Forge of Empires is a browser-based strategy game that lets you create your own city and accompany it from the beginning of the Stone Age onward throughout the centuries. Build structures typical of the epoch and enlarge your sphere of influence through military campaigns and skillful dealings. With a powerful army and the right tactics, you will subjugate your enemies and forge a vast empire.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

By Tribalwars Developer Typhi

We’re wrapping up 7.3 Production here at the office – you can expect localized announcements about the content and update times in the various forums in a few days. For now though, here are some of the most relevant bug fixes:

• Forwarding reports: we adjusted the auto-deletion trigger for forwarded reports to reset when they are received by a new user. We also fixed a problem with forwarding not working for a number of players.
• Reports: fixed problems where the forward and backward arrows (>>) didn’t display.
• War stats: Tribes should now only be reported as disbanded when they really have been disbanded, and all actions should now be shown properly in the Tribal Events feed.
• Address book: fixed problem with recipients disappearing from mailing lists.

Keep an eye out for the full 7.3 Change log.

Concept Art by Tribalwars Artist Andrei

Concept Art for some new Unit Info on the Unit Info pages

By Seven Lands Developers Team

We have had exploration in the game code for a while but it has taken until now before we could finalise this feature. Over the coming weeks we will unveil it for you on the beta first. We struggled with this aspect of the game mainly because we were not sure how to fit it into the game. It is very simple to put a new feature into a game but it is another matter entirely to have that feature fit seamlessly in. We didn’t want exploration to simply be something that you could pass a few minutes with while wandering from location to location. We wanted it to be something enticing and that our players would be eager to do.

The map you see to your above is blank and boring now. Once the feature is ready we will populate the map with icons that you can click on to explore. This will involve fights, discoveries and effects. The fights will be like a standard monster fight. The monsters we populate the exploration feature with you will in the most part at least hae met already. Be warned though that once you are out exploring in the wilds you will hae a good possibility of meeting monsters above your characters level that you won’t be able to deal with easily. Some of the monsters here will be different and unique however and the only place to encounter them is during exploration. The map represents a small area, in this case in Pinnath’Carag, around your characters current position. They can select from a number of locations to explore and the further they progress the more locations open. If the character can get through the entire map before it expires they will get a special reward!

So I am not going to reveal our entire feature now… you will have to wait a little longer for that! However I will tell you that we have added about two quests per land that depend entirely on exploration. Some of these we hae termed hunts where you will be going to tackle a specific monster that is marauding in the landscape. Others are more light in nature such as the “search for the seven dwarves“

Update

Above you can see another of our background maps. We have the artwork for these finalised now. Each of the lands will have their own map.

The icons on them will be unique too. A common set for each land wouldn’t be distinctive enough.

While you will see the same or similar forests all over the seven different lands each area will most definitely have its own areas to explore..

This is a pool from Lorach. Who knows what lies within it depths! We should be ready to test the feature today or tomorrow depending on getting everything correct. One of the bigger difficulties is having everything configurable and making sure that the combinations all work together. We are tying a lot of features into exploration, a lot of which you won’t have heard of yet. So making sure that these fit seamlessly together is a priority. One of the things being introduced is character effects. These will confer a lasting status onto the character.

Here is a sneak preview of one of our first Land Six Monsters.

This guy is going to be tough… we haven’t worked up his statistics at all yet but you had better be prepared if you venture out into the deserts of Erulith.

Currently the developers team is preparing the monsters for this land but they are not doing quests yet.

The developers team has some features that they now have graphics for and we want to get them fully implemented in the game.

I will have these previewed for you over the coming weeks! They are going to be great.

Click for 3600x4800 Hi Res Image

By TribalWars Developer Robert

7.3 production is proceeding well, though a bit more slowly than originally planned.

The majority of our effort so far has gone into improving some backend items, so there won’t be as much “ooh shiny and new!” stuff for you to fiddle with as usual, but we’re pretty sure you’ll like the few simple things we managed to include.

Our current notification system.

Fade out notification

Above, you can see our in-progress replacement for some of the popups that you need to click away before you can do other things that some players find inconvenient. (I personally agree completely).

Instead, we have developed a fade-out popup that gives the information you may want or need to know, but then leaves your screen after a second or so without you needing to do anything about it.

We’ve already replaced a few of the more obvious ones that came to mind, but would love to hear from you guys about which of the other numerous popups we should work on eliminating.

A new monster got introduced at Seven Lands, here is our wonderful new monster, the Automaton.

Things are not as they seem in he deepest deserts of Erulith.

Strange creations from a forgotten era still lie undisturbed for millenia awaiting some long forgotten thing that shall reawaken them!

