Conquest! - Medieval Strategy War Game Development Blog

Conquest! Language Support

9/17/2021

Since its inception in 1993, Conquest! has only been available in the English language. Based on some reviews of Conquest!, adding additional languages seemed like a good idea. Fortunately, a design decision made circa 1995 made the process much easier.

Before the change, all game messages were hard coded within the server. This meant that every time a new message was added or an existing one was changed, the game had to be redeployed and the server restarted. At that time I decided that I would assign all messages with a numeric code and send that to the clients, which would interpret how to display the message (e.g. instead of sending "You must be a Paladin to use this skill." the server sends "35Paladin"). Originally, this was meant to cut down on the network traffic and facilitate creating graphical clients (which didn't materialize until 2016!). However, it had the nice side effect of allowing translations to other languages.

This week I completed translations of Conquest! to French, German, and Spanish. It took about a week to translate the ~2000 different messages using Google Translate. When the graphical client was created in 2016, once again all of the help, prompts, and field labels were hard-coded in English. In addition to the messages from the server, all of these had to be pulled out and translated.

I did look for a way to perform dynamic translations but I didn't locate a way to do this and I was wary about build an external dependency, especially given the dynamic nature of the game. Now that the plumbing is in place, creating files for additional languages requires just the translation effort (which is still a huge amount of work!).

Some items (e.g. level titles, troop names, etc.) cannot be translated at this time. I'm eyeing a translation to Italian in the future but for now I'm going to take a small break (its actually mentally taxing to work on translations).

Version 3.0 is a wrap!

4/30/2021

Yesterday I released version 3.18.05 of the game client which concludes 3.0 development (minus bug fixes of course!). What started as an effort to update the 350 images in the game turned into a major overhaul with 900 new ones! When version 2.0 was released, it reused many of the same images from version 1.0 (e.g. alliance crests, maps, troops, etc.). For version 3.0 all but one image was replaced.

By using the same artist for all the graphics, they have the same consistency and style. A big thank-you to Vi from 99Designs.com for his efforts in making 3.0 look amazing

We also increased and standardized the dimensions of the images. For example, in version 2.0 the icons depicting army attributes were 30x30; in 3.0 they are 128x128. Obviously, this makes a huge difference in the quality. Other images were odd dimensions (e.g. 94x120 for the shields) and a mixture of drawings and photos made to look like drawings.

Additionally, I contracted with an audio engineer from UpWork.com and replaced the sound effects. The ones I had were mashed together from various free audio sites for version 1.0 of the game. Now all the sounds have been designed by one person and are a consistent style and quality. Thank you Leah!

The improvements in 3.0 encompass the client and server and there are so many it's hard to catalog them all. But here are the highlights:

Client

All new graphics
All new sound effects (music defaults to off now)
Improved spy and combat reports
No scroll screens for moving troops and land travel
New dropdown lists for targets, heroes, artifacts (vs typing or copy/paste)
Weather visible from HUD in kingdom and city screens
Improved alliance customizations (shields and ribbons)
View all kingdoms and markets from Watch Tower (current kingdom/city was excluded)
Color coded world messages
Improved in game help and prompts (e.g. arrow to indicate scrolling)
Improved formatting and readability (e.g. numbers with commas)
Improved device support
Passwords are auto generated for new players
Global messages file was reviewed and spell and grammar checked

Server

Active NPCs, which play and fight back, were added
Age modification set by winner
Automatically generate an Age legend (albeit with somewhat mixed results!)
Land is automatically added to the overall pools (no player will start with 0 land)
Increased maximum and starting movement points
Overhauled troop strengths for balance and consistency
Hero, Artifact, Item effects were reviewed and (for some) improved
Added additional email alerts (e.g. espionage, spells, engaging fleet)
Two new espionage missions: Dismiss (Hero) and Remove (Artifact)
Push vs pull model for sending data from the server to the client
Improved server performance (stress tested with ~400 concurrent, active connections)

And for both, many, many, MANY bug fixes. =)

To see the evolution, consider these 3 screens, all depicting the entry point for playing Conquest!.

Version 1:

Version 2.0:

Version 3.0:

It is bitter-sweet that this project is ending. I have immensely enjoyed working on Conquest! again and I'm going to miss those weekly dumps of new graphics. But now that this chapter closes the next one begins: aggressively marketing Conquest!. My plan right now is to hire a digital marketing firm to do a short 1-2 week blitz. I expect this to start in late summer/early fall. Stay tuned.

Conquest! Version 3.0 Launches!

