Allright. Here's our most recent foray into the world of online games. We just published WordWars, the antithesis of non-violent puzzle games. The object is to kill your opponent using words, poison, ambushes, bombs, traps, and well over 50 special words which each have their own special effects and do additional damage.

For this project, we created a central server for network play. You'll need to create an account in order to play online, but the server keeps track of your record using your login information, regardless of whether you purchase it or not. We plan on using the same server for several games, so the lobby system will be similar from one game to another. You can host games, challenge people, and will be ranked on a ladder system similar to Battle.net and Westwood Chat (does that still exist?)

We're keeping sort of a low profile on the game for the moment to see how the server handles the stresses of lots of players logged in all at the same time, chatting and playing their games. It shouldn't be a problem, since we tested it with a simulator and hit over 4000 connections before we killed the simulator. We also had our beta testers play a bunch of games simultaneously and it seemed to work out just fine.

Anyway, check it out, feel free to comment good or bad. Enjoy!
Download WordWars (http://www.gamethoughts.com/downloads/WordWarsInstall.exe)

Congrats on the new release Mike!

Here's some feedback from a single-player and online game I just played (I believe it was with the programmer).

I've also attached a screenshot showing the lobby misaligned, most likely because I run large fonts under Windows XP.

Lobby Screenshot (http://www.micromanx.com/misc/ww1.jpg)

* No option to auto-launch game after install

* Atomic monks logo was a little on the long side (at least I could click thru tho)

* No Windows system menu...so I can't easily minimize or close the app

* No option for full-screen

* Pressing escape doesn't bring up the in-game menu

* Consider adding "tool-tips" to explain what the non-letter tiles do when you hover over them.

* The tiles zooming in (from huge to small) to their spots is cool but a little hard on my eyes for some reason

* Consider adding a button on the matchmaking screen to launch a browser with the login html page

* In-game menu only let's you end or resume game...but not change sound settings, etc.

* In-game chat can significantly hurt frame-rate if too many lines pile up.

* If you place invalid tiles such that the turn button beeps at you...provide some feedback as to what the player did wrong.

* Provide tips more frequently at the lower levels (or, if you know it's the first time the player has run the game).

* Installer installs a few too many web link shortcuts IMO.

* When I selected "Next Skin" in the options, there was a pause, but I couldn't tell if anything visibly changed.

* The rolling credits are a bit distracting when you are first trying to find the menu options. I would consider moving the credits into a menu option.
---------------------------------

No crashes and the game ran smoothly once we figured out it was too many lines of chat text that was killing my frame-rate.

I played like most new users...I didn't read any instructions. :)

I'm sure getting the backend for the lobby working was a big effort...so congrats!!!

Hope this info helps and best of luck with your new release. :)
-Scorpio

Thanks for the extensive feedback. We'll definately take a look at those things. Some of them were oversights, others were things that never came up during beta testing.

Full-screen - We opted not to go with a full screen option because we wanted the lobby to be open to people during a game. It gets really boring waiting for the other player to make a move, so we thought allowing them to flip back to the lobby to chat with other people was the best option. Full screen looks fine, but since the lobby is a VB Form, it looks really bad when it goes to full screen. The screen flickers a lot, and when you see it, you're thinking in the back of your head 'I hope this doesn't crash my system' even though it never does.

For the Skins, the game only comes with one default skin. There are others that can be downloaded for free, but we haven't made them available yet. There are five total I think, each with a completely different look, a slightly different interface, and completely different music. The game has about an hour of custom music if you count all of the current skins. If you don't have any other skins installed, that option really doesn't do anything. We'll have those posted within the next couple of days.

Most of the other things we can address. Yes, the back end lobby was definately time consuming and not something I'd really want to do too many times in my life. There were just soooo many things that could and did go wrong when we were trying to get it all running. Encryption of the packet streams was an absolute nightmare. It seems to be very stable though and is fairly quick. I suppose that could change with a few hundred people connected to it though.

Thanks for the feedback. If anyone else has anything to share, we'd be happy to hear it.

I agree with most anything scorpio said.

Here's some more comments:


intro sound very noisy (loud, dostorted to some degree)
having the app in the background causes intense skipping in winxp, both with the games sound and with all other applications' performance
it did weird stuff when I went into options and pressed change skin (it delayed for a bit then blittet... something in the top left corner
further clicking in the options screen made the application freeze (sound continued) when pressing "name"
the requirement to go to a website to create an account will certainly loose someone on the way


I didn't have too much time to test it, but I hope you'll find the input any useful at all. Maybe if the game had an in-game help feature I might have understood what was going on too :)

First of all (to everyone), thanks for trying out my game, and also thanks for the feedback. Good stuff!

