to test it and see if it doesn't look too horrible - modern screen resolutions are quite a bit taller than they were.
:pie: Thanks!

9. Add a like button to posts that will list who liked it. Anything to add interactivity.

The forums need a fairly substantial update. I'm really not sure if I should keep maintaining them or try to migrate to another solution which already has nifty features (with non-JS fallbacks) which I would integrate into the SL design. For example, how many people use the BBCode support SL has?
:pie: The SL forum has a lot of nostalgia for me. Would rather do without to keep the ones we have now

10. Button for nearby all. Having to click on 50 planets and do nearbies adds nothing to gameplay and makes it less fun with no real purpose.

It's feasible, though it'd be one of those credits sinks, as others have noted. Displaying the information nicely could prove a problem, if you would care which planet has which nearby.

:pie: Honestly I don't care if I know what planet as long as I know it is a nearby. Not sure how the rest of the community feels on this one.




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Zerohours Posted: 22:43:55 21st Aug 2015

Posts: 2443

Topics: 287

Location: Canada

Gender: Male



11. Allow people to buy stock planet names/names of planets Aliens invaded names for credits. Have it so it either spawns X number of planets or in cycle for an
amount of time. Would be another source to burn through credits. Would help market and maybe your pocket book.

Can't have this without human moderation, can't have that without some kind of moderation qualification system, which I'd like to build some day. Certainly I'd like to someday track down where Zygi got his planet names list so I can figure out what thematically appropriate names to add to it which might have been overlooked. Seems to lean pretty heavily on Greek gods. Ultimately, I can't think of many names I'd feel comfortable approving which I wouldn't put on the rotation for free anyway, when I have some time :).

:pie: Not a huge deal. Was thinking for another way to burn through credits as hopefully some point in the future credits will be your livelihood :)

If you want to find out where he got the names just ask him. This is him below. He logs in every month or two. Yes it is actually him.

zygimantasb


Are you planning on implementing these Iiri or would you be finishing your recode first?
To coincide with Doggs point 12, making it so assaults don't unselect when capturing would make training WAY easier.

:pie: 1 2 and 10 would be the ones that would be nice to have right away but really it is up to you what direction/priority you assign each individual feature
<3




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Zerohours Posted: 20:46:25 16th Sep 2015

Posts: 2443

Topics: 287

Location: Canada

Gender: Male



I feel as though this topic may have died. I did feel rather strongly about these things. I understand even as features go these ones are near the bottom with the recoding Iiri is currently doing.

To that end I ask a question.
Those of you still here, what about this game is fun and appealing? What do you enjoy logging in and doing?




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