Global Triumph

Yep!  It's actually been one of the to-do items on my list.

damn, im good. i reminded you :P its hard talking about borders and harder keeping them right

- Battle Log and Treaties have been moved from the zoomed view to the World's Tools menu.

- The world view's Display menu has changed.  It also now includes options to display country borders and labels.

Have I mentioned lately that you're absolutely amazing?  When can I donate?

will there be a feature in the near future to allow the transfer of missiles from one ally to another?

I get the sense that that kind of feature could be abused.

that'd get abused just like money transfering would.

Gopherbashi and parandiac are exactly right.

I won't add anything that allows any sharing of resources.  It would only encourage users to try to create multiple accounts and countries.

Thank you.

And remember that the next time you run into a bug. haha

- The Help page has been replaced by a Help Wiki.  I created very basic intro topics, but I'll update them with more content from the previous Help page soon.  (The previous page is still accessible.)  Any time and effort you can spend updating the content within it would be greatly appreciated!

- I created the Wiki myself in order integrate into the site and game more easily, as well as to structure the content as needed.  Everything appears to be functioning correctly, but please let me know if you encounter any bugs while using it.

- You can now define shortcut keys to create or delete pins on the Settings page.  Clicking on a pin now allows you to attach a comment to it.  (Pins will soon be shared within alliances, but that step hasn't been implemented yet.)

Might it be a good idea at some point (doesn't have to be now, but eventually) to have a "new players only" map?  When looking at Borogov, I'm noticing that a lot of the larger nations are controlled by players who have been on Ankylo for some time, whereas the smaller nations are mostly controlled by players with newer accounts (ie. created after Dec. 15th).

I'm concerned that the resulting advantage for established players will cause the newbies to be disheartened, become disinterested with the game, and prevent the player base from growing substantially over time.

I suggest having a new-account-only world because this will give new players a chance to learn the ropes for themselves, without getting clobbered by the more knowledgeable players within a week or two.

I think that's a great idea!  I've added it to the list.  Thanks!!

- Pins are now automatically visible to other members of your alliance.  Also, an entry has been added to the World view's "Display" menu to hide/show alliance members' pins.

- Players can now see the attack paths of their fellow alliance members' units in the zoom view.  (Air attacks are not shown, since it would either be confusing if unlabeled or cluttered if it were.)

- Air attacks are now identified by a more specific icon that represents the strongest air unit in the attack.  For example, launching a bomb and a missile in the same attack will display a bomb icon (mushroom cloud).  Of course, launching a single type of air unit (as is the case with most air attacks) will simply display the icon for that type.

- The World view's Tools menu now contains an "Overview" option that displays the full map rendered to the size of your browser window.  The map highlights all of your units in white and all of your fellow alliance members' units in black.

Cool, that is exactly what I was looking for.

- Raw materials mining levels now drop according to the percent of land a country owns.  Once a country owns more than 5%, the percent mined drops as the user grows.  (Conceptually, this reflects additional costs in gathering and processing resources over a larger piece of land.)

- Units now have maintenance costs.  When income is calculated in the Daily Cycle, 0.02% of the value of all bases and defenses and 0.2% of the value of all units is deducted.  These values may be adjusted in the future.

Would it be possible to display each map's total number of land sectors?  Just an additional entry in the World Statistics column would be nice.

- Units now have a "split" option and a keyboard shortcut for it.  Each unit has its own split distance, which is listed in the Help section.  In order to prevent unit "hopping," a unit that has been created by a split cannot be merged with until after a cycle has passed.

- The statistics on the home page now include your country's daily maintenance costs and each world's total and land sector counts.

You must be snowed in and have nothing better to do.  Over the last week, you have got a lot of shit done.

i really hope this kills your income. :P

Could you also add mean global money per sector?  I would love to know how my money per sector compares to the world.

I think it would be even better to have mean, median, and mode...

Hell, while your at it, why don't you just email me (only me) everyone's money, sector count, troop strength, a screen shot of all their attacks, and anything else you feel relative every day...

I love coding, so this typically is my something better to do. haha

I'm also very anxious to get the game to Beta.  There's very little to finish up at this point, so I'm trying to wrap up all the loose ends.

Should this also work with merging -> splitting?  ie. a unit that has been merged cannot be split in the same turn?

It wouldn't really be accurate because very small countries can be very skewed.  For example, there's one country who owns one sector.  Since every user gets a base income of $8,000, his money per sector is $7,995.

Yes!  Excellent catch!  I'll add that now.

Alright, it's fixed!  A unit that has been merged into cannot be split until after a cycle has passed.

Thanks, Gopher!

Well, I definitely needed to change some of my strategies!

- The "Attacks" button in the World view now cycles between your country's attacks (in black), alliance attacks (in white), or off.

It's kind of a useful feature, but I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of how it's set up.  I think I'd like this a lot better if "Alliance Attacks" were in the Display menu, probably right under "Alliance Pins".