Click for 3600x4800 High Res

This game takes you on an incredible journey filled with adventure, danger, and many surprises. Immerse yourself in the history of Seven Lands and experience the legend directly in your browser.

Seven Lands is a free to play browser-based gamein which you roam through the depths of a troubled country, perform tricky quests, rage in the arenas and gather items.

In Seven Lands you begin your adventure in a torn and tortured land of mystical rituals – on an adventurous journey.

This dark and fantastic world awaits militant challenges, but you must also show commercial skills and keep a cool head when solving the puzzle.

In Seven Lands, you have the choice between four nations, each blessed with powerful skills. Whether you are a human, dwarf, elf or orc, your character progresses in Seven Lands, formerly Dunwich, and you experience epic battles with monsters and other players.

Each character has his own fighting style and the choices are yours. Depending on how you you settle your combat strategy and tactics, and adapt to your opponents, you can totally qualify yourself in the battles and fightings. If you are PVE fans, you can resort to explore the unknown enviroment, and slay monsters using different skills you learned, while if you are declinded to play in an Arena, then you can go to battle against other players who want to compete with you.

The German beta is live, while the English version or global version is not yet confirmed.

Adventurers frequenting taverns in Tolira will not take long to hear stories about the Tempest Wraiths, the ghosts of mariners lost in storms.

Even hardened seamen will flee, rather than fight when confronted with these spectral horrors.

Not only does the Tempest Wraith represent their darkest fear, there is, indeed, very little a hapless traveler can do to oppose these creatures.

Practically impervious to physical attacks and driven by a maddening hatred for the living, Tempest Wraiths attack with an intensity unmatched even by much mightier foes.

Adventurers hoping to arm themselves against these threats of the ocean can glean some scant wisdom from the tavern stories:

Fire is said to be especially harmful against the wraiths and the best defence seems to be a good offense, ending the fight before the icy fingers of these spirits drain too much life from your soul.

Click for 3600x4800 High Res

By Anwar

Wow. This took a long time coming. In fact, I’ve been bugging the team about item balance a whole year now and finally, a few weeks ago, they broke in and let me redo the items. Let me take you on a tour of what has changed and why I felt it needed changing.

The thing most players will notice first is that damage levels have increased across the board, especially at higher levels. The reason for this is pretty simple: When reviewing PvP fights, I noticed a lot of them ended after 42 rounds, often with both characters still having half of their hit points. That’s a very anti-climactic way to end a fight, so it was quite obvious that this needed changing.

Next up are item enchantments. While magic weapons looked good from day one, other items, shoes, helmets, even shields, kind of got the short stick when it came to magical properties and the results were often underwhelming. Looking at these items, I also realized that we were a bit restrictive in what kind of bonuses they can give. I resolved to fix this by adding new enchantments and generally increasing the strength of the existing ones. Look out for a whole lot of new toys to play with here!

The final thing that needed addressing were armor resistances. When we put this feature in the game, we were very reluctant because it had the potential to become to dominant in a fight. That’s why almost all of theses items had very low resistances. Now, with some development time dedicated to the item, I finally changed that too. You’ll now be able to find very powerful armors and shields of various resistance types. This gave me some headaches, because, unlike other stats, resistances have a natural ceiling – not much sense to increase resistance beyond 100%, after all. Sharing these few points among armors, shields and rings meant having very low values on each, so this is where I made the greatest change: Rings now give damage absorption, instead of resistance. I’m curious to see what effect this will have on the various tactics out there.

When I was all done and finished with that, there was only one thing to do for me: Bug my colleagues a bit more about item graphics. Believe it or not, I had the lists for all items up to level 77 already finished a year ago, all that was missing were the graphics and I really felt it was “now or never” to request new graphics. I’m happy and a bit proud, too, to be able to tell you that we finally got those graphics as well.

If you’ve made it all the way through this post, I think it’s high time that you GO AND PLAY THE GAME!

Note: Seven Lands is currently only available in the German Language

By SevenLands Dev Team

Seven Lands Team are currently making some changes to the crafting system. It seems to be popular at InnoGames at the moment as the West team are doing the same. You can read about that here. The system we have simply isn’t used enough and we think thats a waste of the nice artwork we had made. So firstly we are changing the time requirements. At the moment it takes eight hours to complete a crafting session fully. This is divided into eight one hour sections that you can cancel your work after and gain a reward for those hours done. We are going to reduce this to only two hours of work as a total with each of the eight sections divided into fifteen minute ones. This should make it easier to complete and more attractive as we are not changing the awards for this.

