Persistent Browser-Based Games Blog

Angels and Demons

Angels and Demons is the latest game I have been working on. It is a resource management game where the primary resource is souls.

The game starts of simply and gets more complex as you progress. There is a certain language or culture that goes with this game as you will see.

When you start you have to choose a side to join. You can either join the Angels or the Demons. Angels defend a bit better and Demons attack a bit better. Once you have made a choice, you can not change sides.

After you have picked a side you are given a piece of land, called a Holt.A Holt consist of a 7 x 8 grid of land. It is your base of operations…of sorts.
On a Holt you can build structures, each structure allows you to do take different actions. Certain structures train warriors, others will gather souls, others will cast and maintain spells.

Each building that you build increases your Holt’s attack and defense powers. Not important right now, but critical later on.

You start the game with 1,000 action points. Action points are the life of the game, they allow you to perform actions. You receive 1 action point per min up to a max of 1,000. (This may change depending on the game server and general feelings of the developer). Action points can not be purchased.

You start with the ability to build three types of buildings:

One that will train warriors. One that will gather souls. And one that will defend your Holt. You can build as many as you want although each building cost a different amount of action points and souls to build.

Each building allows you to “Research” another building. These research able buildings can not be built by you yet, as you do not know “how” to build them. Spend the action points and these buildings will become available to you. The first few are easy to research.

Now this game takes a bit of thought, initially it would appear that if you build a bunch of stuff you can win easily, but you will find that your action points will not be enough. You can not win this game by being the fastest “clicker” or the person who visits the most often. You have to do a bit of planning. Strategy some might say. *grin*

Once you have an Army go exploring, visit the Holts around you and figure out who deserves to die.

The Next Level

There is a meta game, to Angels and Demons. You have your Holt and you can explore the surrounding 8 Holts. These 9 Holts, yours and the 8 around it, make up a Realm.

Initially you are competing with just those folks in your Realm. But when you begin to dominate and hold 3 or more Holts you will receive a “Realm Gate”, sometimes called a Neather Rip, this gate will allow you to travel to other Realms.

However it’s a double edged sword. Until a Realm Gate is built your realm could not be attacked from other Realms. Now that one exists, other Angels and Demons can enter.

So at this point you are now competing against other Realm holders.

Ranking

You will always see a ranking for just players who have Holts in your Realm.

You can see a game ranking which ranks you with all players as well.

Tokens and Membership

Members can purchase Tokens. Tokens allow you to perform certain actions quicker but still take action points. For example you purchased a “Fallen Angel” for 500 Action points….normally you would have to wait about 3 hours before that unit is ready to fight. Member tokens can be used to bring that character up to speed immediately. There is a limit to how many tokens you receive each day, and every time a member uses tokens, free tokens are given to Non-members.

Members have special avatars in the rankings, chat and online boards.

Members are able to name their Holt and lay down different floors on their Holts.

Members are able to view a full list of all their buildings and all the outstanding actions for those buildings.

Thanks for reading the post!!!

Posted in PBBG Websites | Related Content | 1 Comment »

5 Ways to Make Your Game Addictive

We all believe that players love to play our games, but what really makes our games addictive. I have found that the following traits tend to relate to the addictiveness of a game. The more your game has the better it will be.

Reason #1: Full Immersion

Players like to be drawn into the story. While most PBBG will not take over the entire screen or have heavy 3d graphics, having a background story and a consistent narrative throughout the game goes a long way to having immersing the player in your game. Be forewarned this is one of the toughest of all of the attributes to implement as it takes a methodical, long term, and strategic builder to maintain a good story line.

Reason #2: Player Ownership

Allow your players to “own” a piece of the game. Ask yourself what aspects of the game play do you allow your players to control. The most common implementations of this are an in game auction site, allowing players to sell items from a shop, or allowing players to swap items or even create them. One of the best games online that allow player ownership is SecondLife. (Yes, I realize it is not really a game)

Reason #3: Personalization

Do you give your players a way to stand out from other players? The more opportunity you give them to stand out the more invested they become in playing the game. Most games have some sort of built in Avatar system, while this does go toward personalization it has been proven that most gamers have become jaded to the avatar and consider it the same as a personal username. Leaving the Avatar system with a lesser impact than it did in past times.

Reason #4: Rare Items/Actions

Having rare items within your game gives the collector within the gamer something to look forward too. The issue with rare items is that often they are “game changers” in that who ever owns one is semi-god like. In truth a rare item that has less power works just as well as a powerful rare item. There are two caveats to keep in mind, first knowledge of its rarity must be will know, and second the item must have a “unique” appearance within the game. For Example: Everyone knows that finding the “Super Secret Rod of Civility” is really hard to get, and if you get one your face glows red. The only way to get a glowing red face is if you have the secret rod.