I don't know if it would make sense to move "Nation Attacks" from its own button to the Display Menu if you end up doing this.

I initially tried "Attacks" and "Alliance Attacks" as items within the "Display" menu, but the attack overlay image is something that needs to be generated dynamically (since attacks are always changing).  You end up waiting another second or two for the World view to come up, which I thought was annoying.  Yes, you can turn the layers off, but then you'd have to click into the menu and click to see your attacks every time you wanted to check on them, which is tedious.

I could do separate buttons, but that seems wasteful.  I thought I could also make hovering over the "Attacks" button open a window with a link/button for "Alliance Attacks," so you can move over and click without too much extra effort.  That, though, would then work differently than all of the other menus and I didn't want it to become unintuitive.

I initially thought I'd combine attacks and alliance attacks in one overlay (using black and white to differentiate them), but people voted to keep them separate.  Maybe they'd vote differently if they knew they'd be highlighted using different colors.  I'll try another poll.

What if clicking on the attack button automatically toggled your own attacks, but also brought up a list of everyone in your alliance?  Although I'm wondering if that would be more trouble than it's worth.

ATTACKS . . . . . . . . . x

O Crisconia
----------
O Parandiac
O Johnny
O TodZumTeufel
----------
O Select All

Yeah, I think that would be a pain because you'd have to click the "X" to close the attack menu each time you clicked attacks.  I think the drop-drop menu that auto appears and hides would be a better option at that point.

I'm going to give the poll a couple days and then I'll come up with a better solution.

- A "group clone attack" shortcut key has been added to the settings page.  When playing the game in the zoomed view, hold this key and then click and drag your mouse over the units to which you'd like to apply a clone attack.  (The area you are dragging over will appear highlighted on the screen.)  When you let go of the mouse, the highlighted units will have a clone attack applied to them.

There are two very important notes to keep in mind.

One, whether the clone attack applies to land or sea units depends on which type had more units in the highlight.  So, for example, if your highlight includes five land units and two sea units, the clone attack would apply to the land units.  It's built this way to account for a unit or two of the other type that may happen to be in the selection area.

Two, the direction you draw the box determines the order in which the attacks are set.  The order is set first by row, then by column.  So, for example, if you draw a box from the top-left to the bottom-right, then the left-most unit in the top-most row would set first, then any units to its right in the same row, then it would move down a row and again move from left to right.  If, for example, you drew a box from the bottom-right to the top-left, the right-most unit in the bottom-most row would set first, then any units to its left in the same row, then it would move up a row and again move from right to left.  This means it's generally best to start drawing the box on the side the units should be moving toward (ensuring the closest units to the starting spot move first).

I cannot get this to work, or does it not apply to units on Ankylo?

I got the highlighted area, then nothing happened initially, then it caused my whole browser to freeze up

sweet, my group clone attack was implemented ^^

i cant get it to work just yet, but this is going to make expansion campaigns so much quicker! ^^ move a vast number of units in just a few clicks! alright!

You're using IE, correct?  I can only get IE to run smoothly on the default 57x37 zoom size.  Almost anything larger causes constant hangs for me.  It's JavaScript implementation is just awful.

I checked and it looks like the command was called and responded correctly on the server, so it could just be that your browser chugged on the update.

Can you please elaborate on "can't get it to work just yet"?  Do you mean it hasn't been working correctly for you within the game?

Google Chrome works with full zoom size and i never have any hang ups or issues. IE has always been buggy and Firefox is slow. Try out Google Chrome, never get an issue really.

And the Group Clone works now. not sure what it was. before i couldnt get a square to appear, but now its working

I'm not sure which version of Firefox you use, but I actually found Firefox 3.5 and Chrome to be very similar in speed when I tested Chrome.

hmmm... maybe its my system then. Im using an OS called Jolicloud... and Firefox would drag to load even the simplest of pages. I had the latest version of Firefox about a month ago, but i couldnt take it. Opera and Chrome run wonders on this system. But im use to Chrome from when i use to run windows.

I dont know whether its the system or the browser, but my brother also uses Chrome and he has Win XP.

Firefox seems to work fine for me.

- The Settings page now has an option to select how the "Attacks" button functions in the World view.

- The latest YouTube map videos have been uploaded.  (The videos now generate themselves, so I just need to automate the uploading to YouTube.  Once I have a chance to do that, they'll automatically post every two weeks.)

- The map videos will automatically generate and upload to the Too Much Stupid YouTube channel every Monday morning.  There will no longer be updates posted to the board when the videos are uploaded.

- A new option has been added to the "Settings" page that allows you to specify where the options panel should display when using certain functions that require input (such as unit creation).

- A "Radar" option has been added to sea bases (when occupied by a construction truck) and a "Radar" button has been added to the World view's menu.  Clicking the button will display your country's radar areas and highlight any enemy units located in water sectors within radar range.