First of all I've nuked all forum accounts that hadn't made a post. It was the cheap and easy way to get rid of the spambots that had registered (and clear out a bunch of old accounts). Along with that, I've deleted the old test version of MLMK as it was.

The World Map now requires you to login to see it. You can also click on the labels and get some more info (and some bogus test data at the moment). Finally, you can click the "My Land" menu item (visible when you login) to see the map generator work-in-progress.



Hexes are more fun!

After a fun couple of weeks looking at various solutions (including trying the Google Maps API and deciding against it) I've now got a World Map Test up and running (the link should work whether you're logged in or not).

Antalia - World Map Test

Feature-wise it should work just like Google Maps, although it's actually a combination of an Open Source script (mainly PanoJS) and some JavaScript by myself to make the markers (though JavaScript is not my strong suit). It should have all of Google Maps functionality so you can zoom in and out with the keyboard or mouse wheel. You can also scroll by dragging the map or using the arrow keys.

It should work all right in Firefox, IE and Opera, though the labels pop in and out a bit in IE (no idea why yet - and I'm not likely to care about it for a long time).

For the couple of people who are still checking in I'd like feedback on:
- Map functionality (does it work in your browser?)
- Speed (does it load and scroll at a reasonable speed?)
- Names (Nothing too stupid / blatantly stolen from somewhere?)

Game-wise, it's a change from the original WorldMap concept. I've moved to a more abstract version. The labels that appear as you zoom in are Regions. Each Region will have different chances for different terrain (EG: Woodlands 15%, Grassland 25% etc...). When you found your Kingdom, you'll select one of these Regions - and then a local map (much like the old original map) will be randomly generated based on the terrain found in that Region.

This means I can handle an unlimited number of Kingdoms (no nightmare "increase the world map" scenario) but it still gives me the option to use location based features. EG: Trades with Kingdoms that are in your Region (or a nearby Region) will have quicker delivery times. Trades that are conducted across water may involve extra travel expenses, Regions that are in-between you and the Region of the Kingdom you're trading with may have the chance to intercept a trade... It does of course mean you won't be expanding into your neighbours any more, which is a bit of a loss but a decision I can live with.

Special thanks are to ravells and Marken4 of the Cartographer's Guild for actually making the map.

 

 

http://www.mylandmykingdom.com/images/misc/magic_tech_tree.png

Time to let you all know what's happening. The game, as it stands, is Alpha One. It's let me learn and see quite a bit of what's working, what's not and how that can be improved. There are quite a number of game concepts that I want to implement and the challenge for me now is working out a system that allows me to incorporate them into an online browser based game without bogging things down.

It's also told me quite clearly that I need to spend a lot of time working out the numbers. Part of that will also involve simplifying some things from the way they currently stand, just so that I don't have so many numbers to play with that my head hurts.

From here on, I intend to plan and then develop what will become Alpha Two. That version should incorporate a lot more of the basic stuff that's still missing and in such a way that it's not completely unbalanced. I'm not going to give a time-frame on that, so it'll be done when it's done. Once it's done though, I'll essentially wipe the database as it stands and start over (read: Reset). At this stage, I intend Alpha Two will run until I've made sure that things aren't hideously unbalanced. If things go well, Alpha Two might be rolled into Beta without a reset. If things go badly because I fucked up somewhere, then I'll adjust things, make sure it's all working correctly and then reset before launching the Beta.

Anyway, this is mainly to let you all know that for the time being, there won't be any more improvements to the game as it currently stands. I'll keep this version going so you can muck around and have fun taking over the entire world map or whatever other goal you might have but don't expect any new features. What you can expect is that (maybe before the end of the year) there'll be some pretty drastic changes.

I'll spam e-mail everyone who's currently signed up when that happens.

