Go-Live in < 3 Weeks

With major development wrapped up, I've been focusing on fixing nagging issues and bugs prior to the code freeze on May 25th.  After the code freeze only critical issues (showstoppers) will be addressed, as I have to allow enough time for my builds to be approved by Apple and Google.  There were several additions this week, for both the client and server, so let's dive in.

First up, the inclusion of using the unique identifier provided by Unity to identify devices.  When Conquest! was on IRC, the server used the IP address of the player to identify possible duplicates.  With WiFi and cellular connectivity, IPs change frequently and are no longer a good indicator of a duplicate.  Conquest! has a general rule that only one player is allowed per person and this enhancement will help enforce the rule.

I also added capability to the server to save the last combat report.  This report allows players to see the outcome of a battle which occurred when they were offline.  The server records all world events to a text file which can be viewed here.  This log is rotated at each New Year Season.

Hordes were renamed from "Weak", "Mediocre", "Strong", and "Mighty" to "Small", "Medium", "Large", and "Huge" to better reflect their size (50%, 75%, 100%, 125%).  I also capped reinforcements to Small (except when artifacts are used) so they will be more predictable.  Player's can view their own reinforcements from the Combat screen and those for other players when spying.  I also increased the minimum amount of land each continent will contain when a new age is started.  This increases the land players have to control for promotions, since these are based on a percentage of the total land on the continent.

Timezone issues were also addressed.  Seasons occur at a player's local time and all log and chat messages are normalized to that timezone.  I discovered there was an issue handling DST times, which meant these normalized times were off by an hour.  This should now be corrected and the client will also periodically send an update to the server, in case the timezone changes.

Several commands were removed from the server.  Most of these were maintenance commands used by owners ("Titans") to show information about the game or other players. The functionality was moved to a single command.  I removed the "reprieve" player command, as this information is now displayed when you spy on another player.  Finally, I was also able to remove several unused global variables which were hanging around for some reason.

The tutorial was moved from a separate data structure to the player structure.  This simplifies the creation and storage of tutorials and also prevents "orphans".  The tutorial itself was expanded to include several more hints and information about the game, based on user feedback.

A special thank you to the community at BetaBound.com who have provided exceptional feedback.  If you are a developer looking for help I would strongly encourage you to check them out.

Sign up for the Conquest! mailing list here and follow the journey on Facebook or Twitter.  Until next time, I hope to see you in the game.