In the last few days we decided to move back to our original GWT based frontend, this was somewhat put on hold and reverted back towards a more static site design mostly due to the complexities of GWT RPC calls, and how it had difficulties nativly handling mouse events in some situations (it took me days to get a prototype drag/drop library working).

Since the release of GWT version 2, mouse handlers have been improved massivly, generics have been added to the java code (THANK YOU GOOGLE!), and we’ve made moves to implement our own RPC generator.

For those of you who aren’t technical, RPC is a ‘Remote procedure call’, a method of communication between multiple componants of a system (in this case, the frontend UI and the backend core server) in previous incarnations of TurnEngine, this was achieved via a custom developed XML API, however for performance purposes, this is being replaced by a more optimal layer, and set of libraries which will allow the frontend UI to behave as if it’s the core, and have the requests and responses layered back transparently. The difficulty presenting us at the moment, is the way that GWT has it’s own RPC protocol (for ajaxy stuff), so what we’ve done, is create a very large config file of mappings, and a small but complex piece of code to generate all the files relevant for GWT which allows for us easily to send messages from your browser, through the web core, then out to the server and back again, which has accellerated frontend development significantly!

So what does all this mean for you? Well, firstly, we will be unable to support Internet Explorer 6 (which coinsides nicely with google dropping support for the browser as well), also your browser will need to support javascript which unless specifically disabled, most browsers will! Other than that, you can look forward to some fast response times and dynamic gameplay elements (Drag+Drop queues, mouse overs as well as other cool stuff!)

So still moving forward and looking to the future! Hopefully i’ll have some funky screenshots when everything starts coming together.

– Craig “FrostyCoolSlug” McLure

Hi all,

Firstly, I need to apologise for the general ’silence’ coming out of TE HQ as of late, real life, jobs and a lack of time have caused us to somewhat neglect the blog here a little bit, but never fear, we’re still progressing.

So, onto news! Firstly, happy new year, hope you all had a good holiday season.

Progress on ShadowWars has slowed a little recently, I know Zedd is activly working on the nuts and bolts, and I’m progressing with the frontend UI, unfortunately, it’s a lot of boring technical stuff, mostly internal code which handles part of the game and backend/frontend communication.

A lot of work has recently been put into error handling, and simplifying the ability to debug problems, if you end up doing something wrong, you’ll get a very specific reason as to why in an attempt to avoid situations where an action seems to make sense, but doesn’t work without you knowing why.

Zedd has also been working on and tweaking the combat system, trying to get the maths to make sense and work properly which he’s been having some fun with.

That’s all for now, hopefully we’ll try and keep everyone a little more updated in future.

All the Best — Frosty

Space Combat

The most common type of combat is Space Combat. This occurs any time two fleets from opposing sides end a turn at the same location. Unlike Dark Galaxy, combat has been scaled down for the casual version, with only three combat-capable ships.

Fighter

The fighter is the cheapest and most numerous ship. It is very fast, but does little damage with its dual lasers. Its primary roll is to intercept and destroy opposing Bombers and Fighters. It can be used to attack larger ships, but will only be effective at destroying them in sufficiently large numbers.

Bomber

The Bomber is the most important of the combat ships. Its purpose is to destroy large ships. Although similar in size and speed to a fighter, bombers are equipped with nuclear torpedoes capable of destroying even the largest ships. They are however significantly more expensive than fighters, so should be protected with fighters of their own.

Battleship

The Battleship is a very large and expensive ship. Heavily armoured, the battleship is armed with an array of flack cannons. These weapons are particularly important as they not only fire at incoming fighters and bombers, but can target and destroy the nuclear torpedoes launched from the bombers. A fleet with one or more battleships is very well protected, and any opponent should think carefully before attacking it.

Defence Platform

The orbital Defence Platform is not a ship, as it can not move from its home planet, however it is a critical addition to space combat. Those wishing to protect their planets more effectively can build defence platforms. Like battleships, the platforms are armed with flack cannons, making them an important part of any planetary defence.

Invasion

Once a planet has lost all its orbital defences, it can be invaded. To add an interesting twist to invasion over the version in Dark Galaxy, more effective defences can now be constructed on a planets surface.

Soldiers

The Soldier is a powerful, biologically enhanced, technolgically advanced war machine. Although they are the only units that can be used to invade a planet, they can also defend planets them too. They are slightly more effective at defence than attack.

Defence Tower

The Defence Tower provides a more powerful defence against invasion, however it can not move from the planet on which it is built. It is very heavily armoured and draws power for its laser cannons directly from the colony fusion grid.

