We’ve just ran through a major test and review session of the Mafia Empire update on our Beta servers. We’ll be making a few more tweaks to the system but the short of it is that it’s about ready for release. Expect it soon, like next week soon.
Haven’t blogged on the TYLER blog since Blogger destroyed the last incarnation I started almost 3 years ago.
Decided to start again because I hate to repeat myself on the discussion boards or waste time to dig up a thread where I made an announcement. Next time I’m tempted to make an official thread I’ll try to mirror it with a blog post containing a link to the thread. Not going to blog on a separate blog for our different games. Too much trouble.
Anyway, we’ve got quite fair bit of things in development right now, this month has been dubbed “the month of development”.
Most of it we can’t show: like the comic; don’t want to give away the story through the sketches but 10 out of the 22 pages for the first issue have already been sketched. Intervened a bit in the character conceptualization; we received the first color tests from IFS after which we decided we want to more or less completely overhaul the characters. Hope they don’t hate us to much for that.
This is the color test for Rhea. We felt the outfit was too red, after which we decided to change her outfit completely.
Finished the layout for new revamped Mafia Empire main page last week. We should have the new jobs/quest system for ME in a testable state by next week. Was supposed to work on
but keep getting side-tracked with operational issues (yes, this means the stuff to do with Clan War, IMBAness of Tier S, etc)
2 new team members joined us this month. A warm TYLER welcome to Evan (new programmer) and Kenneth (new artist). Still looking for 1 more programmer, a marketing exec and 1 more artist.
Battle Stations is now available on Friendster as well!
http://widgets.friendster.com/battlestations?src=add&instance_id=1
More aesthetically pleasing interface for managing your equipment.
Also allows saving “builds” for easy swapping of entire equipment sets.
Our Ocho cash shop is now available for Battle Stations players in Facebook.
Check out the items on sale:
Demon Battleship
Outfits
Hats
More here: LINK
This morning I got an email from Facebook:
“You made one or more wall posts that violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, posts that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down posts that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled.”
What the *bleep*?! The only wall posts I made within the last month were:
- review of the movie “Wanted” which I posted on the wall of the Singapore group and mySingapore app
- a message on the Battle Stations wall asking players not to post their problems there because we don’t check the wall regularly
Possibly I was removed for “advertising a product” so better not post movie reviews.
I have NEVER made an obscene, profane, hateful, attacks an individual or group wall post (forum posts during the Chaos days yes, but wall posts never).
There wasn’t any warning or a pink box of death or anything. I just got removed.
I’m not going to create a new account because I don’t believe in creating multiple fake accounts (not to mention all the photos and apps that I’ve added, I don’t want to have to start again from scratch).
I’ve sent an email to disabled@facebook.com and started working on a Facebook clone which I’ll call “Freedombook”.
Our blog is screwed up. There’s a permanent blogger error preventing me from fixing it because it thinks we still have widgets though they were already deleted.
I’m moving to wordpress when we have the time.
I was away from BS most of last week trying to clear work before by my trip. After almost 24 hours in the air and transit (managed to practice some 日本語 on the flight since I flew ANA), I’m in NY. I’m stay just a few blocks away from the bull. Would be really convenient to get posted here considering you can stay a block away from the financial district.
I had a discussion with friend who is a marketing consultant (the kind offers practical advice doesn’t just spew crap about 4Ps). She commented that it’s rather impractical to allocate resources to provide the close communication with the players as our user base grows (much less hire a communications director for 4000 USD /month to do PR for a free game). I’m also behind on my studies for my exam in June so I going to be on the BS forums a lot less often.
Someone will probably say I used the earlier paragraph just as an excuse. I just want to piss him off by doing that which he hates so much.
Eating like this everyday could quickly turn into a health hazzard but I thought I should indulge just a bit before I go to Europe. Damn record high Euro.
Got this from the S.S.U. group page a long time ago. You guys need to chill because
a) it’s a game
b) we’re fixing it
Today, our Battle Stations forum got spammed by a player of some web game. Their game has more than 1 million registered players (launched Dec 2006), ours has 24,000 players (launched Oct 2007).
Let’s compare traffic numbers:
We have lower traffic but it’s almost on par. And we have 41.6 times less players. At our current rate of growth, guess where we’ll be given the same amount of time?
This is the same web game that’s been responsible for spamming a lot of other Facebook games like Warbook and Pirates.
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