Apocalypse is much more profitable now. The total prize pool has gone up about 20%, the number of places paid is lower (so more money to those paid), and gladiators get paid a bit of money for merely doing damage. So even if you can't take a place, you can likely make a few bucks for your efforts.
The page header now includes a list of players currently online. This should help show everybody how immensely (un)popular my game is!
FIXES
Fixed misspelling of "clientele" in the Gladiatorium shop's description. Thanks, Mr. Callahan!
Tied challenges (both players "lost") no longer take money away from both managers (sometimes this caused really bizarre amounts to be taken). Thanks to Pope Ketric for stumbling upon this bug in a really awesome way.
Removed some weird formatting characters from some areas in the game, such as the "\n" that was showing up in some recruiting stations.
Zooming in one oneself no longer shows the "rival player" view - it shows you your account overview.
CHANGES
Slightly more precise "vague" stat reporting for rival gladiators.
Made a few of the tip messages and FAQs more accurate and clearer.
Session expiration is now 2 hours instead of one.
Equipment tip text is now much less informative (no more seeing what every single attribute does), but far easier to see at-a-glance - you now see only the base weapon and the final, modified weapon. Obviously for weapons and shields that have no attributes, you only see the base weapon stats.
Rebalance done for weaponry and derived stats:
For simpler value calculations, I assumed a base of 20 to damage, which is then modified by the equipment to get to about the same values that previously existed.
The base value for damage is ignored if you are unarmed - in this case, base damage is set to 3.
All weapons now apply modifiers to attack, dodge, and speed just like they do to attack (modifying the base value instead of adding a %-modifier).
Hit points are higher again, and hardiness plays a bigger role, especially at mid- to high-level.
Strange Al's is less powerful - Die With Honor is now weaker only every once in a while, not almost every day!
Apocalypse matches are now less chaotic - instead of potentially having three or four gladiators ganging up on a single one, the gladiators have been given a little lesson in honor. No more than two gladiators will ever assault a single gladiator now.
0.12 Official PUBLIC Beta (2007-04-09):
ADDITIONS
New manual and FAQ info for versions 0.11 and 0.12.
Recruiting stations can now affect starting skills. Gone are the days when a "veteran" has no knowledge of fighting!
Huge weapon attribute renovation! Instead of simple materials, each equipment class (blades, shields, blunt, axes) has a list of potential modifiers. These modifiers are far more interesting than the materials were, and allow for a much larger variety of items. Additionally, one shop can sell items with up to 4 attributes (MULTRIBUTES!), and eventually super-rare items may exist that have even more. Imagine a world where you can wield a "Deadly Sharp Swift Sweet Gnarly Katana of Pain and Gore and Suffering and Pretty Pink Ribbons"... and keep on imagining it, because it ain't there yet. (Thanks to Jesse for this idea)
To accomodate the above-mentioned "multributes" change, a ton of backend fixes and updates have been applied which will hopefully speed up further skill and equipment class changes.
New recruiting station for uber-cheap, but crappy gladiators: Suicide Watch!
New shop to accomodate additional variation in the new equipment renovation.
Weapons and shields all have at least one new item in each group. Nothing incredible, but a bit more variety as well as a single item that "goes against the grain" for the group. ie, a bladed weapon that's high damage but low speed has been added, even though most blades are low-ish damage, but high speed.
Added a comment viewer/manager for myself so that your submitted comments won't take so long for me to deal with.
FIXES
Fight processing no longer crashes when a fight manages to get built without any gladiators assigned to it.
No more tick maintenance crashing from user-submitted names (thanks, Mr. Fox!).
Posting to city forums now works again.
Pagination in forums no longer is totally off.
Item purchasing now validates that items purchased are actually available from the given store for the given date and manager. You actually have a one-day grace period so that if you loaded the inventory page today at 11:59pm but clicked "buy" at 12:00am the next day, you won't lose your chance to get the item.
Arenas that don't respect risk settings (challenge and green) no longer give bonuses/penalties to skills based on risk setting. In other words, no more being in green at max. risk and getting fast skill gains for it.
If your gladiator hits the threshold for divisional movement (5 wins for getting to lightweight, for instance), he moves immediately instead of needing one more arena match.
CHANGES
Gladiator names can now be as short as 3 characters, instead of forcing 6 or more.
Derived stats have been completely overhauled!
