Geopolitical simulator - the history of creation and development

Hello.

I want to introduce you to the history of the creation of our application Vkontakte RivalRegions.
In short, this is a geopolitical simulator with elements of the economy and military operations. The concept is simple: you choose the region in which you will live, organize or join an already existing party, and begin your political career, from parliamentarian to president. In addition, you naturally pump up the character’s skills, work in enterprises, and participate in protecting your region, or in conquering a neighboring one. After the conquest, you can organize your state.

Technical part:


Frontend - html / css / js (jquery). In our opinion, it turned out to be a fairly convenient quick interface that allows you to play through mobile devices. Supported themes: you can change the colors of the interface and icons. Upset browser restrictions on fullscreen mode: chat and articles (integral parts of the application) are not available.

The server side is written in php. Chat, wars and battles (combat "chess" on the field of hexes - now available only in the form of training, unfortunately, receded into the background) - node.js + socket.io. The base is MySQL.

It works like this:

image

Online at the same time fluctuates around 300-400 during active hours: The

image

application has been developing since the release (a list of innovations can be found on the wiki), therefore, caching is performed in the form of physical versions of a whole new set of scripts / styles on the server: this of course forces users to load all scripts and styles anew but guarantees full performance and the absence of cache problems, amplified by the presence of an iframe. To do this, of course, there is a “deploy” utility launched from the admin panel: an interface with graphs, errors and a chat stream. Prior to this, the version method was used after the file name (script.js? V = 120), but even to our surprise it did not give a 100% guarantee.

Initially, the application was developed as multilingual: the error of the previous application was not repeated (then had to be redone). The development is carried out with the addition of English and Russian phrases, translation into other languages ​​is entrusted to the players. A simple interface was added for this:

image

Saving a line and translating into a new field by Enter allows you to jointly translate about 1000 phrases quickly enough, the current localization progress and the list of translators are available to all players (currently 12 languages ​​have been added, 31 are available for translation). Adding a language for translation takes a minute, the number of languages ​​does not affect productivity, hence the appearance of languages ​​such as Pre-Revolutionary, Soviet and Siberian.

The map (svg file) is created manually, with the help of a php script it is transformed into a map for the jquery plugin: moving using the keyboard and zoom are available. When playing through the site or in full screen mode, the map is expanded to full screen.

image

On April 1, an alpha test was launched. The game map consisted only of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. 2 weeks of test and a break until the beginning of May. The beta test lasted from mid-May to the end of June, and a release took place on July 1. If you look at the story , you can see that the game is still being finalized. Every 2-3 days we add new features to the game.
It is nice that the users themselves are involved in finalizing the game, most translations into other languages ​​are done by their own hands.

Advertising


After the release, the question immediately arose of monetization and promotion of the game. In the application, it is possible to buy gold through VKontakte votes, but unlike most games, you can also earn gold at the enterprise without investing real money. Golda, in turn, is exchanged for the domestic currency of the game.

The most effective way to promote based on our experience is internal contact advertising. Most of the votes received in the application we spend on it.

There were attempts to buy posts in public, but their effectiveness is lower: for a post in public 300k, coverage 150k we paid 1,500, of which we received a little more than 200 installations.

We also tried the method of reposting the entries about the application, and the drawing of prizes among those who shared the record. Over 500 reposts for the new iPod Shuffle.

It should be noted that getting into the block of new applications brings a very good effect:

image

The plans are to add new regions, improve the economic and military component, and, of course, go west.

The game was considered mainly as a political simulator, but to our surprise, many players occupied their own niches in the game, which we did not even think about. Some of the players united in a clan of mercenaries, not members of any party, and in order to show their strength, they declared an uprising in Moscow (the capital of the strongest state at that time), and removed the government. Many do not participate in hostilities and save money to create private enterprises (now in development).

With pleasure I will listen to wishes, comments, recommendations, advice.

Well and links:
rivalregions.com
Play on vk.com
Play on facebook.com

Also popular now: