State of Profit

[Bonbon-Chan]

I still have the freezing problem with new busses (I have try with another PC and another Internet connection). It is far too annoying 
May be it is related to my 1k buses 

[Mickelukas]

It might very well be related to your big number of buses. I'll try to reproduce it in the weekend.

First week of work is always busy but hopefully I'll have some energy in the evenings next week to get some coding done.

I'll reset the server once it's worthy of a 1.2 update (I'm thinking expanding reputation, showing your reputation to cities, sort options in all windows with lists, general bug fixing, an economy overview page, first version of farms and first version of research). It'll be done when it's done but I'm hoping in 1.5 weeks or so. The current server has been running long enough now but it's also giving me good information about issues that can happen really late in the game once the speed is slowed down a bit.

Mike

[ra4king]

Wow I haven't played in a while, I log in, and I have $15 million!! Now to rule the world!!

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Mickelukas]

First of all, yay, 10 pages and 6000 views!

Secondly:
19th of August 2011:
New:
The vehicle list can now be sorted on name, profit and status
The station list can now be sorted on name, passengers waiting and vehicles using the station

Modified:
Removed the start and end station from the vehicle list to be able to show twice as many vehicles

Bugs:
Fixed an html login issue that could happen on internet explorer
Fixed a bug where negative vehicle profit was displayed as 0
Lowered the amount of flickering in windows when clicking on options really quickly
Fixed a dead lock that could happen when rotating a station
Fixed a dead lock that could happen when selecting vehicles/setting destinations
Fixed a client null pointer exception when teleporting to a station/vehicle
Fixed a bug that caused the city names to disappear
Fixed a bug that caused the walls of the buildings to come out of the roof
Fixed a bug (hopefully, don't have a way to test it) where older intel gfx cards showed water through the land
Fixed a bug where the water wasn't visible in the corner of the land

[counterp]

lol'd

[Mickelukas]

Oh, I forgot to say that I added some off road buses in the update, sorry about that.

Hahaha, that looks really nice :-D

That should never ever happen so I'll have a look at it.

[Mickelukas]

Reputation and general functionality update!

21st of August 2011:
New:
You can now click on the stations in the vehicle window to open the corresponding station
You can now click or drag in the lists to scroll
You can now see the number of vehicles using a station in the station window
You can now see the max passengers waiting in the station window

Modified:
The cities window has been made bigger so you can see more cities in one view

Reputation:
You can now see your reputation to a city by clicking on the city label, reputation is updated once every 2 hours
Reputation is now visible in the cities list and it's sortable
Not transporting people from your stations will lower your reputation to the city, transporting people will raise your reputation. If you built a ton of stations in a city and don't take care of your passengers you will soon not get any passengers anymore (I'm looking at you counterp! )
Planting trees raises your reputation, removing trees lowers it

EDIT:
Resetting all reputation to 100 in a moment and restarting the server. I calculated reputation based on passengers a bit wrongly

[Riven]

Interesting stuff!

As 'counterp' basically walled my cities, *my* reputation changed to 'hated' and all my buses are driving around empty

[Mickelukas]

Ya, I was unlucky when I was thinking. The first thing the server did during startup was check how many % of your passengers you had transported (which of course was 0) and then deducted reputation. It also removed reputation per station and not per user, so if you had a ton of stations in a city you instantly got hit like crazy

Fixed it (as far as I can tell) and uploaded the new version.

EDIT:
General thoughts around the current reputation system:
If you are a new player and build in a city where you get a ton of passengers your reputation will most likely drop unless you built lots of buses. After the initial drops you'll get less and less passengers and eventually you'll even out or increase.

If you're the only one in a city you'll always get all passengers unless you're "hated", make sure to treat the passengers nicely in the cities where you're the only one.

You will only be known to a city after you build a station, planting lots of trees around cities where you don't have a business is just a waste of money.

When you start you can either:
Put lots of buses on the stations to make sure you transport all people (therefore increasing reputation), but on the other hand earn less as each bus transports less passengers.
Put less buses on the stations and expand quickly or log in more often to make sure you transport everyone.

It's most of the time difficult to reach "hated" (0 reputation), but if you do the only thing you, currently, can do to increase your reputation is plant trees.

If you build stations in a city and don't have the money to buy buses (or just build stations for the heck of it) you'll loose reputation quite quickly and the other people will get more passengers.

There is no way to see the reputation of other people. It'll be added in the future as a "market analysis" option that'll cost 10.000 or something.

Mike

[ra4king]

As always amazing job Mickelukas!

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Bonbon-Chan]

Fixed a dead lock that could happen when selecting vehicles/setting destinations

At last, it is playable again ! 

Fixed a bug (hopefully, don't have a way to test it) where older intel gfx cards showed water through the land

Well, it is not 100% resolve. The big blue rows have disappear but there is still a few flickering of water.

[Mickelukas]

As always amazing job Mickelukas!

Thanks Next up is either an economy overview page, research, selling vehicles or changing stations.

I'll also need to fix the buses that drive off road, I'll see what I feel like doing first

Well, it is not 100% resolve. The big blue rows have disappear but there is still a few flickering of water.

Thanks for the info, I'll probably need access to an old computer to solve the last one though.

[counterp]

Interesting stuff!

As 'counterp' basically walled my cities, *my* reputation changed to 'hated' and all my buses are driving around empty

I don't trust those Mettawan bastards to the south for a second.. I made a protective wall for the city!

Besides, it's becoming a nightmare to spend this $124 million

Why is everyone hating on me

[Mickelukas]

I'm hoping for a server reset in a week or so, after 3-4 days you're making more money than you can spend so I'll need to fix that without messing up the speed of making money in the beginning. Research will help a bit though.

Cities hate you because you built stations without transporting people from them. What do you expect people to do if they spent 10 minutes to walk to your station and they had to wait for hours before a bus came (if one came at all!)

Also:
23rd of August 2011:
Bugs:
Lowered the possibility of seeing a car driving off road (they never drive off road on the server so you'll always get your money as intended)
Fixed a bug where vehicles were added to stations when they weren't actually there

[Mickelukas]

As everyone has been asking for a way to sell vehicles, here we go with the latest update.

24th of August 2011:
New:
You can now tell vehicles to stop at the next station
When a vehicle is stopped you can sell it for 2000 (next up is changing the other station while stopped)

Modified:
You now start the game with twice as much money (400.000 instead of 200.000)
You get about 1/10th of the money for really long trips, if you have a good path it's still better than short distances
The passengers added has been halved, but by increasing your reputation you'll get extra passengers
Vehicle maintenance has been decreased somewhat
Station maintenance costs change with passengers using your station, the more passengers, the more expensive maintenance (as will be seen on the station window later)

Bugs:
Fixed a bug that would cause blank areas in the game when building trees close to the borders of the world

[Riven]

Regarding your plans to reset the world 'soon', I'd advice you not to make the big changes in a new world.

In the current world, you have players with a lot of money, than can easily afford to mess around testing new features. Once you find most bugs and balance your new features, it might be a better time for a reset.

[Mickelukas]

That's true, once I add farms I think I'll have to as they need to be tested and they'll influence the city growth speed (no food, no love!)

The current players don't play too much anyway as everyone is running around with a billion in cash and have stations everywhere

On the other hand, if I do farms last of the new features it'll still take some time

[ra4king]

I currently have $27 million!! I have been so busy with school that I couldn't log on. Now my reputation is terrible because each station is only used by 2-4 buses and there are thousands of passengers waiting T_____T

[Mickelukas]

I currently have $27 million!! I have been so busy with school that I couldn't log on. Now my reputation is terrible because each station is only used by 2-4 buses and there are thousands of passengers waiting T_____T

Big cities will grow less quick after the next reset (farms will arrange for that) and once you built up some reputation and know from the beginning more or less how many buses you'll have to use in a city it'll make more sense too.

Also:
25th of August 2011:
New:
Added hourly station maintenance cost to the station windows
By clicking on "Vehicles currently in this station" in the station window you'll instead see all vehicles using the station

Modified:
Vehicles with negative profit shows up in red in the vehicle list
The city list doesn't show all text in bold anymore
You only see the labels of other people's stations if zoomed in a lot
Changed maintenance cost to be deducted every 5 minutes instead of every 10 minutes to prepare for day cycles
Planting/removing trees has a direct impact on your reputation instead of having to wait for up to 2 hours

Bugs:
Fixed a bug that could cause two vehicles to have the same name
Fixed an issue that could cause an faked client message to put the server into an infinite loop (Way to go testing guys )
Moved the station marker on the map half a square so the station is at the correct position
The station window updates to the correct status when you set a vehicle to stop

Restarted the server.

[Mickelukas]

Features that miss :
- a way to delete a bus
- a way to change origine/destination of a bus (You should do that you can only change the station the bus is not on the way to)

Added so you can change the destinations

27th of August 2011:
New:
When a vehicle is stopped at a station you can now change the other destination
It's now possible for me to broadcast messages to the logged in users, for example to warn for a server restart

Modified:
All clickable links in the vehicle and station windows are now bold so it's easy to see where you can click

Restarted the server.

Kind regards,
Mike

[Nightrise]

First I'd like to say congratulations on your MMO, I know you put a lot of work into it.  Overall an entertaining game with good potential.

My experience with your game has been over the past 24+ hours and I ended up making two accounts because the first one I expanded to quickly it would seem, but even in my second attempt I've come up short.  Here are my thoughts.

Ideas

a. Remove the $4,000 cost to bulldoze (remove) a bus station.

