Naked War: Beta Release

(Copied from: Zee-3 forum) For those here that have been waiting to play the game:

http://www.zee-3.com/forums

The Pickford Brothers website:

http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros

is now open as well, if you're interested.)

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Naked War Release schedule
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Naked War is almost complete and we're planning a staggered release of the game, in three phases. Phase 1 is the Beta Programme which will begin on Friday 26th May 2006. This will be followed by a Phase 2 - a limited release, then Phase 3 - full release.

The Zee-3 website is now open, although the The Naked War section is currently closed to all non-subscribers / non-testers.

Phase 1 - Beta Programme

This is a chance for anyone interested in the game to purchase a subscription and start playing the game before the full release, to help us iron out the last few wrinkles in the system and to give us some early feedback.

You can join the Beta Programme by purchasing a subscription to Naked War.

http://www.zee-3.com/nakedwar/buy.php

A subscription buys you 20 or more Challenge Credits, which are used to initiate new games of Naked War against your friends. Although you will need to purchase a subscription to join, for the period of the Beta Programme all games will be free, so none of the Challenge Credits you purchase will be consumed. The only limit is that during the Beta Programme you will only be able to play games against other Beta players; you won't be able to send invitation Challenges to new players.

Once you've enrolled yourself in the Beta Programme the Naked War website becomes visible when you log in, and you can download the game and read gameplay instructions, background info, player stats etc.

If you receive an invitation Challenge from one of the Pickford Brothers you will also be automatically enrolled in the Beta Programme, but you will still need to purchase a subscription before you can send out Challenges.

Active Alpha testers will automatically be enrolled in the Beta Programme, but will need to purchase a subscription before sending Challenges. There will be an additional reward subscription given to any Alpha tester who subscribes.

There is an up to date list of all Beta players on the Naked War website.

http://www.zee-3.com/nakedwar/beta-players.php

You can send challenges to anyone on this list.

The main things we want to test during this phase are the subscription purchasing system, the interactions between the game and the website, the game's balance and ease of use for unfamiliar players. And bugs, obviously!

The Beta Programme will be open to new players for a limited time. Once we have enough people the purchase system will be closed until the game is released.
Phase 2 - Limited release

At the end of the Beta Programme (which we envisage taking a few weeks from the start date) we plan to open the game to a wider audience on an 'invite only' basis. Each new game will now cost 1 Challenge Credit to initiate, but exisiting players will now be free to send Challenges to anybody with a PC and an email address.

The Naked War website will remain closed non-registered players, but will become visible to anyone who's received an invitation Challange from an exisitng player.

The purpose of this limited release is to avoid a big influx of traffic to the website in the first week or so, which could potentially overwhelm us. Maybe we're being optimisic, or pessimistic, but we don't want to get 'slashdotted', or linked on some other popular site, and have a big surge of hits in a short time which kills the website and puts off potentially interested players. We hope that a temporary invite-only system will allow the traffic to grow more organically, and give us chance to put some protections in place once we understand the likely server load better.

Phase 3 - Full release

At some point, probably a few weeks after the limited release, we plan to fully release the game, opening the website up to everyone, and making the game software freely available to anyone.

You've been posting too much on your own forum it looks like.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up. Will check it out over the weekend. I'm pretty tied up right now...

what about those game titles eh?

De-flower!!
Sticky Balls!!
Naked war!!

some spectrum classics in that softography there

good luck on naked war

Good luck with this, you've been working on it a *long* time.

Nice site! I always thought that Solar Jetman was more of a spiritual successor to Speccy Scuba Dive than any of the Thrust-alikes, so it was interesting to read Ste's bit on it.

I never got my confirmation email :(

I've looked and looked and looked... and I'm either blind or it just ain't there... I have no idea what this game is. At all. It could be nekked mud wrasslin or WW2 rts for all I know. And I can't find any screen shots either so............................. I'll just stay away for now.

> I never got my confirmation email :(

Strangely it's been added to various spam filters (such as yahoo) I had to check my spam e-mail to fine my confirmation.

> And I can't find any screen shots either so.

You've got to buy it first to start testing.

Cheers everyone. We aren't doing a hard sell at the moment - we're just allowing those interested to pre-purchase and take part in the Beta testing.

Kanati, the game is a turn-based battle game a little like Advance Wars and is played via email.

Here's a recent video:

http://www.zee-3.com/video/chainreaction.wmv




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Once we get through the beta phase we'll be doing some proper marketing.

This looks lovely :-)

I really like the graphical style you've opted for.

Ah, twas the spam filter.

That's what I was looking for... Don't know if I'll be up for beta or not (I'll take a look again on payday) but it's definitely enough that I will give it serious consideration when it's out of beta.

No worries. There'll be a free demo when we get to the full release.

We're getting some brilliant feedback at the moment and I've had some cracking games.

Just a reminder that the Beta Programme is still open (see my sig).

The current batch of testers have been pretty active. Since last Friday afternoon we've processed 776 turns - an average of 113 per day or 4.73 per hour.

Our most active player has clocked up 17 hours play and he would have used 14 credits (we aren't decrementing the credit count during the beta phase).

And I have lost 3 out of 5 games.