Derived stats are first modified by raw values (for instance, +4 to attack for a high risk setting), then modified by accumulating a set of bonuses/penalties and applying those as a percentage to the modified value. This makes "micro adjustments" easier than before.
Stats and skills now apply a change to derived stats for every little change. 1% gained in a skill, or 1 point gained in a stat will affect something, even if it's only by a small amount.
Unarmed gladiators now get no penalties to derived stats, and instead have simply to deal with an extremely low damage.
All weapons and shields have been renovated to apply bonuses to derived stats in more interesting ways. Balance should still be there, but it should be far more interesting to choose a weapon class.
In line with the above change, skills work a bit differently. Since every 1% gained is a slight bonus, there is no longer any sense in showing the hover tip for a given skill. "Worthless", for instance, covers 0% to 9%, which is 10 distinct changes. The short story: no more hover text for skill names!
Skills are now shown for rival gladiators. Since a given name no longer corresponds to a definite value, it's like giving out a vague range.
Animal bots (green arena) are slightly less powerful now.
Hover text is bigger now, so it's easier to read. Also, when hovering over a tip, the tip changes color so you know exactly which tip you're seeing.
Shop inventory is now based on date as well as manager's number of items purchsed - makes things a little weird, but ensures nobody can buy 10 exceptionally good items in a row. Also makes sure two managers won't likely see the same inventory (ah, how I remember the days of IRC-ing "TITANIUM PAVIS IS FOR SALE IN GLADIATORIUM TODAY!!!").
Resale value is now always 75% of purchase price, instead of 45%-65% -- randomizing just didn't seem to serve any purpose.
Battle scarring has a slightly lower maximum for when you lose, but starts much earlier so getting 0 in a fight is far less likely.
Maximum challenges have been changed to 2 for normal users and 14 for premium users. Now you premium folks can be gone a full week withough your challenges being lost! And normal users can save up a full days' worth instead of being screwed after missing a single tick.
Attack chance is now a little more fair, especially as attack and dodge get higher. Instead of lower levels nearly always hitting, and higher levels nearly always missing, things should be more balanced.
Normal stats have been overhauled a bit as well:
Starting stat points are now lower, but stats are gained every rank instead of every two ranks. For those who actually achieve "Soul Drinker" rank, you'll have 4 points more than you used to get at that point.
Minimum stat is now 7 instead of 8, to allow for lower starting stat points.
Maximum has been bumped up to 21 to accomodate the higher total stat points available.
While specializing in stats is still better than being equal in all stats, it's not quite as overpowering as before. In fact, early on, specializing can be very dangerous since you have fewer stat points to spend, and a lower starting value for all stats. Roshito's is now much more worthwhile to recruit from.
0.11 Official PUBLIC Beta (2006-11-12):
ADDITIONS
More data for newbie guide - info about stats, ranks, and divisions.
There is now a KO stat for gladiators and managers, so that gladiators who spend a lot of their time in Apocalypse can still show off how much ass they kick.
There is now an option to filter the upcoming/recent battle views by arena, and it defaults to skip challenges. Yay!
Two new links were added to the battle views: (view my battles only) and (reset all filters). These should make the battle views a bit more friendly.
Gladiator stat card now shows default arena, with a link directly to the arena tab for that gladiator.
Gladiator stat card now has links for "Weapon:" and "Shield:" that take you directly to gladiator's equipment tab.
Risk setting bonuses / penalties are now shown on the combat details tab.
Arena information is now shown in a much more useful popup window - the hover tip was just getting to be too cramped.
FIXES
Link from battle emails is fixed.
Gladiators who are unrated don't show up in the middle of the gladiator list as if they were indeed rated. They also no longer "use up" a position in the standings.
CHANGES
Removed the "jump to gladiator" dropdown at the top of the page when you're zooming a fired gladiator.
Balance again:
Rebalanced combat training to be both more fair and more consistent.
XP gains are significantly better, so maybe people can actually reach heavyweight one day.
Stat bonuses and penalties were totally reworked to reward specializations (before this change, it was better to keep all stats relatively even).
Maximums for all stats now default to 19 instead of 18, making specialization easier.
Apoc arena now gives more xp and skill gains.
Gave the battle views a (minor) facelift full of CSS goodness.
Hiring a gladiator now gives more useful message as well as taking you directly to that gladiator's zoom, set to the arena tab.
Prettied up the message that tells players they can't hire another gladiator until they purchase more weapons.