 Reason: In the beginning of the game you start with $400K which is understandable so that a player can make roads and help expand and connect the towns within the game.  In my first attempt I expanded without knowing how the game worked, it's hard not to over expand with $400K at the start.  I built stations with no buses ( I thought they would be automatic ) and by the time I realized this I couldn't afford 2 buses in all my stations, I actually had 2 stations with zero buses.  At this point in the game I'm losing money and the game is over.  If you can't make profit you can't buy more buses, without buses there is no income, if you can't get rid of stations they will always cost you in maintenance fees.  It's a lose lose situation.

Also, in my second attempt at the game I started with 6 bus stations in 6 big towns.  I "grouped" them in pairs of 3, each bus station had 2 buses.  All of my buses were making great profit, at least $500... most were making $1,000 and some $1,500.  Even with this profit I'm still -$4,000...

b. Limit the number of stations a player can build within the first 24 hours of the game.

Reason: This sort of plays with idea “a”.  If the concept of the game is to start with 2 or maybe even 3 bus stations, and then have 5+ buses in each then you may want to limit a players ability to make bus stations in the first 24 hours.  This way they will be playing the way the game is intended and stick around longer.  I started with the theory of multiple stations with 2-3 buses in each, and it failed twice haha.

Under the money symbol in the top right of the screen you could put “2/4 Bus Stations” or something.

c. Work on the GUI.

Reason:  I feel like some sort of UI giving you more information about your investments would be beneficial and keep the user wanting to play and see his stats improve.  You can take the items from the left menu and build them into the GUI for a better look.  I also understand you are probably going for a look to keep the screen open so people can view the world more freely, but nevertheless a GUI would keep people interested.

d. Chat window.

Reason:  As this is an MMO people do like to communicate with each other.  They may want to talk about strategies, get other players to help them develop a part of the map or just have a conversation with each other while they review their buses.

e. More building types in the future.
Reason:  As you expand the game I'd consider adding in some different types of buildings to make the towns feel like a good community.  Schools, police stations, bank, shopping mall or anything else would be a pleasant addition.



Again, this is a great game and I see potential here.  Keep up the good work and I hope my feedback helps you.   

[Mickelukas]

Hi Nightrise,

Thanks a ton for your testing and feedback! It's very nice to see that several people either registered on the forum just to post in this thread, or at least posted their first post in here. Welcome to JGO!

I already did some changes in my test environment based upon you playing (even before you posted this ) as I noticed that some things went terribly wrong for players starting late in the game.

a. Remove the $4,000 cost to bulldoze (remove) a bus station.

 Reason: In the beginning of the game you start with $400K which is understandable so that a player can make roads and help expand and connect the towns within the game.  In my first attempt I expanded without knowing how the game worked, it's hard not to over expand with $400K at the start.  I built stations with no buses ( I thought they would be automatic ) and by the time I realized this I couldn't afford 2 buses in all my stations, I actually had 2 stations with zero buses.  At this point in the game I'm losing money and the game is over.  If you can't make profit you can't buy more buses, without buses there is no income, if you can't get rid of stations they will always cost you in maintenance fees.  It's a lose lose situation.

Also, in my second attempt at the game I started with 6 bus stations in 6 big towns.  I "grouped" them in pairs of 3, each bus station had 2 buses.  All of my buses were making great profit, at least $500... most were making $1,000 and some $1,500.  Even with this profit I'm still -$4,000...

As for your first attempt I'll consider removing the fee (or at least half it or so) but once I manage to get some kind of guide or help into the game for new players, building stations but not buses shouldn't be an issue.

It was your second attempt that made me change things in my test environment. You built a station in a big city where there were only one other player. This gave you a ton of passengers and therefore you had to pay 20.000 in bus station maintenance per hour. I lowered the maintenance fee significantly so it won't happen again. Better yet, after the next reset when farms will be necessary to grow big cities, people should take care of their big cities. They won't grow big without some attention from the player(s) that have stations in there. This will hopefully make it even more unlikely that people end up with huge maintenance bills in the beginning of the game.

b. Limit the number of stations a player can build within the first 24 hours of the game.

Reason: This sort of plays with idea “a”.  If the concept of the game is to start with 2 or maybe even 3 bus stations, and then have 5+ buses in each then you may want to limit a players ability to make bus stations in the first 24 hours.  This way they will be playing the way the game is intended and stick around longer.  I started with the theory of multiple stations with 2-3 buses in each, and it failed twice haha.

Under the money symbol in the top right of the screen you could put “2/4 Bus Stations” or something.

This seems to play nicely into having some kind of guide or help system early on. I know that there are people that will just click through it and try to play by themselves, but somewhere I'll have to draw the line between forcing people to play the game "the correct way" and letting them figure things out by themselves.

c. Work on the GUI.