Overkill

Already mentioned previous, overkill is being introduced in Shadow Wars. With the addition of more effective defences, comes the ability to completely overwhelm them, dramatically reducing their effectiveness. Although it needs careful balancing, overkill will allow a fleet or invading/defending force that outnumbers the opposition by a significant factor to gain a bonus in combat.

Well I’d better get back to it. Progress has been slow recently due to a few technical hitches, however things are still moving forwards at a respectable pace.

Cheers,

Zedd

As you know both myself and Zedd have been chugging away at the Shadow Wars code, and are getting ready for some alphas to try and get the feel for the game and its usability, i recently posted a forum post with an ‘unofficial update’ on our progress, and felt I should spend the time making a full official blog post on our progress!

TurnEngine v3 is coming along nicely, as many of you know, this is pretty much a complete rewrite of the TurnEngine to add massive flexibility in terms of what it is capable of doing, and we’re hoping to showcase this in ShadowWars and future games.. It’s being designed in a way that is hopefully stable straight out the box, and the feature set will be complete. I’ll discuss how we are achieving this later!

Feature wise, we are adding features at a good rate, I’m going to go over what we’ve done so far, and hopefully add what changes have been made since previous incarnations of the engine:

Mail / News

The mail engine is reasonably straight forward, although completely rewritten from the previous version (you can delete mail properly now). For Shadow Wars we are going to experiment a little with merging Mail and News together into one interface, and use filtering to allow you to better refine what types of mail your are viewing. In later versions, we’re also going to allow for you to customise how ‘vocal’ the news system can be, for example a really vocal version would send a news item for every event that’s happening on your planets, rather than just Combat / Invasion

Planets

Planets are going to be similar to what you are already familiar with if you’ve played DarkGalaxy, although there’s going to be nothing special overall, we’re hoping to add a few nice touches to make actions a little speedier. We are also planning on adding filtering mechanisms to the planet list to let you select planets that are for economy, or possible strategic importance. We are also focusing on refining the planet list page to display more planets in smaller space, as well as alphabetising them to help players manage this, especially if it gets long! Below is an early concept of the planet list.

Fleets

Fleets again are similar to what you have seen before, and on top of that will include some of the enhancements seen in the planets page, careful designing will allow you to easily see the composition of a fleet, along with everything it is carrying without having to scroll too much. We’re also going to be adding the filtering system to it, again, to help you organise what your fleets are doing.

Navigation

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the new navigation systems brings a whole new dimension into Shadow Wars over previous TE based games, although due to its complexity, this wont be featuring in the first alphas / betas, we have really high hopes for it, it should allow for more strategic play amongst factions, each fighting over key sectors and outcomes determining the outcome of the war! The flexibility will also allow us to run ’smaller’ games where a handful of players fight out for dominance on a smaller playing field. We have also been discussing a lot of ‘alternate’ usage for the navigation which may make an appearance in the distant future once everything is running smoothly. We’re hoping that the new navigation design is going to lead to some battles of epic proportions where eventually both factions throw everything they have at each other, the winner being the faction which can persevere longest and start creeping forward. Every sector usurped is a sector closer to victory! You just gotta hope you don’t find a massive invasion force packed at a nearby stargate!

Combat

Combat is also something which wont be in the initial alpha for us, but should be a reasonably quick addition, the initial combat calculations will be done for the ‘casual’ game, which is much simpler than the ‘hardcore’ game which will come later, we’re going to be watching things like outcomes and combat score carefully to make sure that the winner will always get a better take of the winnings, and that suiciding fleets doesn’t result in more combat score! One of the things I’m personally looking forward to, is Stargate ambushes, linear travel means your journey from A to Z is no longer safe, there are many points where you could get engaged along the way, good team coordination will help keep you on the safe path!

Alliance

Also not yet implemented. Despite Shadow Wars being a faction vs. faction game, alliances will assist in bringing people together as a ’squad’ in the battle. Where this goes from here is entirely up to the players, will you form a HC with other alliances in your faction to co-ordinate? If so, bring your best diplomats! When resources are spread thin, you’re all going to need to closely work together and potentially commit everything you have to the war effort at once! If relationships start to sour the entire structure of your faction could collapse and fall into chaos, whilst your adversaries are there to clean up!

Trading

As you have seen from the screenshots, there is a trading button, lets talk a little about this, in a galaxy full of combat, there are always those who want to give the upper hand for profit! Introducing the black market. Here you will be able to sell your hard earned resources for credits, and in turn, purchase fully built ships for delivery in a small amount of time at an extortionate cost! This will come into play in a ‘backs to the wall’ moment, where you can sacrifice everything you have in an attempt to repel a full assaulting invasion force. But even if you win, rebuilding your resources and starting to produce ships on your own isn’t going to be easy! Other options open up with this market, supplement your fleets with black market ships whilst going for that final game winning assault in an all or nothing attempt to subdue your enemy, the possibilities are endless!