Renamed "Combat Settings" tab to "Arena Settings" to make it more obvious what the functionality is.
After training a gladiator, you're sent back to their training tab instead of the first gladiator's tab.
Challenge update:
Players now get 2 challenges a day (1 per tick).
Premium players can store up to 10 challenges before new challenges stop getting added, normal users can store only 1 (ie, use it each tick or lose it).
Challenges now give about 40% the credits of blue arenas, instead of the 10% they were giving.
Challenges now give 80% the xp and skills of the blue arenas, compared to the 10% they were giving.
Challenges now change combat stats (wins/losses for both gladiator and manager)
Challenges also give a bit of fame to the winner, while taking away a very small amount from the loser.
In summary, challenges are now more integrated to the core game. Premium players get fewer than before, but they're worth a lot more. Non-premium players actually get the same amount they used to get, but can't roll them over anymore.
Risk updates:
Risk has been updated to apply a fixed bonus / penalty to attack, dodge, and damage (was a % boost to attack and dodge).
The most dangerous risk settings now apply lower scarring boosts than xp/skill boosts, making their efficiency for skill-gaining higher (other risk settings apply the same modifier to risk as they do to xp and skill gains).
The "Just Plain Nuts" risk setting now has a lower danger level (150 instead of 200).
Fame updates:
In general, fame is easier to gain. Many fame-requiring systems have been updated to partially compensate, but overall it's a faster road to the "good" stuff.
Fame is now awarded based on placement instead of wins/losses/KOs. So in blue, you gain fame for being first, and lose some for being second (the loss is far smaller than the gain, mind you). In apocalypse, a certain number of positions get fame, with #1 being the highest; on the flip side, the bottom few positions lose fame, with last place losing the most.
Fame for kills and deaths is now more significant a factor than before.
Arenas no longer pay per KO. They now pay similarly to fame - top position gets the most money from a prize pool, and pay goes to a certain number of places depending on the arena. In Blue, for instance, first place gets 100% of the prize pool, and second gets 0%. In Apocalypse, the top 25% of gladiators get paid, with first place getting the highest share. The other 75% of gladiators get no money whatsoever.
0.10 Official PUBLIC Beta (2006-10-19):
ADDITIONS
Public forum (for all cities) now exists in-game. No more trash talking in private messages alone!
To help BC get more exposure, I've added voting links under the sidebar. They're ugly, but more votes means more new players.
"Last Post" listing in forums now shows the author's name and a link to his profile. Note that since messages currently don't store last post data, this will all say "N/A" until the next post occurs.
Email capabilities are in - you're now able to get PMs and battle logs delivered to your inbox!
Players can now select email preferences - this goes along with the above addition, obviously. When you go to the preferences page, you can choose which types of messages will be emailed to you.
Gladiator xp need to get to next rank is now displayed in the gladiator zoom, and as a hover tip on the XP progress bar in their stat card.
FIXES
In the revamp to make the public forum, I did fix up a lot of potentially broken tests and code. Yay!
More paypal fixing - still trying to get the thing to work fully...
Gladiators that are fired/dead no longer get auto-scheduled into the green arena.
Training page fully reloads when you perform training, so no more "you can train X times" where X is totally wrong.
Arena pay displayed in hover tip has been corrected.
When a manager has multiple gladiators in the same arena, credits are properly given to him/her, instead of just crediting one gladiator's fight at random. In other words, this bug was hitting people who had mutliple gladiators in the same arena (say blue) - you'd get credit for only one of the fights. In some cases this meant no credits even though all but one gladiator took money!
At negative fame values, players can still access the "lowest" recruiting station and shop. No more being locked out of the game for losing a gladiator early on!
Managers without a homecity (never finished registration) no longer crash the player list and manager zoom.
Notices displayed in the two battle lists are no longer carried into the next action (result was notices like 'cannot find manager named xxx' in totally unrelated pages).
I hate Internet Explorer. But since most of my traffic is IE, I decided to fix a few "minor" issues (note that some of these fixes also help Opera, so it's not a total waste of time):
IE can now handle clicking the bottom 'delete selected messages' button.
IE now has no trouble opening new messages.
IE no longer displays the FAQ in a HORRIBLY MESSED UP way.
IE now updates clicked message checkboxes immediately, instead of waiting until they lose focus.
Various browser compatibility issues fixed via Scriptaculous update.
CHANGES
Manager list is now ordered by player fame, and shows last time player was active.
