Blood Royal: Briefing 1

Dear all
Hi again. Another month on and another report on how the game is progressing.
As I expected, Christmas got considerably in the way of significant progress this month: I work for a chain of bookstores, and - as you will understand - this is our busiest time; add to that several trips to visit family, and I didn't get as much done as I hoped, although it was about as much as I expected.
The first thing to change, which hopefully you won't notice, is that I have upgraded to webhosting from freespace for the website. I'd hit the 10mb limit on my freespace account when uploading some new files, so I decided to bring forward the plan to make the domain name a 'live' one - and now it's done! You shouldn't see any difference, BUT - IF YOU HAVE THE FOLLOWING URL AS YOUR BOOKMARK TO THE SITE CHANGE IT:
http://freespace.virgin.net/james.doyle/blood_royal/br_player.htm
You should bookmark : www.blood-royal.co.uk. If you have any problem with this, let me know.
I might try and use the extra facilities available now to set up things like discussion boards, etc., but this will probably be of more use and interest once you have some programs to play with.
The reason that I hit the limit on space was the uploading of the full map set. These are now all available on the new site, with detailed maps of the realms and their territories. Producing those consumed most of the time I had available for the game this month; I hope you think they're worth it!
The expanded command list I promised last time is 99.9% done in text format, but I haven't yet produced the HTML files to upload. Should be done in the next week, and hopefully you'll like what you see. Some of the new commands were suggested by you (including ones which were on my list already), others are from my brain only, but feedback will be welcome.
Thanks to all of those of you who have made suggestions and comments. Some have been acted on, some will be acted on, and others don't fit within my ideas, but have been dealt with politely (I hope). To cover some of those points:
- Language: maps and details have been added to the documentation. Language will affect loyalty of your territories, but isn't something you have a lot of direct control over. This is intentional, but you may be able to exert indirect influence over what language people use.
- Website coding errors: most of these have been dealt with, but there are a couple left to do. These are mainly to do with my code not working with particular browsers. If anyone notices such problems, please let me know. I'm happy to fix these, but at the moment I consider that testing the site on a number of platforms is wasteful of my time.
- The name of the game has excited a lot of interest. To reiterate what I have said to some of you in individual responses, my game has no connection with the Games Workshop Game 'Blood Royale', other than a similarity of aims; which is probably how we ended up with similar names! My game was originally called 'Pretender to the Throne', but when I decided to make a web-based version, I made a list of possible names and went searching for domain names - virtually all of the good ones were taken, and 'Blood Royal' stood out as a strong name that would make a good domain name. At the time I wasn't aware of the existence of 'Blood Royale', but I have since become aware of it and, as you say, although there are similarities, my game has much more to it, I think As a footnote, I think that 'Blood Royale' is a dumb name - the phrase used has always been Blood Royal, whereas Blood Royale is an uncomfortable and inelegant mix of languages.
-What's New: the 'About Blood Royal' page now has dated notes of recent changes, so you can drop in and see what's been added since your last visit.
- Printable version of the rules: several people requested this, and I must thank Steve Duke, one of the playtesters, for volunteering to create a PDF version of the rules. Apparently the graphics print out faintly, so Steve is reworking them into something that prints with better definition. Steve is also working on a traditional 'fantasy' style map, with pictorial representations of mountains, etc. Something else to look forward to in the new year.
Those are the major points raised. Others have been dealt with individually. More welcome!
We've now reached 60 people on the list of those interested in playtesting, which is good. What is not so good is that about 20 of those people haven't responded to the first newsletter. I shall be emailing those people separately to remind them and ask if they are still interested - if you get that email, please reply! It lets me know you haven't dropped off the net. I shall continue to accept people onto the list, as I have no doubt that not everyone on it will be available to play when we begin the playtest.
The front-end program should be written by the end of January - apart from a skiing trip to Chamonix from the 20th to 26th, I'm not going anywhere this month, so lots of time to work on the game!
All the best for the new year

Copyright © 2001-02 James Doyle. All rights reserved.