9/21/2020

Conquest! Version 3.0 Summary
Version 3.0 represents the first major work done on the Conquest! application in over three years. Here is a breakdown of the major changes:

New Graphics
I have contracted with a new artist to update over 130 of the game’s icons. To put this in perspective, Conquest! has over 350 total icons in the game (that total does not include maps, buildings, etc.). The updates included in this version are troops, artifacts, classes, heroes, ships, and the launch icon. Over the next several months I will be working to upgrade the remaining graphics. My priority is removing poor quality or mismatched ones first.
I have also removed some single-use icons and replaced them with a functionally similar one used elsewhere in the game (e.g. removing the “infected” icon in kingdom overview and using the “bad event” one from log events). This not only reduces the overall number of icons I must replace but also the size of the application.

Improved Combat Reports
Combat reports have several enhancements.

Reduced scrolling. Rather than have one long page, combat reports have been broken into different pages. This allows players to view the pertinent information without scrolling as much. This feature works in tandem with streamlined reports.
Streamlined reports. The navigation button on the bottom left will dynamically adjust to the report to filter out unnecessary pages. For example, if there are no reinforcements in the battle the page will not be shown.
Dedicated hero page. If heroes are killed in battle, it will be noted on a dedicated page. New for 3.0, enemy heroes killed in battles will also be listed.
Dedicated fleet page. Fleet visibility has been improved to list each class of ship with the class name displayed. This page is hidden if no ships are involved in the battle.
Daily casualties. The casualties for each army and each day is now visible. Buttons allow you to scroll through each day and view the casualties sustained to each army as the battle progressed.

Improved Spy Reports
Spy reports have benefited from some of the changes from combat reports (e.g. reduced scrolling, streamlined reports). Alliance crests are now visible in spy reports and lists throughout the game (e.g. rank, kings, titans).

Improved Functionality
Several screens were improved.

Distant markets and kingdoms. Removed the popup for results and replaced with a full screen page to make it easier to view the information. Buttons for travel and journal are larger and clearly state the action.
Artifact page. Artifacts have their own dedicated page in the Royal Vault (vs. being listed with magical items).
Managing and searching for vassals is easier. The new display follows the established method of displaying lists of players.
Hero and artifact bonuses/penalties. The bonuses and penalties for each hero and artifact are now clearly stated.

Better Device Support
Rather than use fixed sizes, several pages were refactored to use percentages instead. This permits the Unity engine to scale the page as needed to fit the resolution of the device. And each page in Conquest! was tested for functionality simulating a variety of phone and tablet devices. This should allow Conquest! to render properly across a wider variety of devices.

Updated Social Links
Facebook and Tumblr were replaced with Discord and a link to the main web site.

Happy (Belated) New Year!

2/4/2017

How time flies when you are developing! Between the holidays and all the work being done on Conquest!, I had forgotten how long it has been since my last post. Let's get right to all the new stuff!
The first item is the guild now keeps the last 5 spy reports. I severely underestimated how useful this is until I started playing! Before the change, spy reports were limited to just the last one and they were lost when you logged out. Now they are stored on the server and can be retrieved by clicking "Reports" from the guild. Like combat reports, I added a timestamp to you know how stale the information is. In the future I might expand the history a bit more.
Next, I continued work to remove popups and reduce scrolling by tackling combat orders and statistics. Previously, these were two separate popups with the former showing your army's food and gold upkeep, as well as options to set surrender and auto-enlist, and the latter showing all of the numbers the game tracks about your player (battles won/lost, troops killed/lost, etc.). I decided to combine these into one and remove the food and gold upkeep (it is available under the kingdom overview):

One screen, no scrolling.
The next useful feature was (finally) adding tooltips! I was watching MEIT Dev's feedback for Conquest! and noticed he tried selecting items to get more information. There is no mouse over for mobile clients but now clicking on items in the HUD or your character class, pops up a small 1-2 sentence description. For example, I clicking on the "house" in the HUD:

The tips work on every screen and add some much-needed aid to new players. On the backend, I also got around to improving the network performance of the client. When the UI was first launched, I put in a kludgy solution to read data coming in from the server. It was fine for launch, but now I'm using a proper event driven read. This also removed the worker thread from the client, which also had the side benefit of making Conquest! web based via HTML5. Or so I thought; HTML5 doesn't support direct socket connections. Doh!
The next improvement came from adding friendly reinforcements to the combat reports. This has been asked for on several occasions but a certain stubborn developer resisted (for some reason). I finally added these:

Friendly reinforcements are shown in blue, while enemy reinforcements are shown in red.
The biggest usability issue addressed was auto-scrolling to the bottom of the chat and event windows. It took me a while, but I discovered that modifying a ScrollRect's verticalNormalizedPosition property was much better than trying to accomplish the same thing by modifying the RectTransform of the same object. I also discovered the ForceUpdateCanvases method under the Canvas object. For chat, I call this prior to adjusting the normalized position. Using this same method, I corrected a bug where the travel map would scroll too far and be out of bounds for some resolutions.
The other nice feature was adding an option to reverse sort your journal. A small change, but a large improvement in usability.
Finally, the weather screen got its makeover. Like the other popups I removed, it became a full screen window. I also added a quote regarding the season and an overview of the effects (none, light, moderate, severe).