Sessions now time out after one hour instead of lasting forever.
Maintenance message is now far friendlier and displays in the framework of normal BC pages.
All notices are formatted in a much nicer way now.
More rebalancing:
Cost to hire gladiators from the really expensive recruiting stations has gone down a lot.
Equipment costs for the really expensive items have dropped drastically.
Training has been redone again - total cost to train from 0-100% is still rather high, but far lower than before. And early training is significantly cheaper.
Shields are now far more useful than before (significantly higher dodge values).
0.9 Official PUBLIC Beta (2006-10-09):
ADDITIONS
Added a link to the phpbb forum at nerdbucket.com for easier global discussions. However, I do plan to build a public forum in-game just to make sure people can have true in-game conversations.
Added a brief description of the game to the main login page, and the login page always has links to nerdbucket.com's registration and password reset (I got the impression from some people that they didn't know what they were supposed to do when the page popped up).
Added a "Delete Selected" button to the top of your inbox - mimics functionality of the one at the bottom, just added for convenience.
Zooming into another manager's gladiator is now far more informative - you can see a vague version of their stat card (far less info there) as well as their manager's information, arena, and recent battles.
FIXES
Paypal payment bug fixed, will be manually tested again this release.
Removed the winner/triumph text from battle logs, as it was buggy.
FINALLY removed the "TODO" notice in the gladiator zoom (weird spacing issue...).
Fixed a field that was giving users only 255 characters for their bugs and suggestions... oops.
CHANGES
Gladiators that aren't scheduled for an arena and are "normal" (not dead or fired) get auto-scheduled in the Green arena. This will help ensure players realize that the daily arenas are where the game lives.
Rebalanced shield skill gains again to make them more likely to increase at a similar rate to weapon skills.
The "site down" message no longer appears for all areas - places that are fairly safe from maintenance collisions are now accessible. This means that you can still view the FAQ or new player guide, for instance, even when the game is running maintenance.
Battle log summaries are now more descriptive and (hopefully) easier to read quickly.
Challenge system updated to be +X challenges per tick, where X is 1.0 if you're a premium user and 1.0 if you're not. Of course, you will max out at a certain point: 14.0 for premium users and 2.0 for others. This does, however, allow for a little leniency in getting challenges done. Premium users, in particular, can miss a few ticks without forfeiting the challenges they should be getting.
0.8 Official PUBLIC Beta (2006-10-01):
ADDITIONS
The account controller now has STUFF in it! Overview has mostly just the same info that was in Manager Summary (which was removed). There is also a preferences section (currently just for turning on and off page tips), a place to purchase tokens for premium mode, and a place to manage referrals.
The final limitation for gladiators is in - gladiators above a certain rank aren't allowed to access any arena but the green one.
Gladiator standing is now calculated, and displayed in a few useful locations.
Tons of page tips are in, shown at the top of any pages I think could be confusing, to give the newbie a much easier time figuring this game out!
New plans for costs are in, and FAQ has been updated appropriately. Players buy tokens and redeem them for game time. Players are also awarded tokens for referrals, making the system very consistent. Spend money, get tokens. Refer players, get tokens. Tokens are only going to be redeemable for time to start, but eventually they will be able to be used to buy special bonuses or items in-game.
Paypal is integrated into the site. Not really something most of you care about per se, but it means I'm actually working toward the finishing touches on a real product! Yay!
Maintenance runs now take the site down with a "friendly" note about maintenance being run. Should help avoid weird issues when player updates gladiator who's in the middle of a battle.
Broke managers now get helped out at the cost of some fame. This only happens if manager is truly broke (less than 100 credits) and has one of the following: no gladiators and low-value equipment, or gladiators but no weapons. The idea is to help out players who either have no way to make money, or so little chance of making money that they'll be playing for weeks just to try and get the minimum number of credits to get in the game again.
To prepare for beta, I've added a "Bugs & Suggestions" area.
Help exists!! It's not totally comprehensive, but the "newbie" guide is essentially a beginner-to-intermediate guide to the game's rules and mechanics.
You can now see exactly how many times you can afford to train a gladiator in a given skill. Thanks, Jesse!
Manager zoom added to see stats and gladiator list of other players.
The inbox is now filterable by "normal" messages, battle log messages, or both. May make it easier to see what's important at any given time.
User now has two alerts at the top of the screen for messages: normal PMs and battle logs.