Backend Communication

We’re working carefully on the technical side to allow for a much faster backend <-> frontend communication, transparent ‘modules’ will run the communication through and allow us to dynamically switch between (for example) a highly optimised and human readable versions of the communication, which not only benefits the people playing, but allows us to very quickly diagnose bugs as and when they occur!

Design

From a design perspective, we’re focusing heavily on simplicity and usability. Although shiny graphics look nice, it’s not always the most practical solution to a problem, we’re trying to keep things clearly labled and layed out on a nice blue palette, using subtle shading of areas we want to draw your focus to, and utilising a lot of colourful icons to prevent the pages from becoming too stale and ‘monochrome’,  there’s a difficult balance of keeping the users eyes focused on specific areas without boring them too much, and being too colourful that it’s difficult to track where you are trying to go. During the design phase, we’re going to focus a lot on these types of elements, in an attempt to create a pleasurable experience when viewing and playing Shadow Wars

Testing

One of the bains of previous turnengine iterations, the number of strange bugs! Something we’re focusing on heavily in this version of TurnEngine is test suites and simulations. There’s a huge library of tests for all individual components of the engine, in addition to a dummy UI to allow us to ‘dry run’ certain features, and test for unusual behaviour. There will of course be bugs in the alpha / beta versions, but we’re hoping that they are going to be minor in comparison to some of the larger (and more obscure) bugs that made their way into DarkGalaxy. Also, as mentioned before, we’re able to quickly switch and monitor what the throughput between the frontend and the backend, which will help us identify the location of a problem and resolve it more quickly.

Full Development in Java

Both the backend and frontend are going to be developed in Java, the departure from PHP for the frontends is one we decided to make together, as both myself and Zedd are good Java developers, we can both be involved in all aspects of the development, it also comes with the benefit that Java is a much faster language than PHP when it comes to handling large volumes of data. It also allows us to speed up the development process, and drop in libraries to ease development, and the Object Oriented nature means fixes for issues should come through a lot faster without having to sift through copious amounts of code. It also has the benefit of having a very powerful debugging suite, which makes it easier to just step through problematic code and find the cause of issues.

We’re hoping to get the first alpha going as soon as we possibly can, and we are satisfied of the quality. Until then, watch this space!

We’re really happy with our current progress, we have spent a lot of time discussing how we want things to behave and the best way to implement that which is simplest to the user, and ensuring that we individually decide how components are going to work before actually implementing them, which is giving us a strong image of how the game is going to play, and it’s going to be great!

I’m going to be spending some time today discussing actual design concepts for visuals over actual implementation of features, this does unfortunatly mean SCREENSHOTS (are you happy now?)!

The header design has gone through *MANY* iterations over recent weeks, starting off with a single design and moving forward to what you’re going to see at the end (no cheating and scrolling to the bottom).

The first version of the header was made by Zedd, and is below (remember, not the final version :p)

Obviously, looking at this post you can see the general goal of having ‘cut away’ edges and a lot of gradients to help create a ‘futuristic’ and appeasing idea.

The general issue with this is the amount of space it used, on a 1024×768 screen, it leaves very little room for actual game content. The general concensus was it needed to be simplified but still contain the same content.

I personally thought the title bar with the Shadow Wars logo was gorgeous (but not the actual logo itself!), It had a darkness too it and a smooth design, but seemed far too empty. The first thing i decided to do was move the buttons up there and introduce them into the bar (I don’t have a screenshot of that anymore), This didn’t look right, other than the incredibly small size of the buttons to make them fit right, fonts became illegible, and the blackness of the buttons themselves interfered with the smoothness of the bar itself.

The next step i took was to resize the bar and place the buttons *BEHIND* the bar and allow for it’s opacity to ‘wash’ over them.  This fixed the issue with the buttons looking bad, but resulted in the rest of the bar not really being justifiable for the logo. The final solution was not to resize the bar, but instead, have it expand around the icons.. Introducing some of the ‘corner cuts’ of the design so far, progress was made (I recoloured the ‘active’ button as well)!

Both myself and Zedd concluded that this was a much nice approach, it gave the title bar more meaning and removed the need for the large box underneath for navigation.

The issue now remained, what about the ‘user’ box? we discussed moving this to the left hand side of the content, but it shouldn’t really be something that has a lot of focus. When you are logged in, you know you are logged in, and the only part which is important is mail / news / credits, but they are not important to warrant a lot of screen space! The second idea was to attach the box to the right hand side of nav and trim it a bit, but we found that a box there not only killed a lot of space, but it also didn’t quite feel right along side navigation (It’s not nav, so why is it in the nav box?!). After several attempts to place it anywhere else, we decided to attach it as a ‘low profile’ yet separated box along the main header, and place the turns there too.

