Geopolitical simulator - the history of creation and development
Hello.
I want to introduce you to the history of the creation of our application Vkontakte RivalRegions.
In short, this is a geopolitical simulator, with elements of economics and military operations. The concept is simple: you choose the region in which you will live, organize or join an already active party, and begin your political career, from parliamentarian to president. In addition, you naturally pump your character skills, work in enterprises, and participate in the defense of your region, or in conquering the next. After the conquest, you can organize your state.
Frontend - html / css / js (jquery). In our opinion, it turned out to be a fairly convenient fast interface that allows you to play via mobile devices. Themes are supported: you can change the colors of the interface and icons. Frustrate browser restrictions on fullscreen mode: chat and articles (integral parts of the application) are not available.
The server part is written in php. Chat, wars and battles (combat "chess" on the field of hexes - now available only in the form of training, unfortunately, have receded into the background) - node.js + socket.io. Base - MySQL.
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It all works like this:
Online while hovering around 300-400 in active hours:
The application develops from the release itself (a list of innovations can be found on the wiki ), so caching is done in the form of physical versions of the entire new set of scripts / styles on the server: this of course forces users to download all scripts and styles anew but guarantees full performance and no problems with the cache enhanced by the presence of an iframe. For this, of course, there is a deployment utility launched from the admin panel: an interface with graphs, errors, and a chat flow. Previously, the version method was used after the file name (script.js? V = 120), but to our surprise, it did not give a 100% guarantee.
Initially, the application was developed as a multilingual one: the error of the past application was not repeated (then it was necessary to redo it). Development is carried out with the addition of English and Russian phrases, translation into other languages is laid on the shoulders of players. A simple interface has been added for this:
Storing the string and transfer to a new field by Enter allows you to translate about 1000 phrases together fairly quickly, the current progress of localization and the list of translators are available to all players (currently 12 languages are added, 31 are available for translation). Adding a language for translation takes a minute, the number of languages does not affect the performance of work, hence the emergence of such languages as Pre-Revolutionary, Soviet and Siberian.
The map (svg file) is created manually, with the help of a php script it is transformed under the map for a jquery plugin: keyboard movement and zoom are available. When playing through the site or in full screen mode, the map is expanded to full screen.
April 1 was launched alpha test. The game map consisted of only Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. 2 weeks of the test and a break until the beginning of May. The beta test lasted from mid-May until the end of June, and a release took place on July 1. If you look at the story , you can see that the game is still being finalized. Every 2-3 days we add new features to the game.
It's nice that the user themselves are involved in the finalization of the game, most of the translations into other languages are made by their own hands.
After the release immediately raised the question of monetization and promotion of the game. In the application, you can buy gold through the votes of VKontakte, but unlike most games, you can also earn gold from the company without investing real money. Golda, in turn, is exchanged for the internal currency of the game.
The most effective way to promote based on our experience is the internal advertising contact. Most of the votes received in the application we spend on it.
There have been attempts to buy posts in publics, but their effectiveness is lower: for a post in public 300k, coverage 150k we paid 1500, of which received a little more than 200 installations.
Also tried to repost the record of the application, and draw prizes among those who shared the record. More than 500 reposts for the new iPod Shuffle.
It should be noted that getting into the block of new applications brings a very good effect:
The plans include adding new regions, improving the economic and military component, and of course going west.
The game was viewed mainly as a policy simulator, but to our surprise, many players occupied their own niches in the game, which we had not even thought about. Part of the players united in a clan of mercenaries who are not members of any party, and in order to show their strength they declared an uprising in Moscow (the capital of the strongest state at that time), and shifted the government. Many do not participate in hostilities and save money for the creation of private enterprises (now in development).
I am pleased to hear suggestions, comments, recommendations and advice.
Well, links:
rivalregions.com
Play on vk.com
Play on facebook.com
I want to introduce you to the history of the creation of our application Vkontakte RivalRegions.
In short, this is a geopolitical simulator, with elements of economics and military operations. The concept is simple: you choose the region in which you will live, organize or join an already active party, and begin your political career, from parliamentarian to president. In addition, you naturally pump your character skills, work in enterprises, and participate in the defense of your region, or in conquering the next. After the conquest, you can organize your state.
Technical part:
Frontend - html / css / js (jquery). In our opinion, it turned out to be a fairly convenient fast interface that allows you to play via mobile devices. Themes are supported: you can change the colors of the interface and icons. Frustrate browser restrictions on fullscreen mode: chat and articles (integral parts of the application) are not available.
The server part is written in php. Chat, wars and battles (combat "chess" on the field of hexes - now available only in the form of training, unfortunately, have receded into the background) - node.js + socket.io. Base - MySQL.
')
It all works like this:
Online while hovering around 300-400 in active hours:
The application develops from the release itself (a list of innovations can be found on the wiki ), so caching is done in the form of physical versions of the entire new set of scripts / styles on the server: this of course forces users to download all scripts and styles anew but guarantees full performance and no problems with the cache enhanced by the presence of an iframe. For this, of course, there is a deployment utility launched from the admin panel: an interface with graphs, errors, and a chat flow. Previously, the version method was used after the file name (script.js? V = 120), but to our surprise, it did not give a 100% guarantee.
Initially, the application was developed as a multilingual one: the error of the past application was not repeated (then it was necessary to redo it). Development is carried out with the addition of English and Russian phrases, translation into other languages is laid on the shoulders of players. A simple interface has been added for this:
Storing the string and transfer to a new field by Enter allows you to translate about 1000 phrases together fairly quickly, the current progress of localization and the list of translators are available to all players (currently 12 languages are added, 31 are available for translation). Adding a language for translation takes a minute, the number of languages does not affect the performance of work, hence the emergence of such languages as Pre-Revolutionary, Soviet and Siberian.
The map (svg file) is created manually, with the help of a php script it is transformed under the map for a jquery plugin: keyboard movement and zoom are available. When playing through the site or in full screen mode, the map is expanded to full screen.
April 1 was launched alpha test. The game map consisted of only Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. 2 weeks of the test and a break until the beginning of May. The beta test lasted from mid-May until the end of June, and a release took place on July 1. If you look at the story , you can see that the game is still being finalized. Every 2-3 days we add new features to the game.
It's nice that the user themselves are involved in the finalization of the game, most of the translations into other languages are made by their own hands.
Advertising
After the release immediately raised the question of monetization and promotion of the game. In the application, you can buy gold through the votes of VKontakte, but unlike most games, you can also earn gold from the company without investing real money. Golda, in turn, is exchanged for the internal currency of the game.
The most effective way to promote based on our experience is the internal advertising contact. Most of the votes received in the application we spend on it.
There have been attempts to buy posts in publics, but their effectiveness is lower: for a post in public 300k, coverage 150k we paid 1500, of which received a little more than 200 installations.
Also tried to repost the record of the application, and draw prizes among those who shared the record. More than 500 reposts for the new iPod Shuffle.
It should be noted that getting into the block of new applications brings a very good effect:
The plans include adding new regions, improving the economic and military component, and of course going west.
The game was viewed mainly as a policy simulator, but to our surprise, many players occupied their own niches in the game, which we had not even thought about. Part of the players united in a clan of mercenaries who are not members of any party, and in order to show their strength they declared an uprising in Moscow (the capital of the strongest state at that time), and shifted the government. Many do not participate in hostilities and save money for the creation of private enterprises (now in development).
I am pleased to hear suggestions, comments, recommendations and advice.
Well, links:
rivalregions.com
Play on vk.com
Play on facebook.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/201650/
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