Like what you see? Have a suggestion to make it better? Email me here: emperor@conquestgamesite.com

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.

Continuous Improvements Continue

12/3/2016

It has been a busy month as 2.0 improvements continue. Since my last post, we implemented new screens for spying, markets, moving troops, conducting surveys, vassal maintenance, and the kingdom overview! These changes continue the effort to enrich the experience and streamline gameplay. In this post, I'll compare some of the changes, starting with spying.
In the original release, spying consisted of a popup window with 3 tabs:

The first tab was used to send your spy and the other two displayed the player's kingdom and armies. It wasn't immediately obvious to players where the results appeared, especially during the tutorial (switching between tabs was manual). There was a lot of scrolling to see all the information.
Now when you conduct spying a new window displays immediately:

Switching between kingdom and armies is now marked with text (versus an icon only). The top and bottom portions are independent, so as you scroll the key information remains visible. Jump buttons (the small helmet icon in the 1.x screen) were removed when 2.0 was released (since they were unmarked some players didn't realize they were buttons at all). This screen is the same layout used for combat reports and it works nicely here.
The next screen I'll review is moving troops:

If a player wanted to move individual troops, the sliders were utilized. To save you had to scroll all the way to the bottom. The text area at the top displayed error messages, which could be missed unless you scrolled back to the top.
With the new screen everything is clearly marked and players can use either the text boxes or the sliders to move troops:

As players make changes to either text box the other is updated automatically to reflect the new amount. Finally, the buttons and text area are always displayed.
The final improvement I'll discuss are the marketplaces. Players obtain troops in Conquest! from the markets in each of the cities. The original design used a popup with two tabs, one for buying and one for selling, and lots of text boxes and buttons.

Like moving troops, a text area at the top was used to display information and errors but would not be visible if you were scrolled down. Clicking on an icon revealed an additional popup with detailed information but this was not intuitive.
The replacement screen puts everything on display; there is no scrolling. Troop details are displayed right below the icon and error messages are upfront:

I'm encouraged by the results and player feedback for all the changes has been positive. I continue to look for ways to improve what we have. Conquest! was raw when it was first released and there is still work to do. But overall, I'm happy in the direction it is going.

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

Conquest! 2.0 Improvements Continue

10/29/2016

This month was spent building on the improvements made for the 2.0 interface for Conquest!. Major changes were made to chat, the journal/log, private messages, and combat reports.
Since version 1.x Conquest! has used a pop-up window style to interact with players. In many cases, tabs were provided to allow players to switch between pop-ups to see additional information. For example, private messages were displayed on one tab and sending a new one (or replying to an existing one) was on another. This meant lots of scrolling and new players would often miss the tabs (and critical information).
With the changes made this month the designer and I created new windows to eliminate the tabs and help cut down on the scrolling. The effect is a much cleaner user experience.
Let's start with the new chat interface:

The tabs have been replaced with buttons with labels and the scrolling window has been replaced with a sleek semi-transparent background. I also doubled the chat and event history from 25 to 50 entries.
Here is the new log:

Rather than scroll up and down to see entries, players can now simply select the left/right arrows to quickly page through. We also added icons for each, allowing players to identify the entries or events visually. The player's journal works in the same fashion.
For private messages, players scroll through the messages on the left and, once selected, reply or delete it on the right:

With the old pop-up design, players had to scroll to see all the messages (and move between pages) and select a different tab to reply to the message. There was no preview function either.
Perhaps the one I'm most excited about are the changes to combat reports. The old pop-up design was not large enough to show all the spoils, forcing players to scroll to find them. To view enemy troops and casualties, the 2nd and 3rd tabs had to be selected (with additional scrolling to see everything). Now, the most important parts of the report are visible at once:

Only enemy reinforcements are not shown on the main window, and those can quickly be accessed by the button on the bottom left. Attacking the wildlands was on a separate scene in Unity, which meant jumping to the kingdom screen to view the report (this happened automatically). Now the report displays on the quest scene itself which allows players to keep fighting without switching scenes.
Behind the scenes, I was also able to remove duplicate code by moving these new windows into their own class (versus being part of the Unity scene). This streamlined the development process for me and allowed me to add combat reports to the Quest scene (as previously mentioned) quickly and easily. During this process, I have also corrected some inefficient code, as I learn more about Unity as a platform. We are going to tackle spy, city markets, and questing next. Check back for updates to see our progress.
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.