The Blue Team are winning with an 88% to 12% win ratio.

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We still have a few compatibility issues preventing the game working properly on some PC's. Mainly those with 6800 based cards. I'm aiming to have that fixed in the next few days. I'm also implementing some measures to get the game running on lower-specced hardware. During the week we've added proxy server support which has allowed at least one player to play from work.

Any ETA of the free demo? Weeks/Months?

Could you please explain what the credits are for in the full game?

Weeks.

You don't buy the game, you buy batches of 'credits' which allow you to challenge people. The person you challenge plays for free. For $19.99 you get 20 challenges and a guarantee of 20 hours gameplay (you'll most likely get a lot more). You can buy them in bigger batches for better value.

There will also be a 'loser pays' option where both particpants put up a credit and the winner is refunded at the end of the game.

Interesting concept that is.

And there is nothing like an unlimited credits option or such?
For $40 or whatever.

We might consider that but it would limit some of the possibilities (like loser pays) which I think add a bit of spice to the proceedings.

The $39.99 option gives you 60 credits and a guarantee of 60 hours play. Bearing in mind that you'll likely be receiving as many challenges as you send out so you'll likely be playing 120 games before you could possibly run out.

There will also be a number of ways to 'earn' extra credits. I'd be amazed if anyone buying the biggest pack ever ran out.

We're running it like this mainly because it reflects our costs. We have to maintain a server and pay for bandwidth (as well as continuing development of the client software) so it's more like service than a product. It also means we can make the software free to distribute and not worry so much about piracy.

The testers so far are getting better than the estimated 1 hour per credit.

Interesting - sounds like a great way of 'selling' the game. Loadsa money! ;)

Will you have a 'winner takes all' option for hardcore players? Each player puts x amount of credits in the pot, the victor taking the lot, minus 1 credit for the game.

Yes, that's a feature we want to implement. We need to make sure it's legal though - we don't want to fall foul of gambling laws.

Yeah, that did cross my mind. It could make for some real nerve-racking games, though. :P

Yeah, I think it will be a popular feature.

And there will be probably some hackers out there trying to cheat too... :(

Be hard to cheat if the games require a pass through the games main-server to check for illegal moves before proceeding with the e-mail sending, and penalize cheaters by loss of credits or something.

They're only cheating themselves. Or something.

John, is there any way that people can watch the action between two other players?

I was just thinking it would be nice to be able to watch two players battling it out between each other. Have the option to play public or private games. Public games in progress could be listed on your site and others would be able to opt in and watch the game to it's conclusion. If you are able to do the 'winner takes all' option, I think others would love to watch the game, especially if high stakes are involved. :)

Anyway, just a thought. Probably a logistical nightmare in reality?

It's not impossible. We could let others download the turn files without the option to respond. The files would effectively be movie files of each turn.

It's something we'll look at if there's any sort of demand.

We have a lot of cool features in the pipeline. My favourites are the 'Challenge Anyone' and 'Challenge Everyone' games. In the former, your challenge is posted on the website for anyone to pick up. With the latter, this happens with each turn - so you are literally challenging everyone or at least the entire community. If you are ever bored you can simply visit the site and play a couple of random turns.

Nice one. :)

For the "spectator mode":
Wouldn't it be better having the server to create a "script file" of the complete round.
Then the users only need to download one single file and can watch all turns made in the round?

Perhaps, but currently the server only really stores and passes on the compressed turn files. It doesn't know how to maniplulate them. I suppose they could be packed into one file. Or potentially each turn file could contain the entire history of commands - which is a fairly trivial amount of data - so it could play back the entire game so far.

Beta Programme Stat attack:

10 days since launch

100 games played

1000 turns sent


22 players have signed up, and about 3/4 of them have remained active, playing Naked War for just over 100 hours between them - that's an average of around 5 hours each, or half an hour each a day. Our top player is now up to 24 hours played!

We've had loads of very valuable feedback, spotted quite a few minor bugs and niggles (which we're fixing), and had some excellent suggestions to improve the game.

Most of the 4 of 5 who haven't played have had PC compatibility issues, preventing them from playing the game, which we're working on fixing now.

Great job.

Btw I just read about: Naked War Chronicles: Chapter 1

"Chapter 1" indicates that there will be a "Chapter 2"?

Chapter 2 is two player at one pc battle against each other?

Eh?

Chronicles will be a 1 player game. Chapters will be stories released as separate products.

You can do the 2 player at one PC stuff in Naked War now. In fact that mode will be 100% free.

Aha, ok. Thanks.

Any estimated pricing for such an episode yet?

No. We'll see how much content they have. We're pricing Naked War at $1 per estimated hour of play. We'll probably use a similar formula.

Your image looks very appealing, your gaming concept sounds great, I am sorely tempted to play however I really need to stop reading threads and get on with some of my own development.. All the best with what looks like a promising product...

3 more testers signed up in the last 24 hours. Must be to do with pay day.

The great thing is pretty much all the testers have remained active - other than those who can't (yet) run the game.

About 145 turns have been exchanged today. So far.

One player just challenged me with a custom designed map too. Well chuffed about that - it's quite hard to get people to try the map editor.