Secondly we are implementing a bonus award. If you come back within two hours of having completed the crafting the reward you will earn is doubled. So this feature is really going to pay out if you start using it regularly! If you consider this combined with the shortened time we are increasing the reward by a factor of eight. However the fun doesn’t end there… We are also making the rewards level dependent. So a craft that paid out well when you were level three will still be attractive when you are level ten.

Another complaint I had and one I know the players agreed with is that crafting was tied to a location. This was done initially because we considered crafting as somethiny a player would do when logging off. So while you slept your character was busy working away… no rest for the wicked. Now we have it so that you can do crafting anywhere at anytime. We think this represents a character picking up odd jobs around the seven lands as he wanders or hangs around the towns.

So I hope that you will like these changes and that we see crafting being used more often. We have much more planned for this feature still but those changes will come a little bit later. For some of the crafts we want items to drop. These items can then be used elsewhere in the game. However until that ‘elsewhere‘ is ready I don’t want to reveal too much!

By Developr Rayni

After releasing the patch 1.31 on german markets we figured out that we have to make some changes to the crafting system.

1. The cooldown of all useable products will be reduced to 10 minutes (written before)

2. We will reduce the difficult of the starting recipes that means you will need less products to craft the start items until a skill value of 100

3. We want to add some more start recipes which will build an own chain for example: You do a job to get leather after you found one leather you will be able to craft it to “better” leather. This “better” leather can be used to create “much better” leather with “much better” leather you will be able to create an item to use. As you can see with that chain you will be able to find just one leather and craft 4 times. (These chains are planned for every profession until a skill value of 25 or something like that).

Changes in crafting frontend:

 

I have made some changes to crafting frontend. First i converted it to the new screen layout. Second you will have a better overview about what products you need and which you already have.

Rayni, Innogames The West Developer

The Closed Beta Test has come to an end!

by InnoGames

First of all, we would like to thank everyone who participated!

We are currently developing a stable and improved beta version of the game, which everyone can experience on August 02, 2011!

All existing accounts will be eligible for the open beta. If you do not have a game account yet, you can create one here!

By InnoGames Beta Testers

The Closed Beta of Bounty Hounds Online has come to an end. And even though Open Beta will start on August 2, with so many new players and all the updates that were considered beneficial by us, the beta testers, I cannot help but feel a little sentimental…

A little jump back in time: Dennis, Sarah and I have slayed countless enemies, crossed dystopian environments, visited magnificent cities and bravely climbed down to the deepest, most alien-infested sewers. We fought giant boss monsters and teamed up with groups of other players. Our characters have grown stronger and learned new abilities. When we walk down the streets of Sunshine City, people can admire our shiny armor and our impressive weaponry.

Now that the Closed Beta is almost over, Dennis and I decide to leave the world of BHO the “manliest” way possible. Sarah thinks we are pathetic and exaggerate our one-month absence a bit – she is actually very excited about starting with a new character, getting new features and seeing tons of new players in the game world. But we are bound and determined! We will finish BHO with a series of duels that bring eternal glory to the winner and utter shame to the loser…until Open Beta starts at least  We choose the center of the Shadow Canals as our final battleground. As I step out of the teleporter, Dennis is already waiting for me – and makes full use of the advantages of a ranged class. In other words, he throws a rocket in my face. Wretched Heavy Gunner! I try to make up for it and close in on him, but the sneaky bastard runs away and attempts to hide in the tunnels. He even uses his AntiGrav Board to escape (Yes, we finally got some of those. And they are awe-some!!).

Luckily, my Shock Trooper’s speed is unmatched. My favourite move, the light-guided charger, catapults me right in front of Dennis. With a few slices, I inflict heavy damage and force him to retreat again…but there is no escape. As his character sinks down, Dennis shouts and curses behind his computer and instantly seeks revenge. Seconds after his resurrection, he resumes firing at me. But this time, he cleverly uses the wide space and the boulders in the middle to keep his distance from me. Nuke after nuke rains down on me, and after a dramatic chase, Dennis finishes me with his twin glaive exactly the moment I finally reach him. Our office becomes a madhouse! Dennis jumps up and taunts me cheerfully, I call him a coward. Sarah, who is super busy (with real work stuff) gets visibly irritated, but keeps her cool. Both Dennis and I are eager for the third round. But as we storm towards each other, our connection breaks off and the Closed Beta finally comes to an end – the duel will have to wait until Open Beta. For now, we reminisce about our time in the world of BHO. And one thing remains clear to us: We will be back on August 2!

This is a full featured screenshot capturing and editing client for your browser.