Conquest! 2.0 Now Live

10/1/2016

Conquest! UI version 2.0 officially went live on September 23! The new UI brought a host of changes, enhancements, and bug fixes. So far, the reception has been overwhelmingly positive. And thanks to very through beta testing there were no major bugs reported.
This week design work started on a new interface for private messages. The current design uses our "standard" pop-up with two tabs. The new one will be one larger popup, with a list of messages on the left and composition/viewing on the right.
Other areas targeted for improvements are the vault/magic shop and possibly chat. I expect development to slow down a bit, since the UI is now in a good place, and a shift to marketing to occur.
Our Twitter and Tumblr activity has helped bring new players in but Conquest! still has issues explaining what to do and how to do it. I would expect enhancements to the tutorial over the coming weeks to address these issues.
Enhancements made since launch include standardizing the main menu and bottom bar between the kingdom and city screens and minor updates to the help and basics.
A final note this week about the build size. I was very pleased with the build size reductions we were able to make. The iOS build was reduced by ~20MB, while the Android build ~3MB (it was already fairly small). This was accomplished by reducing the number of Unity screens (from 18 to 9) and using blank buttons and panel headings with text instead of custom graphics for each one. This also means I can create buttons or pop-ups as necessary without needing new graphics each time.
Conquest! does not use any on demand resources (everything is packed inside the build), which makes development simpler for me. By reducing the download size, it ensures Conquest! can be picked up over cellular networks (Apple has a 100MB limit for this). The overall install size of the application was also reduced, which saves space on devices where this might be a concern. In summary, a win/win for everyone.
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.

Conquest! 2.0 Beta Now Open

9/17/2016

Conquest! 2.0 beta "officially" opened this week with deployments to the Android and Apple stores. The city map was completed this week, which was the main driver for the open beta. This map continues the design from the kingdom, with labeled buildings used to perform all city related functions (markets, church, tavern, mystic, magic shop, and port). The map will also highlight when the city gates are open or locked.

As part of the work on the city, I removed two more screens: Royal Vault (from kingdom) and Town Hall map (from city). Rather than jumping to additional screens it just made sense to add these to the main areas. This also had the benefit of reducing the size of the application (2.0 is actually smaller than 1.x). In total, the number of screens was cut in half (from 18 to 9). I'm very pleased with how 2.0 is shaping up; feedback from users has been positive as well.
I also added a few more enhancements to the client, such as hiding the "Hire Spy" option if a player's current city does not have a market. The movement point and gold costs to hiring a spy were also added to the popup to round out displaying the costs for things everywhere (only repairing ships is missing this now I think!). The "out the door" price (which includes tax) for buying items is displayed both on the market popup and the detail screen. I'm not sure why I didn't do this before but now players can quickly know exactly how much gold they will be losing or gaining when they buy/sell from the markets.
The issue with trying to hire a spy was discovered during a playtesting session on Twitch by Highsight (https://www.twitch.tv/highsight). During the playback, he tried to hire a spy in a city which didn't have a market, which let to the (obvious) question: why is that option even there? Point taken, and now removed where appropriate. The walkthrough also highlighted a few more areas of work, such as some minor graphics issues and understanding what was happening in the tutorial. The tutorial must be read to be understood and after the first few screens he (like other players I'm sure) starting just clicking through it.
Overall, the feedback was positive but Conquest! still needs help on usability and explaining what to do and how to win. Version 2.0 is the start of addressing some of that and work will continue once we are live. (i.e. Conquest! will never be "done").
This week I'm going to work on some of the feedback I've already received. Krees is also working on enhancements to the chat and the main menu. We are also adding a new building to the kingdom and city screens (Watch Tower or similar) where we will make it easier for players to find out about the next Seasons.
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.