I've now made Residential buildings work, so new people will start visiting your Kingdom when you collect finances. Like everything else so far, I've focussed more on the mechanism more than the actual numbers. Which is to say, they work but they're not balanced for all 12 races yet. I realise I've made a mistake with that in some respects as my focus so far has been on making the systems work, rather than working out the exact numbers... Something which is coming back and biting me hard in the arse right now.

Given all of the races, terrain, buildings and resources, you can imagine that there's a lot of number crunching to do. Quite a significant lot, actually. I won't be resetting the game until I've done all of that and it's clear that that is going to take some significant time. Until then, I will be mixing a lot of the numbers around and playing with various aspects of your Kingdoms such as how much cash you have on hand and so on. It's all for the purpose of figuring out what works and what doesn't and moving towards making a game that isn't too hideously unbalanced.

For now, those who are playing I consider my Alpha testers. So please provide feedback, input and suggestions on anything and everything with the intent of making a truly awesome browser based Nation building game with more to it than buying people and shooting yourself out of boredom. My aim now is to get most of the systems working (including, with a bit of luck, war) by Christmas this year ready for a reset and game launch in the beginning of next. I'll be working closely with members of the DAC to help make that happen.

While it seems like a long time, it's important to get it some-what stable ready for Beta. While I acknowledge the game will never be balanced and tweaks will always be necessary to some degree, at the moment there's just too much variance.

We now have a wiki for MLMK located at: http://mlmk.wikia.com

Feel free to go there RIGHT THE FUCK NOW and add stuff about your Kingdom, your Alliance, as well as stuff about the game as it becomes known. The Development Advisory Committee will be adding various bits and pieces as well over time such as recipes and other info about buildings. If you want to jump the gun and beat them to it first though, then by all means, feel free to.

So feel free to use it or we lose it. At the moment, we have no official wiki policy other than allowing everyone who wants to the ability to edit stuff and add whatever stuff about the game they want. I'm sure we'll figure out something more official (if necessary) over time. At the moment, I'm just happy to let people loose at it.

At this stage, this game is in "alpha" mode, meaning a lot of shit don't work. Now so far, I've been giving people land and races and getting feedback from them for that. As well as copious amounts of resources and money to a select few. Given that kind of FUBARs everyone else, at some point in future time, I will RESET the game and declare it beta. From that point on, I will never, ever reset the game ever again. If I find that I need to test things, I'll work out ways to do that without messing up the game by making someone particularly strong. Likewise, if I mess something up, I'll look at ways to redress any imbalance that may have caused without ruining it for everyone.

The reset will happen once a few basic things are in place. Those things are:

• Population increases at finance time.
• Every building, resource and recipe is in and working (for the most part, pending necessary balance tweaks as time goes by).
• Finances take into account some basic expenses (land & building maintenance).
• I've done a few final calculations re: how much land people have and how many buildings they have versus their population (at the moment, some people have a lot of land and comparatively few people, which will likely be addressed by DRAMATICALLY increasing the number of workers you can fit into the various buildings and increasing the production time of all the resources).
• People can create, join and leave alliances.

I had hoped most of that would in fact be done by now but unfortunately, a few real life things have cropped up which have meant I haven't had the time I need to complete all of that (very little time over the last 2 - 3 weeks actually). Those are temporary time suckers though which should clear up within the next one to two months. However, with some luck, I should be able to get those basic systems online by the end of this month with the reset coming shortly there-after. I reserve the right to not be held to that promise though.

For now though, a few basic things have been done. Claiming land tiles is now in (click on a tile next to one you own on the World Map) and you should find that most of the buildings are available with working recipes. Given the nature of the game in that there are so many resources, there will be a bit of a catch 22 as people start simply because you won't be able to build some things until someone else produces certain resources for you. That's simply the nature of the game and something which should resolve itself over time as more people join.

Okay, while I've been able to work out version 1.0 of the production formulas, I haven't been able to get to the buildings (no thanks to a few interfering things that have cropped up). So, rather than have everything wait on me, I've decided to establish a Design Advisory Committee (DAC). The DAC will contain a handful of people who are dedicated to working out all the maths behind the resources, buildings and terrain and just how happy, how productive and how many production hours things should take.