This can be installed for either firefox or internet explorer.
1. When taking a SS just click the S in the corner of your browser (top right). This will open the window shown below.
2. Some highlighted features you can do are in the image below (click to expand to full screen)

Click to expand image

3. Select either upload or save, upload will host the image for free. Save will copy it to your Hard drive.
4. Copy link into your post.

Download FireShot for Firefox, Seamonkey and Thunderbird!

Download FireShot for Internet Explorer!

Download FireShot for Google Chrome!

You’ll love it. FireShot Pro costs $34.95 but if you don’t want to pay for it, it will automatically switch into simple mode in 30 days. You won’t lose anything except advanced features provided by FireShot Pro.
FireShot simple is still free and it will be yours forever.

Features

• Multi-editor interface. Switch between captures, use clipboard to exchange annotation objects between them.
• Uploading to Flickr, Google Picasa, ImageShack, EasyCaptures. Use these services to store your captures at image hosting engine.
• Easily customized uploads to FTP and HTTP servers. For example, you can automate the bug-tracking engine you’re using, or simply store images at your server.
• Organizing files into projects. Everything can be stored as a project without anything being lost. You can re-load it and continue your work exactly at the place you stopped previously.
• Saving and Loading graphic files. For example, you can add comments to photos by dragging and dropping them onto the Editor. They will be opened automatically.
• Unlimited Undo. Don’t be afraid of experiments – everything can be rolled back!
• Work with clipboard. Copy any bitmap to your clipboard in your favorite editor or take a screenshot by pressing Print Screen and open it in FireShot in two clicks. Have a nice screenshot in Internet Explorer? Now you can easily transfer it to FireShot. With FireShot you can edit anything that can be copied to your clipboard!
• Independent window. You don’t need to close FireShot’s editor to continue navigation. Now you can surf and capture webpages without simultaneously..
• Printing. Browsers sometimes do not print documents exactly as you want them to. FireShot Pro will give you the exact printout you want.
• Custom bitmaps for watermarking.

Dear players,

We are currently looking for players interested in beta testing our Tribal Wars application for iOS devices.

Unfortunately due to limitations enforced by Apple we have a limited number of beta tester slots and so cannot run a full public beta. However, if you meet the below requirements we would really appreciate your help!

In order to beta test, you must:

• Have an account on beta.tribalwars.net
• Have a forum account on forum.beta.tribalwars.net
• Own either an iPod touch, iPhone 3/4 or iPad 1/2, running a minimum firmware version of 4.0
• Be able to spend 1-2 hours in the next month testing

We’d just like to reiterate that the final point is very important. We have a limited number of spots, and once we allow your device access to our testing we cannot revoke your spot for a year.

Please do not volunteer if you just want to try the app for a few minutes and then forget about it.

If you meet all the requirements, please email the following information to removed – all slots filled.

• Your account name on beta.tribalwars.net
• Your forum account name on forum.beta.tribalwars.net
• The type of device(s) you own (e.g. iPhone 4, iPad 1, iPod touch 2nd gen)
• The firmware version installed on your device
• The UDID of your device (instructions on how to find this here)

Thanks everyone,

Jon Dawson
Developer

• Name: The Engineer
• Class: Engineer

The Engineer! On the battlefield the Engineer is a highly acclaimed supporter.

Not only does he provide reliable micromachinery, he is also capable of curing his fellow mercenaries due to his extraordinary medical education.

As an Engineer you can also cause a lot of damage using an accurate crossbow, whereas in close combat you will slice and dice your enemies with sharpened dual blades. The Engineer is an irreplaceable asset for every mission.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Bounty Hounds Online is a free to play mmorpg published by InnoGames.

Start of World 57

It’s been a couple of months since our last world so it’s now time for World 57 to start. After our ‘no hauls’ experiment on World 56 we will of course be reverting back to allowing looting on this world.

World 57 is provisionally scheduled to start on Wednesday the 8th of June at around 17:00 server time (CET).

If you have any feedback or questions please click here for the discussion thread.

The settings

Not sure what some of the settings mean? Click here for more information.

• Speed: 1.25
• Unit speed: 1.0
• Paladin: Yes, with weapons
• Archers: No
• Church enabled: No
• Noble system: Gold coins
• Morale: Points and time based
• Bonus villages: Yes
• Barbarian villages: Grow to 2500 points
• Tech system: Simple
• Beginner protection: 3 days
• Tribe limit: 150 (ranking based on top 20)
• Other info: Players can choose their starting direction. There will be an attack and support gap of 100ms. This world has a fake limit.

Tribalwars is a free browsergame by Innogames.

By Developer Zet

I stated sometimes that the there are logs of all battles that have been fought and that the players could analyse them themselves if they know how to use javascript.