Reason:  I feel like some sort of UI giving you more information about your investments would be beneficial and keep the user wanting to play and see his stats improve.  You can take the items from the left menu and build them into the GUI for a better look.  I also understand you are probably going for a look to keep the screen open so people can view the world more freely, but nevertheless a GUI would keep people interested.

I have two things planned for this topic and I hope you'll agree with me
1. Soon(tm) I'll add an economy overview page that shows you all revenue and expenses for the previous 24 hours and for the 24 hours before that (I think, it might be last 2 hours or something as 2 hours in the real world will be 24 hours in the game).
2. I've already got sketches for a menu bar with nice looking buttons instead of the current text one and where you also can see things like the current time in the game world.

As for other gui impovements I agree with you to 100%, the problem is that I suck in graphics (all the graphics in the game and the website so far is by me and as you can see they are lacking some ) I'll try to prioratize it down the line but I'm hoping that I'll find someone to do some pixel artisty things for me instead If anyone feels called I'm even prepared to pay some for it as long as the results are good!

d. Chat window.

Reason:  As this is an MMO people do like to communicate with each other.  They may want to talk about strategies, get other players to help them develop a part of the map or just have a conversation with each other while they review their buses.

The missis is telling me the same all the time, I'll definately put one in. My plan was to only add a chat for people in the same "Cartel" to not get lots of spam and need for moderation. Until there are cartels I'm guessing I'll add one for now though that is for everyone logged in and change it down the line.

Also, I'll add a forum today/tomorrow so people can exchange ideas and come with suggestions.

e. More building types in the future.
Reason:  As you expand the game I'd consider adding in some different types of buildings to make the towns feel like a good community.  Schools, police stations, bank, shopping mall or anything else would be a pleasant addition.

From your suggestions it seems like you mean building types in the city and not building types you can make yourself. Making the cities more vibrant with skyscrapers and special buildings is definately the idea, and will probably be part of the updates I put in before 1.3.

Again, this is a great game and I see potential here.  Keep up the good work and I hope my feedback helps you.   

It's people like you that keep me motivated to put so many hours into the game in the evenings after the kid is to bed. Thank you so very much for the feedback and I hope you'll find your way to the game forum once it's up and running.

Kind regards,
Mike

[ra4king]

I just a noticed an annoying lag when going from the map to the world. The game freezes for about 2-3 seconds transitioning either way. Since I zoom out a lot, a seemless transition is a must. Great job on the game so far!!

[Mickelukas]

I just a noticed an annoying lag when going from the map to the world. The game freezes for about 2-3 seconds transitioning either way. Since I zoom out a lot, a seemless transition is a must. Great job on the game so far!!

The reason for the lag is that it downloads the land you are looking at from the server and then generates things like the shadows and the VBO's. My java skills brought me to the current freeze period and I'd need more knowledge to bring it further down.
I was considering to add some kind of text saying that the game is loading instead of just freezing it but it's not very high on the todo list

Ideas?

Mike

[Riven]

I just logged in, after a week or so, and lots of my towns had bus stations without any busses left.

[Mickelukas]

I just logged in, after a week or so, and lots of my towns had bus stations without any busses left.

Without any buses left? so you had a bus on full load and you were hated so no new passengers came... or?

Mike

[Riven]

The buses just vanished. All bus stations in the towns say: "Vehicles using station: 0" and I'm deeply hated as a result

[Mickelukas]

The buses just vanished. All bus stations in the towns say: "Vehicles using station: 0" and I'm deeply hated as a result

According to the db you have 532 buses, I'll look into it, thanks for the bug

Mike

[Mickelukas]

All,

The forum on the site is now up and running, you might need to refresh to get the latest js and css. I didn't link the account creation as that seemed like a huge task and now you don't need to create an account in the game if you just want to write in the forum.

I'll not post every single update on this site anymore as I'm flooding JGO and pushing down the games of other people. I'll still post all updates but I'll push them together into bigger update posts. I'll still be visiting this forum and replying to everything so you won't get rid of me that easily

28th of August 2011:
New:
Forum! The game now has a dedicated forum, please stop by and post your ideas.

Modified:
The rankings page now has the correct button graphic

Bugs:
Fixed a bug where the password field when logging in would display the password instead of stars (*****)

Kind regards,
Mike

[ra4king]

I just a noticed an annoying lag when going from the map to the world. The game freezes for about 2-3 seconds transitioning either way. Since I zoom out a lot, a seemless transition is a must. Great job on the game so far!!

The reason for the lag is that it downloads the land you are looking at from the server and then generates things like the shadows and the VBO's. My java skills brought me to the current freeze period and I'd need more knowledge to bring it further down.
I was considering to add some kind of text saying that the game is loading instead of just freezing it but it's not very high on the todo list

Ideas?

Mike

Do you have to reload the world when zooming back in? Can't you cache the world that you left?