The TurnEngine Blog

I often find myself asking the question, ‘What is innovation?’, the actual definition is ‘The act of introducing something new.’ which is as unhelpful as it could possibly be. Innovation to me is the act of creating something that breaks out of the boundaries of what exists already.. But is that always possible?

My main project over the last couple of weeks has specifically been the mail system, arguably one of the most important features of any game, the home of communication and team work, bringing people together for the common good of the galaxy, as simple as this may sound, it is indeed no small task.

I’ve done a lot of research into the matter, and created several prototypes each behaving in entirely different ways, I’ve tried the ‘Split Panel’ approach (the concept of clicking on a mail and reading it immediately below), I’ve tried threading views with a full collapsing tree of Subject -> Replies -> Mail, I’ve tried ‘New Window’ techniques, and all of them with their own distinct benefits have quite a few flaws as well.

I’ve reviewed 10 different mail clients (some harder to uninstall than others!), 15 different mail websites, eventually realising that simplicity is best, the easiest mail clients to use had very simple yet powerful interfaces. For Shadow Wars we aren’t looking for folder views, extensive filtering systems, multiple window reading or sophisticated spam management, we’re looking for a very simple read and reply system.

This got me turning back to the previous DarkGalaxy system, excluding the bugs, this was a reasonable solution, and can be easily tweaked and improved to fit a new game. Add styling to easily determine read from unread, attach the ‘Notifications’ as mentioned in my previous blog post, include some nice features like simple BB Code for formatting, mail forwarding etc. And you have a powerful mail client.

Innovation is a powerful word, it conjures up thoughts of creativity and stepping outside the box, but on a few occasions after doing the research and demos, you may feel that you’re standing a few miles from said box, when it wasn’t a bad box to start with!

One of the first things which needs to be considered when designing an interface for a web-based game is the architecture of the display. I’m going to use DarkGalaxy as a place for comparison as it’s something most of you are familiar with and can hopefully relate to.

One word which is being constantly thrown around TE HQ is ’simple’. A lot of ideas and plans get thrown out at the drawing board simply because they are too complex, not from the development side but instead from the usability side, but how do we evaluate this? It comes down to a few simple rules:

• How many clicks will it take to perform the action?
• Will the action interfere with the users current objective?
• Will a user need prompts and tool-tips to understand the concept?
• How long will the action take to perform?
• Is there any unnecessary input required?
• Is it easier to have multiple browser windows to handle this task?

These points may seem pretty obvious, but unless you specifically analyse each one before development begins, you may end up wasting time at a later date trying to improve behaviour, or possibly worse, leaving it as it is.

Lets take the following scenario as an example, I’ve just received an important mail which I have to read immediately. I’m currently in the middle of organising a planet, lets look at the DG way of handling this:

1. You spot the Mail text highlighting in the top right corner
2. You click it
3. You find the mail which you just recieved
4. You open it, and reply if nessecery
5. You hammer the back button to find the planet you were at, or go via. the Planets list

This is somewhat considered the ‘Standard’ way of handling mail, and I’m sure you would forgive us for following this methods for Shadow Wars, but lets look at our criteria, We have 5 or 6 clicks (including returning to the start point), you loose your spot during planet management, the prompt for a new email is vague (lack of info as to who mailed you from the initial look meaning you cannot spontaneously decide whether to ignore it), including page loads it can take a few minutes to reply, and it’s mail, so there isn’t any unnecessary input. In most cases it’s easier to have a separate browser window to handle mail.

So we spend some time taking a closer look at this, looking for ways to streamline the process and make it more accessible. One of the solutions is as follows:

• A notification window appears in the bottom right of the screen telling you who the email is from, and the subject (as well as the standard ‘Mail’ button update)
• If you click on this, an ‘in-page’ dialog window pops up across the current page with the mail details and reply options
• The dialog has a little close (and possibly minimise) button in the top right which allows it to close or hide the mail taking you immediately back to your original position

With those small steps, we’ve significantly simplified the ‘dynamic mailing’ procedure, and have given the user the ability to easily interact with mails, as well as the choice to easily ignore them if they lack importance. It will still take a moment to download the full email, but you’re receiving content which is directly relevant to what you need (as opposed to having to download the entire mail list).

This hopefully gives you an idea of some of the approaches we are taking to improve the online turn-based experiance, and make Shadow Wars a fun game to experiance and play.

Non-Combat Ships

There are four non-combat ships. The colony ship is important early on in the game, allowing you to expand your colonies to the planets and asteroids surrounding your homeworld. The trading ship provides a means of transferring much needed resouces between those worlds.

As the game progresses and you start to encounter hostile fleets and worlds, you may wish to build up forces to invade those worlds. The drop ship carries troops to invade hostile worlds.

Finally the jump ship is a special ship only worth building later on in the game. It can establish new wormholes between planets. If protected heavily and deployed where most needed, they could easily tip the balance in a long running game.

Colony Ship
- Create new colonies on neutral planets/asteroids

Trading Ship
- Transfer Mass & Energy between colonies

Drop Ship
- Capture hostile colonies

Jump Ship
- Very Expensive
- Establishes Planetary Jump Gate at a Colony
- Can be used to travel to any Planetary Jump Gate in any adjacent system

Colony Types

A planet is large, with the most room to build all the different structures, but has a low abundance of Mass & Energy. An asteroid on the other hand is relatively small with little space for structures, but has a high abundance of Mass & Energy.

Planet
- 80 structure spaces
- Standard mass abundance (+100)
- Standard energy abundance (+100)

Asteroid
- 40 spaces available
- High mass abundance (+150)
- High energy abundance (+150)

Colonization
- Settle uninhabited planets/asteroids
- A single Colony Ship is required to colonize a planet/asteroid
- Must have a Planetary Governer available

Invasion
- Capture Colonies from hostile players
- Fleet must be in the same square as the hostile Colony
- No hostile fleets present in the same square as the Colony
- Only Droids can invade a Colony
- Only Drop Ships can carry Droids in a fleet
- Must have a Planetary Governer available

Inter-Planetary Travel
- Inter-Planetary travel is travel between two locations in the same system.
- Within any system travel time is 4 turns

Inter-Stellar Travel
- Inter-Stellar travel is travel between two jump gates in connected systems.
- Travel time to an Allied system (allied colonies, no hostile colonies) is 4 turns.
- Travel time to a Contested system (allied & hostile colonies) is 6 turns.
- Travel time to a Neutral system (no colonies) is 8 turns.
- Travel time to a Hostile system (only hostile colonies) is 8 turns.