So what this is about is:

Explaining the battle logs so that you can (maybe) build your own statistics tool.

If you are not a programming nerd, you probably can skip this post as boring and useless for your gameplay, but if you are one, you’ll most likely find this interesting unless you haven’t figured this stuff already out yourself. So here we go.

The data format

If a battle is opened on the cemetary (you know, on the forts), all the required data is transferred. It contains really everything. For example, this is a battle of only 2 players being involved:

{
“attackerlist”:[
{"westid":60,"name":"foo124663470921","flagholdcount":1,"hitcount":2,
"totalcauseddamage":131,"takendamage":260,"takenhits":4,"killedby":1,
"finishedhp":0,"starthp":260,"maxhp":260,"townid":3,"townname":"cccc",
"weaponid":100,"weaponname":"Stein","weaponmindmg":50,"weaponmaxdmg":110,
"posidx":356,"diedwhen":0,"targetidx":356}
],
“defenderlist”:[
{"westid":1,"name":"testxx","flagholdcount":0,"hitcount":4,
"totalcauseddamage":260,"takendamage":131,"takenhits":2,"killedby":-1,
"finishedhp":1389,"starthp":1520,"maxhp":1520,"townid":5,
"townname":"attackers of doommmm","weaponid":100,"weaponname":"Stein",
"weaponmindmg":50,"weaponmaxdmg":110,"posidx":396,"diedwhen":8,"targetidx":396}
],
“log”:[0,2, 1,1, 2,396, 3,1520, 4,1, 1,60, 2,356, 3,260, 4,0, 8,594, 0,3, 1,1, 2,396, 3,1520,
4,1, 5,60, 7,62, 1,60, 2,356, 3,198, 4,0, 5,1, 7,67, 8,560, 0,4, 1,1, 2,396, 3,1453, 4,1,
5,60, 7,62, 1,60, 2,356, 3,136, 4,0, 5,1, 8,492, 0,5, 1,1, 2,396, 3,1453, 4,1, 5,60, 1,60,
2,356, 3,136, 4,0, 5,1, 8,424, 0,6, 1,1, 2,396, 3,1453, 4,1, 5,60, 1,60, 2,356, 3,136, 4,0,
5,1, 7,64, 8,390, 0,7, 1,1, 2,396, 3,1389, 4,1, 5,60, 7,85, 1,60, 2,356, 3,51, 4,0, 5,1,
8,356, 0,8, 1,1, 2,396, 3,1389, 4,1, 5,60, 6,51],
“map”:{
“tiles”:[[3,5,2,1,11,9],[8,4,1,2,18,7],[6,6,3,1,11,15],[0,11,3,4,11,11],[3,11,3,4,21,6],
[6,11,3,4,21,11],[20,0,4,3,10,6],[128,0,2,2,16,9],[0,0,4,4,6,2],[8,0,5,4,24,2],[8,6,5,5,24,14],
[0,6,4,5,6,14],[1,4,2,2,7,6],[1,4,2,2,7,8],[1,4,2,2,7,10],[1,4,2,2,7,12],[1,4,2,2,26,6],
[1,4,2,2,26,8],[1,4,2,2,26,10],[1,4,2,2,26,12],[4,1,4,2,10,3],[4,1,4,2,14,3],[4,1,4,2,18,3],
[4,1,2,2,22,3],[4,1,4,2,10,16],[4,1,2,2,14,16],[4,1,2,2,18,16],[4,1,4,2,20,16],[5,8,2,2,16,16]],
“cells”:[0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,1,1,5,5,5,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,
6,6,6,3,3,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,1,1,5,5,5,7,7,7,7,7,8,8,8,8,8,8,9,9,9,9,9,6,6,6,3,3,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,1,
1,5,5,5,10,10,11,11,11,11,12,12,12,12,13,13,13,13,14,14,6,6,6,3,3,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,15,15,15,16,10,
10,10,11,11,11,11,12,12,12,12,13,13,13,13,14,14,14,17,18,18,18,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,15,15,15,16,10,10,
19,19,19,11,11,20,20,20,20,13,13,21,21,14,14,14,17,18,18,18,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,15,15,15,16,22,22,19,
19,19,23,23,20,20,20,20,24,24,21,21,25,25,25,17,18,18,18,4,4,4,4,26,26,26,26,15,15,15,16,22,22,22,
27,27,23,23,28,28,29,29,24,24,21,21,25,25,25,17,18,18,18,30,30,30,30,26,26,26,26,15,15,15,16,22,
22,22,27,27,23,23,28,31,31,29,24,24,32,32,25,25,25,17,18,18,18,30,30,30,30,26,26,26,26,33,33,33,
34,35,35,35,27,27,36,36,37,31,31,38,39,39,32,32,40,40,40,41,42,42,42,30,30,30,30,26,26,26,26,33,
33,33,34,35,35,35,43,43,36,36,37,37,38,38,39,39,44,44,40,40,40,41,42,42,42,30,30,30,30,26,26,26,
26,33,33,33,34,35,35,35,43,43,36,36,45,45,45,45,39,39,44,44,40,40,40,41,42,42,42,30,30,30,30,26,
26,26,26,33,33,33,34,46,46,46,43,43,47,47,45,45,45,45,48,48,44,44,49,49,49,41,42,42,42,30,30,30,
30,26,26,26,26,33,33,33,34,46,46,46,47,47,47,47,50,50,50,50,48,48,48,48,49,49,49,41,42,42,42,30,
30,30,30,26,26,26,26,51,51,52,52,52,46,46,47,47,47,47,50,50,50,50,48,48,48,48,49,49,53,53,53,54,
54,30,30,30,30,26,26,26,26,51,51,52,52,52,55,55,55,55,55,55,55,56,56,57,57,57,57,57,57,57,53,53,
53,54,54,30,30,30,30,58,58,58,58,51,51,52,52,52,51,51,59,59,59,59,59,59,60,60,60,60,60,60,54,54,
53,53,53,54,54,61,61,61,61,58,58,58,58,51,51,51,51,51,51,51,59,59,59,59,59,59,60,60,60,60,60,60,