A message is sent to new players with links to the newbie guide and suggestions.
FIXES
Minor fixes to wording in views and FAQ.
Dead gladiators don't get a "standing".
Gladiator view once again mentions when you have no gladiators, instead of showing a blank page.
Gladiators with a lower-than-average risk no longer gain 0 xp every fight.
Risk setting's XP modifier was being processed twice - this is fixed.
The challenge screen lets the user know he can't try to create a challenge when he has no gladiators.
Challenges now store the time they took place (instead of claiming to have happened in 1969).
Derived stats ajax now shows max HP properly.
Managers now properly keep track of lifetime heavyweight gladiators.
You can now unequip your gladiators (OOPS).
A little extra testing added to ensure fewer bugs resurface
Challenge list now shows proper data for potential rivals (was showing your gladiator's stats, and your alias under manager's name)
Possible (cross your fingers) fix for the intermittent 500 errors. As the "fix" is a random hack I saw on somebody's blog, don't get too hopeful...
Quoted text in message/forum replies now has linebreaks as expected
AJAX returns for managers will no longer add weird spacing that causes messaging and battle log filtering to cry.
Fixed an extremely rare bug where a finished challenge could show the incorrect result email.
Replies to a subject-less message now change the subject to be more friendly ("Re: ").
Managers with spaces in their alias no longer have a messed up stat bar at the top of the screen.
CHANGES
Changed spelling of Coliseum to Colosseum - both are correct, but people seemed to think Coliseum was a typo. Can't have that, now can we?
Players no longer start with any kind of free trial - pointless to have 3 week trial when it takes longer than that to hit the significant limitations.
Battle log messages now report to the player how much XP was gained.
Page for viewing rival gladiators now has hover tips to make things slightly more user-friendly.
System messages now auto-expire after a while. Should make inboxes less cluttered, especially when you get to having 5 gladiators all in arenas, all getting challenges, etc...
Fight emails now contain a bit more details
More inbox mojo: you no longer select messages to delete one at a time! Check those you no longer want, and do the delete in a single request.
PMs from challenges are automatically marked as read for the challenger. No more re-reading old challenges that say "NEW!" next to 'em.
My first major balance changes:
Skill gains significantly rebalanced - should yield higher average gains by 20% or so, plus more fair to gladiators who are slow but hit hard.
Gladiator damage is now average damage, not max. Fights should now last about half as long as before (smaller battle log to read through).
Better XP gains for dealing damage (KO and Kill xp are unchanged).
Significantly slower battle scarring system.
Training is far cheaper than before, at least at the early levels (later training costs start to approach the old levels, though are still a bit cheaper).
Players can't recruit any new gladiators if they don't have enough weapons to equip their current gladiators. Should save new players the unexpected trouble of hiring 2 gladiators and then having no weapons.
Green arena now gives out 10 credits per level per KO instead of 5 - still very small, but enough to make Green a little more appealing.
Fame doesn't grow nearly as fast anymore.
Players start with 200 credits instead of 100 - you can now hire a gladiator, equip him, and train him a bit.
It's no longer a huge penalty to fight with a shield when your shield skill is ultra-low. It's still not a good idea before the "Awful" level of skill, but it's a lot less likely to get you killed at least. Thanks, Erik!
Credit gains from fights now act like I meant them to - each rank your defeated gladiator is past 1 gives a boost of 25% to credits, not 100%! In other words, defeating a rank 1 gives 50 credits in the blue arena, just like it always has, but defeating a rank 3 now gives 75 credits, where it used to give 150.
Mobaye is now far more fair - the stat penalty is made up for by *good* stat maximum boosts and more freedom in the initial gladiator creation.
Challenges are a bit more fair to the challengee (since he has no say in the challenge) - he gets more credits when he wins than he used to, and loses fewer>
Speaking of challenges, the winner is now given a guaranteed cash prize that doesn't come from either gladiator's manager - it's very small, but enough to make it less of a waste of time to perform a challenge.
0.7 Official Closed Beta (2006-09-04):
ADDITIONS
New stats for gladiators! New requirements for the heavyweight division! With my need to drop the deathmatch challenge system, I found a new way to make the heavyweight requirement "interesting".
Danger Level: determined by the risk setting on your gladiator. Higher risk = higher danger level. Danger level moves up relatively slowly, but moves back down pretty fast, so to stay up you really have to live dangerously. Not only is DL useful for a heavyweight requirement, it's also a great money maker. The crowd loves a crazy gladiator, so the higher your danger level, the more credits you'll get for fights you win! (Note that extre money only applies to fights where death is an option).