There would be a screenshot here, but apparently Word Press doesn’t want to attach it, click here to view it

Everything is clearly evident, We decided not to put turn info into user box because they are considered two separate entities, the choice to keep the bars at different lengths allowed us to break the ‘flow’ a little, to emphasise the detachment and remove some of the symmetry which was in the site.

The last thing to focus on was the logo, as seen in earlier pics, marginal effort had been put into it, and with the new ‘condensed’ header it doesn’t fit very well. After several hours scouring the net for a font which fits, I found one that emphasises the arbitrary corner cuts, and fits well in with the design, add a little transparency, give it a light gradient and place it over the moon, and we have a logo, and a completed header.

When designing a site, one of the hardest parts is making the design fluid, coloured using a specific colour set (here we work on gold, black, and shades of blue), and ensuring everything gets the importance it requires, placing emphasis on something which isn’t really important to a user will result in a bad experience, but there has to be a balance. Dominating a page with something that is important can sometimes backfire and make the experience work. Following pages has to be simple, and not obscure, you need to know where you are and what you’re doing, sometimes that can be simply achieved, but sometimes it requires more effort.

Until next time, stay cool :p

–
Craig “FrostyCoolSlug” McLure
Shadow Wars Developer

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 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.

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.

There are only three combat military ships in the game: Fighter, Bomber & Battleship. These provide a rock-paper-scissors type approach to combat that should simplify the system for new players, but hopefully still make the game tactical enough for die-hard players.

To invade hostile colonies, Drop Ships are required to carry the attack Droids. A Colony Ship is required to settle a new planet. A Trading Ship allows resources to be transferred for free between colonies in different systems.

Figher
- Military ship
- Good vs Bomber

Bomber
- Military ship
- Good vs Colony Ship
- Good vs Drop Ship
- Good vs Trading Ship
- Good vs Battleship

Battleship
- Military ship
- Good vs Fighter
- Good vs Colony Ship
- Good vs Drop Ship
- Good vs Trading Ship

Combat

When a fleet moves into the same square as a hostile fleet, combat occurs. All ships fire simultaniously in combat. Allied fleets (those of the same faction) will combine into one huge fleet as do those in the opposing faction. Combat is resolved each turn, on the turn, and does not always result in all ships from one side or the other (or indeed any ships) being destroyed. To improve the chances of success in combat, it is useful overwhelm the hostile force using overkill.

Overkill
- Each ship has a Military Strength
- If an Allied fleet has a combined Strength over 4x greater than the combined Hostile fleet Strength, the Hostile ships damage is HALVED

Each player must choose early on whether to go for a military role or merchant role in the game. The military ranks can be purchased at any time, although they must be purchased in order. Each rank improves the speed at which military ships can be built, and enables purchase of selected military ships.

Military Rank (Major)
- 10% improvement in military build times
- Enables purchase of Fighter & Bomber

Military Rank (Colonel)
- Prevents “Guild Rank (Trader)”
- 20% improvement in military build times
- Enables purchase of Droid & Drop Ship

Military Rank (General)
- Prevents “Guild Rank (Master)”
- 50% improvement in military build times
- Enables purchase of Battleship

Merchants Guild
The merchant guild ranks can be purchased at any time, although they must be purchased in order. Each rank improves the amount of income from trading stations depending on how many other trading stations are close by, as well as enabling purchase of selected civilian ships.

Guild Rank (Member)
- Trading income bonus for all faction trading stations up to one jump away.
- Enables purchase of Colony Ship

Guild Rank (Trader)
- Prevents “Military Rank (Colonel)”
- Trading income bonus for all faction trading stations up to two jumps away.
- Enables purchase of Trading Ship

Guild Rank (Master)
- Prevents “Military Rank (General)”
- Trading income bonus for all faction trading stations up to three jumps away.
- Enables purchase of Jump Ship

Resources

There are going to be three resources in the game: Mass, Energy & Credits. Mass and Energy will be quick and easy to get a steady income from, however Credits are more difficult to get hold of. Mass is essential early on for building structures and ships, while those who concentrate on energy will be able to benefit more from the special abilities. Credits are generally useful, especially for emergency situations, however they are harder to get lots of and the rate of exchange when trading is poor.

Credits
- Low rate of income
- Essential to hire Planetary Governer/Fleet Admiral
- Essential to purchase Guild Licence/Military Rank
- Buy/Sell of Mass/Energy is expensive
- Buy/Sell of Droid/Fighter/Bomber/Battleship very expensive

Mass
- High rate of income
- Essential to produce structures & ships

Energy
- Moderate rate of income
- Required for special abilities