Most of these suggestions either have been incorporated already since they were mentioned, or are being incorporated now.

Now on some of the specific items:

1. Fullscreen - I'm looking at reactivating it as an option, for those that don't mind the clicking monitor when switching to the Lobby. For those playing single player, it will never come up anyway.

2. Pressing "NAME" option causing lockup - This is actually a little misleading. I doubt that it truly locked up, but instead was waiting for you to type any changes to the name. I'm going to help that by making the cursor actually blink and by popping up a tooltip with a little basic information on what you're doing. Which leads to...

3. Tooltips - I'm adding these as we speak. Wish I'd thought of it earlier.

4. Weird pause with "NEXT SKIN" - This command actually loads the next available skin...but the game ships with only one. I'm changing it to hide/disable that option when only one skin (the default) is available.

If you don't mind, Karukef, could you elaborate on your last bullet? Did you mean having to go to a website at ALL to create an account would put people off, or having to manually launch the browser and go to the URL? I've added a link to the Lobby to take the user to the Account Creation page, and it changes to an Account Management link after they've logged in.

I also agree that getting into a multiplayer game, the first time, is overly complex and many people may not be willing to go through all those steps. If I recall correct, those steps are:

* Launch the game.

* Start a brainstorm game which will take me to the lobby.

* Read the text informing me that I have to go to the web site to create an account.

* Launch a browser and go to the URL I got from the lobby.

* Create an account on the web site.

* Get the email that has the link to activate my account.

* Return to the lobby and enter my name and password.

* Host or join a game.

* Wait for the game a player to join or the host to start the game.

* Play game and have fun.

That's a lot of work for a casual-market type of user IMO. You might consider supporting guest accounts that don't require the user to login (but maybe they don't get their highscores and other stats tracked, etc). Moving the account creation process into the lobby would also be really helpful for users IMO.

A big problem with having a lobby dedicated to a single game is that you need to make it as easy as possible for people to get into and *stay in* the lobby (I am considering playing the game as still being in the lobby). Otherwise, you get the problem where the lobby is always empty and people never play the multiplayer version of the game because whenever they go to the lobby, they are the only person in there.

I hope this feedback is useful for you guys...we went through a lot of similar issues when we wrote a DirectPlayLobby (originally for Claw) many years ago.
-Scorpio

... I always avoid all the yahoo games that want me to join game rooms. I fear people. And I fear having to join a group just to try a new game, screw up, and look silly in public. :)

I'm paranoid, aren't I.

Scorpio:

I think the link on the lobby form replaces your first four bullets, at least. The "accountless" guest entry is an interesting idea, but there's an important reason we're currently requiring accounts and I'm not sure how that would impact it.

Papillion:

Yes, you are. :)

I suggest that you are allowed to create an account from within the game. The optimal solution would be to have a "connect to server" screen like this:

Enter Username:
Enter Password:
If you do not have a username, simply enter the name you wish to use and a password and you will be registered.

If you really need more information, then have a button saying "create account" that goes to an in-game sub-screen for registration.

Stopping the game (or minimizing, which with your game was not possible due to system slowdown) and launching a browser (even if there is a link) is sub-optimal :)

Anyone that downloads the game and really want to play it online will certainly bother registering. But how about the person that barely decides to download it, forgets it, starts it a few days later? Do you think that player will need good reasons whatsoever to lose and uninstall?

Premium simplicity always pay off.

I had considered this approach, but what if someone simply mistypes their username? Do I create a new account for them? How do I know if it's new or just mistyped?

Actually, right now we're working on an integrated guest option where guest/guest will be the default and it won't save your data from one session to the next. We're working on a lot of the other changes as well. Any other suggestions anyone?

Well, Mike I must admit I love your intro screen. That "brothes that play together, slay together" sentence is way too kewl. :)

The bad things: unfortunately you are installing stuffs to my windoze's system directory, which is a very bad thing for a game. Try to avoid that at all cost! (Lower you req, try to stick to default version .dlls, program a workaround for bugfests, or just install it in the game's directory, etc.)

After exiting the game I was not able to start it again. It just throw me back to desktop. I think it has screwed up something with directx because not a single game would start afterward.

Well, and I think I have issues with the UI. I think it is a bit clumsy for me. I would make it a little different to make it comfortable for me. But it is personal preference.

Keep up the good work!

What "stuffs" is it installing into your system directory? It should be updating your VB runtimes if needed (it's using the MS package for that, actually)...and that's about it for your system directory (it does include a zip library and an encryption dll). It doesn't touch or copy the DirectX files at all.