Multifight Points: whenever you place well in a multi-gladiator arena (Apocalypse for instance), you get points for it! Right now it's 5 points to 1st place, and 1 fewer point for each place down (4 for 2nd, 3 for 3rd, etc). These points are merely for bragging rights for now, but they do make a heavyweight requirement that's interesting. Instead of just having to get a certain number of wins, a heavyweight must also live dangerously, at least for a bit (see danger level, above) and do well in an apocalypse battle or two!
Instant challenges are in! Go to the "Challenge" link in the new "Arena" section of the sidebar. Not as "cool" as the old challenge system could have been, but I think I got a fun system in place, which is way more important than the cool factor :) Anyway, any gladiator can challenge another so long as they're both in the same division, aren't owned by the same manager, and the challengee hasn't been challenged in the last few hours. Premium players will be allowed 3 challenges per tick (no, not 3 per GLADIATOR), while non-premium players will only be allowed 1.
New list for upcoming battles is in! And now that fights can actually be scheduled, this might end up being useful!
Better interface for the recent battles (and incidentally the new upcoming battles) view - more filtering and a consistent view between filters.
New "jump to gladiator" dropdown in the gladiator zoom view.
Gladiator stat cards now show an icon when you need to train their stats - see more information in the list of changes below.
New list of "active players" to show you who has been playing in the last 90 days.
A gladiator stuck at a divisional boundary (has enough XP, but hasn't fulfilled other divisional requirements) will now get an alert on his stat card to remind you what needs to be done. Should help explain the not-so-obvious divisional requirements that may one day exist.
Arena section added to the navigation! This now holds all the arena-related actions:
Gladiator Training
Recent / Upcoming battles
Gladiator Roster
Training was given complete overhaul to make it easier to use! It's a little ugly still, but much nicer than before, and you can now train multiple skills any number of times all at once. No more clicking "Train" 52 times in a row!
More FAQs for more informational goodness! Included in the FAQs is the pricing this game will carry.
Gladiators of a high enough rank (4) may now be renamed! Wheee!
When battles are completed, you'll now get a nice email that summarizes it. No need to look at a painfully-long battle log to see who won!
FIXES
Finally! The "Not logged in" text in the top of the page no longer wraps to three lines!
Though not usually a problem, I removed the cache on news items. No more 30-minute late news!
Maintenance script now properly creates fights (OOPS). The one item I haven't been able to write a strong unit test for, and it breaks. No big surprise.
Added some testing to the fights. Won't catch all issues, as the framework for fighting still needs some fixing, but it's now a bit more solid and less likely to have a random weird bug.
"Holy forums, Pitmaster!" That's right, forum posting now works properly, making the messaging system 100% complete.
Stat editor for creating and leveling up a gladiator no longer "jumps" around as you click + and -
Finally removed the link to the nonexistent "stats section" of the nonexistent manual.
Extremely rare bug fixed when trying to sell a dead gladiator for sausages.
Fixed an unlikely issue where gaining XP could push your gladiator past two divisions, effectively breaking him forever.
Fixed a bug with random numbers not actually being random in rare cases during fight processing.
Fixed text formatting issues with news, private messages, and forum messages.
Fixed an error that made weapon skill gains 1% less likely than expected - minor for most cases, but at a high level, where the minimum is 5%, it could be painful to lose one of those 5 percents.
Removed some rather useless debug text from private messages.
CHANGES
The sidebar is no longer invisible when you're logged out. I thought it could be handy to have players be able to read the FAQ without having to have an account.
When a row of gladiators isn't 3 long, the stat cards in the main view no longer stretch to fit. I think it looks much better to have a consistent size now, instead of sometimes having a stat card that stretched all the way across the screen.
Recent battles list no longer shows bot names. Didn't seem all that useful, and caused a tiny bit of confusion.
The navigation bar is undergoing a good deal of change as I try to make the system friendlier. Enjoy not knowing where anything is!
Gladiator stat training no longer forces you to choose their new stats right now. Instead, their stat card will have an icon you can click on to do the training. Additionally, the stat training will now show you exactly what to expect from raising certain stats (ie, if you increase Power, what will that do to your damage?).