54,54,54,54,54,54,54,61,61,61,61,58,58,58,58,51,51,51,51,51,51,51,59,59,59,59,59,59,60,60,60,60,
60,60,54,54,54,54,54,54,54,61,61,61,61,58,58,58,58,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,63,63,63,63,63,63,
63,63,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,61,61,61,61,58,58,58,58,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,63,63,63,63,
63,63,63,63,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,61,61,61,61,58,58,58,58,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,63,63,
63,63,63,63,63,63,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,61,61,61,61,58,58,58,58,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,62,
63,63,63,63,63,63,63,63,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,64,61,61,61,61],
“height”:24,
“sectors”:[{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true},
{"height":0},{"height":0},{"height":0},{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true},
{"height":6,"attackerBonus":6,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":7},
{"height":6,"attackerBonus":6,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":7},
{"height":4,"attackerBonus":3,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":4},
{"height":4,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":4,"attackerBonus":3,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":4},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0},
{"height":4,"attackerBonus":3,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":4},
{"height":4,"attackerBonus":3,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":4},
{"height":0},{"height":3,"attackerBonus":1.25,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":1.25},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":3,"attackerBonus":1.25,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":1.25},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},
{"height":0,"attackerBonus":-5,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":-5},
{"height":0,"attackerBonus":-5,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":-5},
{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true},{"flag":true,"height":0,"attackerBonus":-10,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":-10},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0},{"height":4,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"attackerBonus":-5,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":-5},
{"height":0,"attackerBonus":-5,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":-5},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":4,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0},
{"height":3,"attackerBonus":1.25,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":1.25},
{"height":3,"attackerBonus":1.25,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":1.25},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},
{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},{"height":0,"defenderSpawn":true},
{"height":0},{"height":6,"attackerBonus":6,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":7},
{"height":6,"attackerBonus":6,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":7},{"height":0},
{"height":4,"attackerBonus":3,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":4},
{"height":0,"attackerBonus":3,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":4},
{"height":4,"attackerBonus":3,"defenderSpawn":true,"defenderBonus":4},
{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true},{"height":0},{"height":0},{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true},
{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true},{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true},{"height":0,"attackerSpawn":true}],
“mapname”:”Test”,
“width”:34},
“logtypes”:["ROUNDSTART","CHARTURN","CHARTARGET","CHARHEALTH","CHARONLINE","SHOOTAT","KILLED","HIT","MOVED"],
“roundsplayed”:8,”maxrounds”:50,”battleid”:81,”outcome”:”ATTACKER_WIPED”,”fortname”:”abcfort”,
“declarerid”:6,”declarername”:”foo12464580102″,”attackertownid”:3,”defendertownid”:5,”defendertownname”:”attackers of doommmm”,
“attackertownname”:”cccc”}

That’s quite a chunk, so let’s rip it apart and look at it one by one.

