Hey everyone,

Instead of announcing the new additions, I’m going to talk about what is left to do since the majority of the game has been completed since my last post.

Left To Do 

_____________

17 more Abilities
4 more Spells
all Items 
2 more Upgrades 

______________

Once I get the item framework working correctly, they should all be done fast, as they are all relatively simple.

I’d like to thank all of the alpha testers for their hard work finding all those bugs.  We’ve had over 200 people test the game so far.  If it’s been a while since you’ve tried it yourself, check out the many new features at :
http://www.dragonwars.net/alpha.html

Of course, along with new features comes new bugs, so remember to submit any you may find to:
http://dragonwars.net/forum/ 

I’ll be working on weekly updates, each one hacking off some of the stuff I listed above.  Beta is on the horizon!

Cheers,
Jason 

• Bug Fixes
• Transportation
• Insubstantial
• Flight
• Various Random Abilities
• Dragon

And, the game is well on its way to being ready for Beta testing in early December. Hope this comes as good news to all. If you want to help us, here is what you do.

When you’re bored, if the server is on, play with your friends. If you are SURE you experienced a glitch, post it on the forums, along with your OS, Java console and all of that.

Tell people about the game – don’t post on forums and stuff, just invite friends to play with you once in a while.

BE ACTIVE. A healthy community is what gets people logging in. Post on the forums, login to the game, whatever you can do.

Appreciate your support, DW is almost ready for beta!

Pretty soon you all will be able to play complete games of DragonWars, albeit with only a subset of all the final features.   Remember, the link to try it out yourself is:  http://www.dragonwars.net/alpha.html

Cheers,
Jason

I’ve updated the game to the point where players select an element from their hand to play onto the board, then the available squares are highlighted in green where players take turns placing their units.  If you have a friend that will try it out with you, you can find the applet at:  http://www.dragonwars.net/alpha.html

There are a bunch of known issues with the game.  If you run into any, please follow the directions for submitting a bug at:  http://dragonwars.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=51

Properly submitting a bug helps get the game moving along at a strong pace.

If you don’t get a chance to check out the latest stuff, I’ll have some screenshots up here in the next update.

Try it out! 
~Jason (Nether)

THE BASICS

So you want to learn to play Dragon Wars?

Don’t worry. Dragon Wars is quite an easy game to pick up and play. Mastering it takes much longer, though. The first thing you should know is that Dragon Wars is a turn-based multiplayer strategy game, for 2-25 players, where the object is to kill every enemy Captain on the board. You summon creatures, and have them do your bidding until you have achieved this. The game is split into rounds.

Rounds? God, I’m confused.

Well, every round in the game is divided into three ‘phases’. In the first phase, all the players in the game choose which creature they wish to summon (or perhaps which spell they wish to cast.) This is the Unit Selection Phase. Once they’re all done, or the time runs out, players choose where on the board they place their unit. If you’re summoning a Unit, you usually have to place them in a square adjacent to your Captain. This is the Unit Placement Phase. The final (and funnest) phase is Unit Movement. This is when players in the game take turns at moving their various creatures around, and battering the opposition. Each unit has a limited amount of movement points per round, so if your unit has 5 movement points (speed), you can only move them 5 squares that round.

Alright, well how should I win a game? What should I TRY to do?

Well, to play Dragon Wars is to play a walk line between offence and defence. You want to keep your captain out of harm’s way, while getting your units near enough to deal some serious damage to the enemy. What you will learn early on is that many units have special abilities – for example, the Elf has a bow which fires off some powerful arrows at the opposition once you have moved him. Learning these abilities is crucial to mastering the game of Dragon Wars. This can only come with practice. To get started, just make a few units and set them about killing any enemy troops near you (walk them up to an enemy, and click on the enemy.)

Make? What?

Now, when you’ve chosen a creature to summon during the Unit Selection Round, you will be presented with two options – Summon, or Illusion. The less strong your creature is, the higher its summon percentage is. For example, a Rat has a 95% chance to be summoned successfully, because it’s not very useful compared to a Dragon. If you summon it, there is a 95% chance that that unit will successfully appear on the board the next round. (If it doesn’t, then you lose it forever!) Now, if you choose ‘Illusion,’ the unit will ALWAYS appear on the board the next round. Even if you chose a 5% uber Dragon. The catch? Every player has an unlimited amount of ‘Reveal’ in their hand. Reveal is a spell that you can cast on any unit on the board, and if you cast it on an illusion, it vanishes (if you cast it on something real, you wasted your turn.) If you see Dragons wandering about with Giants and War Elephants, then somebody is probably using illusions and you should use reveal on some of their units. There is therefore a large amount of bluffing involved – making enemies think that an illusion is summoned, or that a summoned creature is an illusion.

Go play!

Well, you know the basics now. Go and play a few games, and come back once you’re starting to get the hang of the game. We’re sure you’ll enjoy it!

THE MEDIUM

Past the Basics

If you’re reading this, you’ve hopefully played a few games and gotten a feel for the world, so I’ll get to explaining some of the things that may puzzle you.