Skill gains from combat are now far more fair - instead of having gains range from 0.04% to 5+% in a single combat, they now range from 0.25% to 1.25%, and are distributed more evenly.
Frequently asked questions now has more questions with more detailed answers, and is arranged in collapsable categories to make it easier to find what you're looking for.
Gladiator division information is more useful now, showing both the current division's requirements and what the gladiator still has left to do to get to the next division.
Fired gladiators' risk is set to lowest so they don't get much scarring and never die. Will be useful if rehiring is ever an option.
Gladiator random names are now a bit more interesting...
Gladiators close to the edge of a division now have an XP cap when they fight. They can only gain enough XP to move to the next division. Once there, future fights will gain XP as normal. Technically this is a side-effect of a fix, but I'm not sure I'll "fix" it, as I kind of like the implications of having to reach a new division before a gladiator can start really "learning" again.
Private messages are now slightly easier to read.
Zoom for rival gladiators now shows their rank. Most information is still hidden, but I thought this was pretty important to allow, since challenges will have a lot of basis on rank and division.
0.6 Official Closed Beta (2006-06-25):
ADDITIONS
Fired gladiators can now be zoomed - they show the same general view as a normal gladiator, except that anybody can view all their stats, but nobody can change them.
New cities were created! We now have 5 different cities, each with different bonuses or penalties.
"Risk" system has been built to replace wimpy:
Instead of specifying a "hp-to-flee" type of value, you now specify a risk level.
Higher risk = more offensive player, better xp, faster skill gains, more battle scarring, and a higher risk of death.
Lower risk = more defensive player, low xp & skills, but also lower battle scarring, and less risk of death.
Default player now has a 2% chance of dying if he loses in the arena. So either you risk death every fight, or you accept some xp loss and play it safe.
New messaging system in place! You can send private messages to any player directly, and when I fix it, post messages to city-wide forums.
Backend is changing significantly to allow database schema changes without data loss, and with minimal downtime. This is, of course, a good thing, but expect new bugs to pop up because of it.
New, darker look for all forms, for being more consistent with the rest of the site.
FINALLY I'm using the Rails unit/functional tests. Many potential bugs have been squashed thanks to this, and I expect far fewer new bugs to crop up. Not to mention saving me around an hour or two of error-prone manual testing every time I make a change.
FIXES
Weird issues with gladiators seeming not to update should now be fixed.
Some fights weren't being scheduled properly due to new bot code. This should be working now.
No more "Application Error (Rails)" when changing gladiator equipment.
General backend improvements to help make the maintenance tasks easier.
Rare bug fixed where error reporting would collide with internal messages (ie, I'd get bad error messages).
City populations are now reported properly, and the "bonus city" now works as expected.
CHANGES
Gladiator stat cards now display next division info.
Gladiator names (for living gladiators) are now clickable to get to zoom.
Wimpy is gone - see additions section for more info.
Battle scarring is now more fair for people with high hps - based on % of HPs lost, instead of a flat scale.
0.5 Official Closed Beta (2005-12-19):
ADDITIONS
Recent battle zoom now displays lines differently for your gladiator's actions, to make it easy to see what your gladiators do in large fights.
Recent battles list will no longer hold all fights since the beginning of time; they're just those within 7 days.
Gladiators can now be fired.
This is a "todo:" item -- fired gladiators cannot yet be zoomed, so if you click one (in the battle log or player roster), you'll get an error!
Player Roster now links the gladiator name to their zoom, so you can get very basic stats on rival gladiators.
Gladiators who have fallen can now be sold to the meat market for sausages! Please ignore the horribly ugly icon for now...
All one-on-one fights have a chance of creating bots (besides the normal bots created to fill in when # of gladiators is odd). The chance is division-based, so lower divisions have a higher chance than upper. This should make newbie fights a little less predictable.
Ugly but functional description has been added to the gladiator zoom to explain stat minimums, maximums, and total stat points.
Complete overhaul of the gladiator list! It's "pretty" and everything. More information is displayed, there are icons, etc. Should make for a far more useful overview of your gladiators.
FIXES
Player roster default view now properly deselects manager's home city.
Viewing another player's gladiator no longer has the rare chance to cause a crash.
Recent battles list for manager is now significantly faster (approx. 10x performance boost).
Most other views are also 10-50% faster.
Fight schedule now shows "missed" fights, instead of acting like they don't exist. These fights are ones which should have run previously, but didn't due to a bug or server outage, and will be run next tick.