Conquest! 2.0 Development Underway

9/2/2016

Development of the Conquest! 2.0 user interface has begun in earnest (1.06.20 is the last 1.x release). For the initial release, we divided the game into certain key areas: kingdom, for managing keeps and taxes, and city, for purchasing goods and access to the church and the tavern. Other key aspects of the game, such as troop orders, subterfuge, and combat, had their own separate areas.
Here is the current main overview screen, which shows the six key areas:

Players click the various buttons, which open up new areas. The icons at the bottom popped up functions such as viewing your log, private messages, and the in-game chat.
There were 9 common areas for a player to move around (Overview, Kingdom, Fleet, City, Church, Tavern, Army, Subterfuge, Combat). While we accomplished our overall goal to compartmentalize the game into sections where like actions lived, it also introduced a navigation issue. For example, loading troops onto ships meant going from City, to Army, to Kingdom, to Fleet. We did add "jump" buttons to help but that was more of a bandaid as we could not add them everywhere.
We liked the overall structure, where like actions were grouped together, but we wanted to make it easier and more intuitive for players to move around. For 2.0 we grouped all functions around 2 areas: Kingdom and City. And we moved from "flat" buttons to a 3-D overview.

Actions are now grouped within buildings in your kingdom and the city. Clicking on a building with a label reveals a new side menu.

Players scroll around the map to view more buildings (and actions). All actions in the side menu are spelled out (vs. solely using icons). Instead of 11 screens there are now 2. Overall moving around the game is quicker, as the back and forth navigation has been reduced.
One interesting problem I discovered was after I added a certain number of prefabs to these new screens, the scroll speed of the map became unplayable. Using Unity's profiler, I discovered the CPU was thrashing on a task called "WaitingForJob" under the CanvasRenderer. I spent days on this issue, trying all of the suggestions. I was almost ready to chalk it up to a bug in Unity but by chance I tried one final suggestion: static game objects. From the official Unity manual:

Information about a Static (ie, non-moving) object can often be precomputed in the editor in the knowledge that it will not be invalidated by a change in the object’s position. For example, rendering can be optimised by combining several static objects into a single, large object known as a batch.

Once I set this option on most of my game objects, performance was restored. I don't know if this is a bug or not (I opened an issue with Unity) but I'm thrilled that 2.0 is back on track. Once the map and buildings for the city are complete, the new version will be released.
Finally, reducing the number of seasons by one had the desired effect of minimizing the time commitment required to play Conquest!. Jj conquered the Age in 18 days, which is about the right amount of time.
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.

An Enhancement 20+ Years in the Making

8/13/2016

A major improvement was made to the Conquest! server this week. In order to understand it, first a minor history lesson.
Conquest! has always had the concept of a single winner of an Age. In the past, this was the player who made it to king ten times without dying. This usually took a player 30-45 calendar days, depending on the level of competition.
For the mobile version, the game was modified so that land was fixed and the victory condition was changed to the first player who controlled a percentage of the total land (current 15%).
When an Age ends, all players are reset, heroes and artifact locations are changed, a new secret city name is chosen, and a few variables (such as the current Age) were updated. The mobile version of the server works the same, except players are automatically carried over. In the past, everyone had to recreate their player, including all settings.
Restarting an age was a manual process. Since Ages used to take so long and the level of effort was relatively low (15-30 minutes) I didn't have automating the Age restart as a high priority. Until recently.
For the first time since Conquest! started (circa 1993), Age restarts are now fully automated. The process took a day to implement (and another to fully debug) but it works great. Once a player amasses enough land, they are made Titan (a special class reserved for Age winners) and an announcement is made that a new Age will be starting soon. Email alerts for those who have signed up are also sent.
Thirty minutes later, the server initiates the new Age code. Files are closed and backed up to an "ages" directory. Cities and continents are reset and players who survived the old Age and recreated in the new.
One of the most challenging aspects was the random generation of names for heroes and the secret city; I already had code to generate locations of artifacts. I had never written a random name generator and searching around yielded little in the way of an actual algorithm I could use. Some were simple, such as randomly combining consonants and vowels. Others were much more sophisticated, where probabilities were established that one letter would follow another. But I didn't really like either approach.
In the end, I simply created a "dictionary" of word combinations and then randomly put them together. In my tests, they came out well. For some reason I thought this was going to be easier than it was.
Now that no human intervention is required, the game is effectively self-running. As long as the machine stays up (and the game doesn't crash for another reason!) it could run indefinitely (in theory!). While this process is invisible to the players, it is a huge quality of life improvement for me.
An improvement for the players next Age that is being discussed is the removal of a game season. Seasons currently happen 5x per day and grant movement points, attacks, food and gold production, etc. This gives players more to do but also means a greater time commitment. By reducing the seasons, and lowering the victory condition to 12%, I'm hoping to make it easier to get into the game without sacrificing real life responsibilities. I'll report back after the 5th Age ends.
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.