Movement

Units move diagonally for 1.5 points, or straight for 1 point. Moving diagonally is therefore more economic. You can also move diagonally when your unit has only 1 speed left – tricksy! Some units can even fly (they’re the ones with wings,) and go straight over other units.

Transportation

Where are the enemy captains? I don’t understand… If you don’t see enemy captains, they’re probably inside transportation (or have an invisibility cape on.) Transport units are what you’d expect – Horse, Elephant, Giant Tortoise – all your usual methods of getting around. Kill the transport, and the Captain will be revealed, vulnerable and ripe for the killing. Want to get in a transport? Click on your transport with your captain.

Alignment and Morality

Every unit has an alignment, and a morality. An alignment is Magic/Enchanted/Mundane. Morality is Good/Neutral/Evil. For example, a Dwarf is Mundane (non-magical) and Good. A Bat is Mundane, and Neutral (all animals are neutral.) A Skeleton is Enchanted (a mundane object infused with magic) and Evil. How does this affect the game? Well, every time you create something evil, the World Morality shifts a little (0.6) towards evil. Every point (1.0) the world morality shifts towards evil evil units are 5% more likely to spawn. If the World Morality is evil, good units have their default spawn %s. Alignment works the same way – a Mundane World Alignment means Mundane units are more likely to succeed. So, if the World Alignment is 6 Evil, and 2 Magic, then the King Dragon (which has a 5% chance and is Magic Evil) will have a 45% chance of Summoning successfully. Luckily the game tracks the changes to summon %s for you.

Combat

How does combat actually work? Well, there’s no hitpoints. If you click a unit which has 5 Defence, and you have 5 Strength, you have a 50% chance of killing it, and a 50% chance of not hurting it. If you have 6 Strength and it has 5 defence, then you have a 60% chance of killing it. These are the statistics.

Strength
Compared = % Chance
To Defence

+9            =   99.999
+8            =   99.99
+7            =   99.9
+6            =   99
+5            =   98
+4            =   92
+3            =   80
+2            =   70
+1            =   60
+0            =   50
-1            =   40
-2            =   30
-3            =   20
-4            =   8
-5            =   2
-6            =   1
-7            =   0.1
-8            =   0.01
-9            =   0.001

Spectres

The undead getting you down? Insubstantial units – any Spectral Unit, the Night Mare, the Shadow or the Wind Elemental – cannot be attacked by physical attacks. It’ll need a spell, a projectile (such as an arrow) or another insubstantial unit to take them down. Damn them!

Undead

Speaking of Spectres, the undead in general are way more likely to be summoned, and way stronger once they are, at night. The werewolf is a little tricky though – he’ll attack anything you move him next to, friendly or not. My advice is to keep him away from your other troops.

Spells

Spells work the same way as combat, except their ‘Spell Power’ is rolled against an enemy’s resistance, rather than strength against defence. Lots of spells have other special effects, too.

Random Events

Occasionally, a natural catastrophe will befall the world. You just have to learn to deal with it, probably with the help of other players in the game. Staying away from Fire is always a good idea.

Ranged Attacks

Sometimes I can shoot them, sometimes I can’t. They’re within range, what’s going wrong? To shoot a unit, you need a direct Line of Sight (LOS.) This means that you can draw a line between your unit, and their unit, without the line touching another unit. If you can’t do that, then you can’t shoot it.

THE EXTREME

You’re a Master, now what?
Alright, well, you’ve learned most of what there is to know about Dragon Wars, and you want a few expert tips. Fair enough, hear you go:

Hot Hot Hot

Want to summon a Fire Elemental? That difficult summon % getting you down? Try spawning it next to or in some fire. That should help a lot.

Faerie Power

Make a Faerie at midnight (a round ending in eight) and see what happens.

Elemental, Dear Watson

Try inducing elemental effects onto your Elemental. For example, throw some clay onto a Water Elemental. Or freeze it. We dare ya.

More will go here.

INDEX

Links to Unit/Spell Information/Item Information/Building Information will go here.

What to look forward to in the near future:

• Placing Units
• Moving Units
• Attacking other Units

Cheers,
Jason

http://dragonwars.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=29

Good progress has been made on dragonwars over the past couple days.  The data has mostly been formatted, and the code for reading in all the unit/spell/item stats is done.

If you were to play the game, here is what is finished:
The captains are placed in the correct locations depending on the number of players.
Items are spawned randomly throughout the board.
Players hands are randomly generated.

More progress soon!

~Jason

http://www.dragonwars.net/dragonwars-alpha2.html

If it doesn’t work, then you don’t have the latest version of java, or the server is down.

Try to gather as many people as you can to chat away, in order to flush out any bugs.

Hopefully this weekend, we’ll see progress with the DragonWars itself.

Regards,
Jason

Lance will add the appropriate forum categories, but feel free to register in the mean while and start discussion in the lounge. The theme is default for now. I shall integrate it hopefully with the main website once that gets designed. Cheers,

-Karan