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.