As for the requirements, it's run on a Pentium 133 with a 4MB S3 card...and pretty well. Seems like a very low bar to me these days. :)

On the UI, what specifically did you not like or would you change?

Good game. I only planned to play it for a few minutes, but I ended up playing through a complete singleplayer game (half an hour or more). I lost by a very small margin (I even went ahead at some point). I liked that even if none of the rules are explained, I could still play through, and I figured out many of them eventually. From what I have seen so far, the game promises to have a lot of depth.

One problem: when I clickthrough the intro screen (the atomic monks one), the next screen becomes garbled. I can send you a screen shot if you want.

Yes, please do...that's very much a new one.

Also, does it do this if you don't click through the title screen?

Also, do you have a localized install of Windows/DirectX, or an English installation of both?

bernie,

I did find three files that are being installed to the System directory and I'll move two of them to the installation directory. The last is a system file that is required by the game and must be installed into the system directory for the game to run properly. Some people simply don't have this file. It's the msflxgrd.ocx file. None of them have anything to do with DirectX though, so I don't know why none of your other games would run after that. Can you email me your system specs and we'll take a look at it? Mike Taber (mtaber@gamethoughts.com)

As for the logo, that's Erryn's. Congratulate him on a fine choice.

Also, does it do this if you don't click through the title screen?


No. Also, this only happens after I start a game, quit and start it again. After this it happens regularly only when I click the logo.


Also, do you have a localized install of Windows/DirectX, or an English installation of both?


No, it must be a regular English instalation.

Ok, this is going to drive me insane. :)

I can't reproduce this. I've actually been clicking through the intro for about a year, and have never seen this. It'd be nice if you just had out of date drivers or something.

Do you possibly have anything else running that could be interfering with this somehow?

Maybe you're just lucky...

What version of DirectX? It did have some occasional problems with straight 8.0 (instead of 8.0a, 8.1, 9.x, etc.)

I have DirectX 8.1 It's very likely that there is something wrong on my computer interfering with your game, but how can one really know?


Maybe you're just lucky...


Actually I am. The problem doesn't appear in the game screen, nor does it appear often, nor does it spoil the game in any way.

Could this be the same problem bernie has reported above?

I suppose it's possible, but it doesn't sound like it to me. Bernie doesn't seem to have reported any graphic glitches...he said it wouldn't start again after the first time. I'm wondering if he "cleaned up" some dll's that it needed, based on what he said. If he sees this, maybe he can clarify that for me.

It appears consistently in the menus, or only in the title screen after starting?

Ok, Erryn and Mike, it is a great progress.

Why I said one should avoid touch the system dirs? Because we all use our computers for working and programming, too. With known bugs of our current .dll environment. For example I am still using sp2 for win2k and sp5 for winnt4.

The other reason is not everyone has administrator rights on his computer. (!)

Ok, I have a win98se partition for games with stock asus nvidia driver for my gf2. The directx version is 9.0 because of freelancer. The cause of directx glitch could be that you don't clearly release the surfaces. This version of windoze is quite a punisher to sloppy programmers!

As I have pointed out earlier this is not really my type of game, but I like to help people with testing their stuffs.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the suggestion that I'm a sloppy programmer... :)

WordWars generally doesn't use surfaces at all, just textures...which are released appropriately after use. I will have another look at how it's handling the few it uses, even though I'm fairly confident they're being handled properly.

> Thanks for the suggestion that I'm a sloppy programmer...

Hey, I am that too! Sometimes. :)

WordWars download page (http://www.gamethoughts.com/wordwars/download.asp)

We spent another week on it, and given the amount of feedback we incorporated, I'd say it's far better than it was before. There's now a guest login that is automatically filled in for the users who wish to simply try the Brainstorm server. We also added a bunch of tooltip text to most of the game, and added in-game hints.

Skins for the game are now available on the website. (they even install to the correct directories. :) The Brainstorm server has changed considerably, but still runs stably (is that a word?)

Any other comments on the new stuff, just let us know. Thanks!

Hey Mike,

I just gave it a quick run...the lobby now looks correct on my XP setup with large fonts, nice work.

The tool tips are helpful...I think they take a little too long to come up (at first, I thought they weren't working). Also, you may want to move their location...they kept covering up game messages when the computer player made his move. They were definitely helpful tho.

Good luck!
-Scorpio

Glad to hear the fonts work right now.

Placing the tooltips is tricky, since with the different skins everything can be in different locations (so there's no one safe spot to put them). I messed with moving them around, but didn't like how that was working out. Maybe I'll figure out a more satisfying way to do that for a next version. :)