	Dear all Hi again. Another month on and another report on how the game is progressing. As I expected, Christmas got considerably in the way of significant progress this month: I work for a chain of bookstores, and - as you will understand - this is our busiest time; add to that several trips to visit family, and I didn't get as much done as I hoped, although it was about as much as I expected. The first thing to change, which hopefully you won't notice, is that I have upgraded to webhosting from freespace for the website. I'd hit the 10mb limit on my freespace account when uploading some new files, so I decided to bring forward the plan to make the domain name a 'live' one - and now it's done! You shouldn't see any difference, BUT - IF YOU HAVE THE FOLLOWING URL AS YOUR BOOKMARK TO THE SITE CHANGE IT: http://freespace.virgin.net/james.doyle/blood_royal/br_player.htm You should bookmark : www.blood-royal.co.uk. If you have any problem with this, let me know. I might try and use the extra facilities available now to set up things like discussion boards, etc., but this will probably be of more use and interest once you have some programs to play with. The reason that I hit the limit on space was the uploading of the full map set. These are now all available on the new site, with detailed maps of the realms and their territories. Producing those consumed most of the time I had available for the game this month; I hope you think they're worth it! The expanded command list I promised last time is 99.9% done in text format, but I haven't yet produced the HTML files to upload. Should be done in the next week, and hopefully you'll like what you see. Some of the new commands were suggested by you (including ones which were on my list already), others are from my brain only, but feedback will be welcome. Thanks to all of those of you who have made suggestions and comments. Some have been acted on, some will be acted on, and others don't fit within my ideas, but have been dealt with politely (I hope). To cover some of those points: - Language: maps and details have been added to the documentation. Language will affect loyalty of your territories, but isn't something you have a lot of direct control over. This is intentional, but you may be able to exert indirect influence over what language people use. - Website coding errors: most of these have been dealt with, but there are a couple left to do. These are mainly to do with my code not working with particular browsers. If anyone notices such problems, please let me know. I'm happy to fix these, but at the moment I consider that testing the site on a number of platforms is wasteful of my time. - The name of the game has excited a lot of interest. To reiterate what I have said to some of you in individual responses, my game has no connection with the Games Workshop Game 'Blood Royale', other than a similarity of aims; which is probably how we ended up with similar names! My game was originally called 'Pretender to the Throne', but when I decided to make a web-based version, I made a list of possible names and went searching for domain names - virtually all of the good ones were taken, and 'Blood Royal' stood out as a strong name that would make a good domain name. At the time I wasn't aware of the existence of 'Blood Royale', but I have since become aware of it and, as you say, although there are similarities, my game has much more to it, I think As a footnote, I think that 'Blood Royale' is a dumb name - the phrase used has always been Blood Royal, whereas Blood Royale is an uncomfortable and inelegant mix of languages. -What's New: the 'About Blood Royal' page now has dated notes of recent changes, so you can drop in and see what's been added since your last visit. - Printable version of the rules: several people requested this, and I must thank Steve Duke, one of the playtesters, for volunteering to create a PDF version of the rules. Apparently the graphics print out faintly, so Steve is reworking them into something that prints with better definition. Steve is also working on a traditional 'fantasy' style map, with pictorial representations of mountains, etc. Something else to look forward to in the new year. Those are the major points raised. Others have been dealt with individually. More welcome! We've now reached 60 people on the list of those interested in playtesting, which is good. What is not so good is that about 20 of those people haven't responded to the first newsletter. I shall be emailing those people separately to remind them and ask if they are still interested - if you get that email, please reply! It lets me know you haven't dropped off the net. I shall continue to accept people onto the list, as I have no doubt that not everyone on it will be available to play when we begin the playtest. The front-end program should be written by the end of January - apart from a skiing trip to Chamonix from the 20th to 26th, I'm not going anywhere this month, so lots of time to work on the game! All the best for the new year


Copyright © 2001-02 James Doyle. All rights reserved.