CHANGES
Gladiators now max out at 18 for any given stat, unless other modifiers are present.
Combat training for shields should be more frequent, while weapons training should be less.
To make bot fights more interesting (since they'll be more common in lower divisions), bots are now more random, and can range from super-easy to super-hard, with the typical cases being just a little less powerful than the gladiator they fight. The range is still tilted toward easier bots as opposed to harder bots, but the fights should now feel far more fair.
Reputation was removed, as I wasn't finding a good use for it.
Divisions no longer have different arena delays. All fights are now scheduled exactly 1 tick in advance.
Gladiator zoom is no longer available for dead or fired gladiators.
Battles now give skills proportional to arena XP multiplier - green arena will give fewer skills, etc.
Ticks now happen every 12 hours again, to get ready for the live game.
0.4 Official Closed Beta (2005-11-12):
ADDITIONS
All recruiting stations and shop lists are easier to read, with each station/shop shaded alternately in the list.
Inaccessible recruiting stations and shops are now not allowing entry before the player clicks them. They will instead say "Unavailable" with a hover tip explaining it, making the process of figuring out where you can and can't go far easier.
Divisional movement is now in - once a gladiator is eligible for moving up, and gains enough experience, he automatically moves.
Recent battle list now shows all bots in a battle along with normal gladiators and dead/fired gladiators.
Recent battle list now highlights gladiators you own, in order to make it easier to see where your gladiators fought.
Errors reported from gladiator hiring are now far more verbose.
New code is in to allow cities and recruiting stations to affect minimum and maximum stats, as well as initial stat allocations. This code is mostly dormant, but will allow cities to have a real effect on the game, as well as new recruiting stations with more interesting effects.
FIXES
Clicking past page one on the player roster wasn't working; this is fixed.
Fixed bug not allowing players to recruit gladiators.
Fixed bug causing fights to crash when gladiator ratings were calculated.
News is now properly sorted by newest article first.
Gladiator fight schedule, ugly though it is, has been cleaned up to only show upcoming fights, not all fights.
Ties in blue arena no longer cause a server crash!
Rails 0.13 -> 0.14 update issues are fixed, which means that the recent crashes in news, recruiting station, and player roster are fixed.
The full list of recent battles is now sorted by date/time properly.
CHANGES
Default starting stat points have been lowered, so now The "average" gladiator will start with 11 in each stat instead of 12.
HP calculations have changed significantly, making early points spent on Hardiness not feel like a waste.
Major balance changes for better fights, easier formulas and easier explanation of formula effects:
HPs are now about double what they were.
Damage is also double what it was, and anything that modified damage has been changed accordingly.
Stat bonuses are capped lower than before, and generally redesigned to be more "fair".
Skill gains are now slightly slower for training, and much slower for combat, to keep from gaining 5-10% in a skill in a single tick.
There are now 12 skill categories instead of 8, to make rewards a little faster.
Shield skill dodge bonus is now far more useful, and weapon-specific dodge bonus is cut down to amplify the usefulness of shield skills.
0.3 Official Closed Beta (2005-10-30):
ADDITIONS
An error logging system is in place to make bugs far easier to track.
All arenas are now scheduled, not just green, and fight processing is in place (though not fully tested).
Gladiator stats page now shows division information.
Recruiting stations can now set the gladiator's starting division.
A player roster now exists.
Recent battles are now shown, though detailed fight logs aren't available yet.
FIXES
Fixed issue with green fights not properly being scheduled after a single one was scheduled.
Bonus city credits are now properly applied.
Minor performance enhancements.
CHANGES
Updated this changelog to make it look nicer.
Non-premium players will be limited to 2 gladiators.
Significant code clean-up to prepare for easier maintenance.
0.2 Pre-alpha (2005-08-13):
ADDITIONS
Managers must now pick a "home city", which will (later) affect some aspects of game play.
Added viewable change log (this page).
Basic maintenance script now runs regularly, scheduling (though not processing) green fights.
Gladiator schedule view shows fights in terms of number of ticks to reach the fight.
FIXES
Fixed a few places where blank "Rails Error" pages could show up.
Manager's fame is checked before allowing entry to shops.
After buying items, manager is redirected to the store (instead of a blank page).
CHANGES
Items in stores now have hover help describing the base stats of the item.
Recruiting station errors are now more descriptive.
Cost displayed in recruiting stations is now highlighted.