Attacker- and Defenderlist

Both arrays contain identical descriptions of all the involved players. Each player has following descriptions:

• westid: the id of the player in this world. Identical to the id used in ranking etc.
• name: the name of the player
• flagholdcount: number of rounds that the player was holding the flag
• hitcount: number of hits the player made
• totalcauseddamage: the total amount of damage caused by this player
• takendamage: how much damage the player got
• takenhits: how often the player was hit
• killedby: a player id (westid) of the player who knocked the player out
• finishedhp: how much hitpoints that have been left at the end of the battle
• starthp: hitpoints on start of the battle
• maxhp: the maximum amount of hitpoints the player may have
• townid: the id of the town the player belonged to
• townname: the name of that town at the moment when the battle started
• weaponid: the id of the used weapon
• weaponmaxdmg: the maximum damage the weapon can cause
• weaponmindmg: the minimum damage that the weapon is causing
• posidx: The starting position of the player
• diedwhen: The round the player was knocked out (bugged, fixed with 1.23)
• targetidx: The target of the player when the game started

A lot of data is already supplied in these arrays, but there’s far more.

The log

Each battleresult contains a complete log of the whole battle. This is most likely the most interesting thing for you, as this contains a lot of data (as a side note, this data might be bugged as it has never been used yet anywhere). A part of the log looks like this:

“log”:[0,2, 1,1, 2,396,(...)

I inserted whitespaces at each second comma, because each pair of numbers describes what happened. The first number tells us what operation this was, the second number describes the operation. The mere numbers are useless unless we know the codes for the numbers. The codes are supplied with the log. The values are represented in an array called "logtypes":

"logtypes":["ROUNDSTART","CHARTURN","CHARTARGET","CHARHEALTH","CHARONLINE","SHOOTAT","KILLED","HIT","MOVED"]

The array tells us that 0 means “ROUNDSTART”, 1 means “CHARTURN” and so on. The order can change anytime when we change some implementations on our sides, so in case of developing a tool in javascript, I would suggest to figure out the right numbers before analyzing the log.

This codebook tells us now following information:

“logtypes”:

“log”:[ROUNDSTART,2, CHARTURN,1, CHARTARGET,396, CHARHEALTH,1520, CHARONLINE,1,
CHARTURN,60, CHARTARGET,356, CHARHEALTH,260, CHARONLINE,0, MOVED,594,
ROUNDSTART,3, …

So this is more meaningful now and with a bit of description, this is the log, encoded in these number pairs:

1. ROUNDSTART,2: The game begins with round 2 (1 is the first round where everyone is choosing their starting position and target position.
2. CHARTURN,1: The character with west id 1 is now active
3. CHARTARGET,396: The character 1 is trying to go to the cell 396 (which is his starting position, so we’re there already)
4. CHARHEALTH,1520: The character 1 has a health of 1520 hitpoints
5. CHARONLINE,1: The player for character 1 was online during this round
6. CHARTURN,60: It is now the turn of player with id 60
7. CHARTARGET,356: The character 60 wants to go to cell 356
8. CHARHEALTH,260: The character 60 has 260 hitpoints
9. CHARONLINE,0: The player of character 60 was not online
10. MOVED,594: Character 60 moves to cell 594
11. ROUNDSTART,3: Round 2 has ended, round 3 begins

This pattern repeats all over the place and we can reconstruct the whole battle for each player. We do even know who was online and who was not online! The keys “SHOOTAT”,”KILLED” and “HIT” describe further actions:

• SHOOTAT: the id of the player that this character is shooting at
• KILLED: if the shot was knocking the player out, this key is used. The value represents the damage that was caused the player to be knocked out. Can be larger than the player’s hitpoints
• HIT: if the shot was a hit, the damage is described with the value

If no hit was made, the SHOOTAT value exists but without a following HIT / KILLED actions.

The map description

The map description is also supplied here. It could be used for replaying the whole map visually. The first thing to know is how a x,y coordinate is represented in the map – since we know the width and height of the map, we can recalculate a pair of numbers to a single number and back with this small function:

// javascript code
function toxy(idx,mapwidth) {
return {x:idx%mapwidth,y:Math.floor(idx/mapwidth)};
}
function toidx(x,y,mapwidth) {
return x+y*mapwidth;
}

Both functions can be used to do the required calculations. The width and height of the map is supplied by the map description as well with the keys “width” and “height”.

Furthermore, we have various arrays now: “tiles”, “cells” and “sectors”. The “mapname” parameter is currently not really used, it still has the name “test” on the productive worlds, something that I didn’t know about yet – as it’s nowhere used right now.