Seerow has accepted the position of Chairman of the Board. It will be his job to oversee what the DAC come up with and enter that information into the game. That information is things like: Should a Cattle Ranch be able to be built on Meadows? If so, how productive should it be? Should it be as productive as a Cattle Ranch that has been built on pasture? What races will the Cattle Ranch affect? How happy will it make them? What resources can you produce at a Cattle Ranch and how many Production Hours are required? What races work better in a Cattle Ranch? Are Humans better at raising Cattle than Gnomes? And so on...

The role of the DAC will be to come up with answers to those questions and input their results into the game, then balance and adjust as necessary. I'll also be working with them on the finances page and the theory that should be going into those calculations. In short, the DAC will be a core group of people who will be able to fine tune the game as necessary. The advantage being that it will allow me to focus on coding and adding in extra features quicker.

If you are interested in joining the DAC, send me a PM explaining what you'd like to do and how you'd like to help. Ideally, I'm looking for 3 or 4 people who are willing to join Seerow in crunching the numbers so that the game doesn't become too biased towards a certain Terrain or Race.

UPDATE: I'm happy to announce the following people now make up the Committee:

• Seerow - Chairman
• Lauzier
• Delta1212
• rosenshyne
• Moth

You are now be able to collect finances, which will generate Production Hours. You can then use those Production Hours in your buildings to produce resources. Please note that at the moment, I've left the Finance system such that you can continually collect finances. That's so you can keep generating Production Hours and try various things out.

The Finance system is also very bare at the moment and the numbers in that and for all the buildings still need a lot more work. However, I thought I would put it all online as it is for now and get feedback. So, go ahead and cut-down trees in your Forest with your Lumber Yard and then turn that Wood into Timber with your Sawmill. Then collect more Production Hours and do it all again.

You also would have noticed a significant increase in the number of resources available at the markets. They are Step 1. Step 2 is putting in all the buildings that are required to create those resources. That is still something I am in the process of. Step 3 is figuring out just how much a Gold Mine should cost and how much Gold it should produce and so on (although that's likely to be something that will always require tweaking / balancing as time goes on).

By the end of the next week, I should hopefully have added in all the buildings and fixed all those basic requirements for the most part. After that I will work on a basic alliance system and then look at how you will be claiming more tiles of land. Amongst all of that, I will be working out what I want to do with the finance system (what expenses you will have and how much they will be and so on).

If you have any suggestions or ideas for any of the above that you would like to share, post them in the forums or hassle me in the #mlmk channel on irc.synirc.net

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Okay, I have enabled the resource market system. For those of you who own shares, it should look familiar. Quite simply, people can make offers to purchase resources and others can make offers to sell. You can either accept the prices people are selling or buying at or enter your own price and hope the market responds accordingly. That's all I'm going to tell you, the rest you'll have to figure out for yourself (just to see how intuitive it is).

So that you can test it, I've given everyone $1M and various resources at random. The purpose for you is to test the market system and try and root out any bugs so that I can squash them. It's also for you to buy and sell as much as possible to get a feeling for how I intend the resource market to work. For those who want, take the current model and think about how you could improve it or what additions you might make (all that trade route stuff we were talking about - how would it fit?).

As always, comments, bug reports and suggestions are accepted.

EDIT: In other bug fixing news, I've just wiped everyone's consumption data and your "assigned workers" data so all your races will be unfed and your workers not working. I missed deleting that data on Kingdom deletion and so a lot of you had duplicate entries for races you no longer had. From now on, assigning workers and consuming resources should work as normal.

I have enabled the ability to found a Kingdom along with the ability to build and demolish buildings, assign workers to buildings and edit your Kingdom profile. It's not much but I need to check some things out with multiple Kingdoms and would like a bit of feedback on how things are looking, feeling and working so far. It also let's me find any errors such as things that don't work properly in a live environment.