Reason #5: Showing the Ladder

How easy is it for your players to see their progress in the game? Players like to get that immediate gratification as they rack up the score, so make sure that they can see their name on a scoreboard and see how they progress up it.  Even if it does nothing more than point out they they are NOT last on the list (only 2nd to last). This is one that is simple to build but rarely done correctly within PBBGs.

Comments are welcome,

mobeamer

Shameless Plugs…

UntouchableGames

A Game Developers Blog

Posted in Game Ideas, PBBG General | Related Content | 4 Comments »

Preventing voting cheaters

You know how in many game listing sites they allow games to reward users for votes by sending the game server some data when a legitimate vote is counted? Yes, that’s a very nice and easy way to get lots of votes from your players.

However, there’s a lack of security involved. If somebody could figure out what the secret voting page is where the data is sent to, they could possibly fake a vote and get rewarded automatically every day/week, depending on when the votes are reset. There’s a simple way to avoid this: give that file a ridiculous long, random name and hide it in sub-sub-sub-directories, which might be bordering on paranoia.

Here’s a simple suggestion to any game listing owners, if you read this blog: give each game owner a unique key, and send that key along when you are sending user/voting info to a game server. It’s a very simple way for the game listing to identify itself and for the game server to verify it!

To be honest, I don’t know of any cases where somebody found a way to automatically fake voting by sending POST or GET requests to a page in a game, but it is possible. This suggestion just provides a little bit of security without having to require large code rewrites for the game listing and for the game owner.

Posted in Theory | Related Content | 3 Comments »

New features in Kapi Regnum

Times change, even in the Middle Ages. And new developments virtually abound in the Realm of Kapi Regnum. New quests, new features, bug fixes, special features and the appearance of a mysterious dark shape: The newly updated version of the medieval economy simulation Kapi Regnum has them all.

The creators of Kapi Regnum have really done a thorough job in giving the game the once over.

All those eager on multiplayer features can look forward to the exciting possibilities the new guild system offers. Players, who’d like to work towards a common goal, can now join forces by forming a guild with common interests, a unifying name, tag, a shoutbox on the game board and even a coat of arms that they can create themselves. To add some additional spice the system, the guild members can combine their efforts and money in order to create a Wonder of the World. Made of marble, the Wonder will grow in size the more the players contribute to the common goal. As reward, the guild members can proudly put a “Wonder of the World certificate” on their office shelves.

Not a team-player? No worries, those players, who prefer to bask in their own glory, can outdo themselves and their opponents in their attempts at receiving a Master of Research Certificate, by sending in their best goods to the newly created Royal Quality Institute.

With Columbus’s Egg and a Heart engraved in Wood, the Kapi Regnum team has also added two exciting new status symbols that players may acquire to increase their reputation and status points.

In the interest of usability, all buildings can in future be listed by ID, time and name, whereas the knowledge gained during researches may be sorted according to name or advantage. Pamphlet administration can be taken care of with just one click for those players owning a Premium Account. Premium users also now have exclusive access to a couple of interesting hidden beta features, such as clock that’s been added to the main menu, as well as a countdown for production buildings.

Interested in new quests? No problem either; but beware, you might encounter a sinister dark shape with mysterious motives …

Posted in PBBG General, PBBG News | Related Content | No Comments »

PBBG Developer Contest

Do you like to code games? Are you an artist? You might be interested in joining the PBBG Contest, hosted by Browser-Based Game Zone!

The contest lasts for two months, after which a winner will be chosen by judges. The winner receives many prizes, with sponsors such as Apex Web Gaming, Top Web Games, and YES, US, PBBG BLOG! Prizes include a domain and hosting, and lots of free advertising.

I will be joining the contest myself, and I am very curious to see what games are submitted!

Here’s an extract from the contest page (see for more info):

Browser-Based Game Zone is hosting a PBBG creation contest! Would you like to try creating a persistent browser-based game, and win something for it? This is your chance!

The contest lasts for two months, in which you may start creating your PBBG. After that, there will be one month for the winner to be selected and for the next contest to be set up.

The winner will be selected based simply on how fun their game is. Please note that details such as the number of players your game has accumulated will not be taken into account.

The winner is chosen by a selected panel of judges, who will play all games entered into the contest and vote for their favourite.

Posted in PBBG Coding, PBBG News | Related Content | No Comments »