The tiles

The tiles are simple arrays of arrays containing each 6 numbers, describing the visual layout with out tileobject:

• The x coordinate on the tile texture
• The y coordinate on the tile texture
• The x size of the tile
• The y size of the tile
• The x coordinate on the map where the tile is being drawn (left side of the tile)
• The y coordinate on the map where the tile is being drawn (top side of the tile)
  • height: The height of this sector
  • attackerbonus / defenderbonus: What bonus the sector provides
  • defenderspawn / attackerspawn: A boolean value that tells us if players can spawn here
  • flag: True if this is a flag sector

This information allows us to draw the hole map using the tile texture. It contains only eyecandy information – nothing else.

The sectors

That array describes the attributes of each sector that is present on the map. Following attributes are available:

There will be further values if there’s a bonus for a certain playerclass, but I think that the whole sector description is pretty self explanatory.

The cells

The most important description for the game is the layout of the sectors. The sectors can have any kind of form, so what we do is, we define for each cell on the map what sector it belongs – it refers here to an index in the sector array. The array called “cells” describes now for each cell, starting from top left the sector for each cell, left to right, top to bottom (just like reading letters in a book). For example:

“cells”:[0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2 …

What we see here is, that the cell located at x=0 and y=0 is described with the attributes given by the sector description at index 0 of the sector array. The same attributes are used for x=1,y=0 and x=2,y=0 and x=3,y=0. The next sector starts at x=4,y=0. Every cell that refers to the same sector id belongs to the same sector (of course…). From the game logic we know that if a sector is taken by a team, the other team can’t enter that sector. So in theory, there could be sectors that are disjunct – which means that a sector could be split. However, this should not be the case.

That’s it!

So that’s everything that is needed to know if you really want to analyze the logs of a battle yourself. How can you get now the data? Well, there are several ways – for example taking the text from the ajax call using firebug. Or by overwriting the FortBattle.makeStats function:

javascript:(function() {
var orig = FortBattle.makeStats;
FortBattle.makeStats = function (data,element,fortx,forty,bool) {
alert(Json.toString(data));
return orig(data,element,fortx,forty,bool);
}
})(); void(0);

If you execute this code in your browser’s address bar, you’ll get an alert message the next time when you look at a fort battle result.

Copy & paste the result and you’ll have the data anywhere you want it to have.

From The West Developer legedric

Good Morning!

I’ve noticed that players aren’t excited about the amount of containing features with updates.

That’s because we do not only implementing features for the game and i show you what is  my current main focus:

The Quest Editor is one of many tools that we are owning now for improving or adding content to the game.

Currently it is hard for our Designer to implement them so we need an editor which gives them a good overview about the current quest dependencies and requirements and it shall reduce error’s, too.

In the future we want to add several new quests and this tool allows us to let people work with which aren’t programmers.

I’ll drop an screenshot of it here (click to expand):

The Editor is written in Java and it also required refactoring the backend of the quests, to avoid duplicates when more than one is using it.

On the left you’ll see several quest groups and quests for a quick overview/access and on the center you see a graph which displays the association between the quests. At least there are the quest properties on the right side to modify it.

So you’ll see that we have a lot of things to do and its quite not easy to manage them at all.

Of course we have a lot of ideas and want to introduce them or improving existing features, but often we have to maintain the backend so that we are able to provide capacity to implement them.

 

Halfway May Rainy and Zet both developers of The West where giving out hints what would come in version 1.32

From Developer Rainy

After releasing the patch 1.31 on german markets we figured out that we have to make some changes to the crafting system.

1. The cooldown of all useable products will be reduced to 10 minutes (written before)

2. We will reduce the difficult of the starting recipes that means you will need less products to craft the start items until a skill value of 100

3. We want to add some more start recipes which will build an own chain for example: You do a job to get leather after you found one leather you will be able to craft it to “better” leather. This “better” leather can be used to create “much better” leather with “much better” leather you will be able to create an item to use. As you can see with that chain you will be able to find just one leather and craft 4 times. (These chains are planned for every profession until a skill value of 25 or something like that).

Changes in crafting frontend:

I have made some changes to crafting frontend. First i converted it to the new screen layout. Second you will have a better overview about what products you need and which you already have.

From developer Zet

Here’s an example for 60 different avatars that’ll be available when changing to the new system (click on the picture for a larger version).

There are of course many more combinations (there are over 70.000 combinations possible already and there’ll be even more!) available, so there’ll be plenty of possibilities to customize your character the way you want.

And once Again from Developer Rainy

After successful release of the patch 1.31 on some german worlds we started to work with 1.32 (of course we also doing bug fixes in 1.31  ). With 1.32 we want to convert as many screens as possible to the new screen layout and window manager, some of them will just converted others will be completely reworked in order of that i have two screenshots for you.

For your information about the updates we started to translate 1.31 for all languages. We will finish the updates on german worlds this week. After that we will update other markets when their translations done.