I'm still working on finances, consumption, production of resources and the resource market. I hope to have the first two of those completed by the end of this week and with a bit of luck, those last two completed by the end of next week but I'm not making any promises. We'll just see how that goes (depends on how many unforseen issues I run into and just how complex they turn out to be).

The purpose of this is just to show you what's happening and let you see how things are coming along for yourself. It is my intention that once the other systems come online (and you can cycle through a whole day and make and sell stuff etc...), I will be wiping the game database and letting you start again.

At this stage, I'm not going to tell you how anything works. I'll just let you poke around and see if you can figure it out for yourself. One of the keys to making this game a success for me will be how quickly someone can pick up on how things work and this lets me find some of that out. As always, if you notice anything that needs improvement or if you have any suggestions, let me know.

Officially, since I posted the "Make our own game" thread on June 8th, MLMK has been under development for a little over two months now (with about a month of that being just planning time alone).

Welcome to My Land, My Kingdom. An in-development browser based game with Elves and shit. At the moment, there's nothing here except the forums but ever so slowly, say over the next 12 years or so, shit's going to be added. Shit like founding a Kingdom, building stuff and trading resources and combat and pretty much everything else that's been planned out in a small way to some degree.

I'll be using these forums to throw around ideas and get feedback on systems as they're implemented. The idea being I can use you suckers as guinea pigs. Hopefully I'll end up with a some-what fun game that lots of people can enjoy. Keeping in mind that being an online game means it'll pretty much always be "under development" in some form or another for its entire existance.

As for what's planned, well... I don't want another CyberNations or LunarWars. I mean really, if all you want to do is buy Infrastruture / Housing, AI / Technology, get bored, shoot self, go to war, then play those. I play those. They're fun for what they are. I want to build something a bit more involved though.

So as for what's planned:

• 12 different races. Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Goblins and more. All of which have various advantages and disadvantages in economy, trading, research, magic, technology and other areas.
• Lots of resources which you can buy and sell for whatever price you should choose to set. Resources will affect your population in different ways. You'll also be able to (eventually) restrict who you sell your resources to, such as specific alliances.
• Survive in a world where Technology and Magic conflict with each other. Focus on one or the other or eschew both and take a balanced or natural approach.
• Resources based on terrain. Founded your Kingdom in a Forest? Supply the world with Timber. In the Mountains? Mine Iron and turn it into Steel before selling it onto others who can turn it into machines of war.
• Decide what goods your population will consume every day in the form of food, drink and luxury items with various outcomes as a result.
• A some-what strategic combat system. No random numbers telling you whether you win or lose but something a little bit more involved which requires thought. Just because you're bigger or have better technology, doesn't mean you'll win.
• Build technological military units such as Canons, Rockets and Flying Machines, focus instead on magic and summon an amy of Golems, Skeletons or Zombies, forget an army altogether and become a powerful wizard who can cast spells on others from a distance or eschew both technology and magic and instead take the path of nature and develop powerful beasts of war such as Dragons, Griffins or War Elephants.
• A World Map. Quite literally, you could conquer the world.
• Various alliance features such as taxes including the ability to tax resources sold or bought by members, implement an income tax or a flat fee. Use the funds to aid members.
• Research will open up more buildings, units and other things.
• Chocolate Milk.

Given the complexity involved with having different terrain types, buildings, resources and races, it means this game will take a long time (relatively speaking) to fully develop most of those features. If I was just making another CN or LW, I'd have well and truly finished coding already. I'm not though, so you'll have to be a little patient.

I'll also need help with story and stuff. At the moment, the world this game takes place on is unnamed and has no back-story. The races are just races, there's no history there. Anyone who wants to have a shot at writing some sort of story or something, please feel free to. If I like it, I might even steal it and use it in the game in some way and you will be rewarded with resources or something... maybe.

So there you go. Sit tight, be patient and eventually everything will come together.

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