As far as exciting news goes Frank and I are proud to announce that we have officially launched the beta version of Conrohl.com. If you haven't checked the game out yet now is a great time to do so. You can get in at the beginning of the server.

So far so good. We have had no major bugs or errors reported to this point and people seem to be pretty interested in the game. We started advertising campaigns on both Google Adwords and on Facebook Sunday evening and we are already above 175 users on the game.

The adds seem to be performing fairly well to this point. We were able to get some free advertising $ through a few special offers that godaddy and visa are currently running.

I will try and write more about strategies for advertising on Google and Facebook in the near future. For now join the game, let us know what you think, and tell your friends.

-Brett

There is some pretty exciting stuff starting to unfold in the Conrohl universe.

First, I would like to thank our good buddy Chris and his dormies up at the University of Kentucky. They have been conducting some pretty solid play testing. Found a couple bugs some more catastrophic than others. But all of them needed to get cleaned up.

So I went out searching for some decent forum software that I use that would be functional, secure, and not too complicated to setup and use. And I must say a BIG thank you to the people over at Snitz.com. The Snitz forum is all of those things, AND it’s free to use.

If you’re reading this and are interested in joining the conversation please check it out at forum.conrohl.com. Heck I’ll even award the first person to register and make a post on the forum 10,000 free credits once the game kicks off. This offer is only valid if, Brett or I don’t know you, sorry Kate.

Speaking of kicking the game off, by this Friday we will finally be comfortable enough to begin our Google and Facebook ad campaigns (perhaps if Brett is feeling saucy he’ll blog about those). We are going to kick these Sunday morning/afternoon.

You might ask, Why kickoff on Sunday if you are ready on Friday? That is very simple, Brett and I both like to go out at night and watch football. We can HARDLY be expected to sit around the computer put out fires all weekend.

Even though we are officially launching BETA on Sunday I’ve opened the registration request link now. I will be going through the server and clearing all the existing users. However, don’t worry I will only be deleting accounts made before today. Till next time.

Happy Gaming,
Frank

On a slightly personal note today is my 30th birthday. Well actually last Saturday was but I was in the keys so we are celebrating it today. Here is a picture of Brett and I working hard as usual on Conrohl.com with beverages in hand. Beer just seems to be a little tastier from the big red SOLO cups.

Well I've nailed down how the Academy/Leaders are going to work and got it working. You will now be able to setup a Planetary Leader as General and/or Admiral to assist in defending your planets ground/sky. You will also be able to create Contracts to hire other people’s Leaders to do your dirty work for you (or you can have your own leader do the work). Brett will write up the specifics and we'll add it to the How-To section.

For the most part, the way it will work is you can create a contract to hire any Leader in the game for whatever amount of resources you are willing to pay in order to apply pressure on your enemy in a variety of ways. You could for example create a contract to hire someone to send their Leader onto your enemy’s planet and blow up their barracks. That offer to hire will sit out in the market waiting for someone to accept it. Depending on the accepting Leaders ability to infiltrate your enemy’s planetary defenses, and their expertise with explosives they will either destroy the building or not and potentially get caught trying to escape. Nothing says "Good Morning!" like signing in to find out your War Factory and Barracks has been destroyed by some unknown sneaky demolitions expert. Or even better yet you check your prisons and see that you were able to CATCH the SoB who tried to do you dirty.

By the way if someone catches your leader you will always have an opportunity to sneak him out of prison or you can pay his ransom and have him released. If you fail the attempt to sneak out then the ransom goes up. What's a reward without risk!! =)


-Frank

Well it has been some time since my last post but we have been very busy here at Conrohl. We have gone ahead and Incorporated so if any of you readers think you'll be able to sue us you'll pretty much get nothing as we don't really have any assets. he he. I'm sure Brett will post something soon about the whole incorporation process. But as far as progress on the actual site as I'm sure anyone who is following the growth of this site will note we have just had a HUGE facelift. Thanks to some overseas graphic artists we were able to finally get some quality artwork up on the site. It’s truly amazing what a difference it makes when all the images match the background they sit on. It almost brings a tear to my eye as this baby begins to come to life. I mean 2 years ago this was all just a vision in my head. Barring a few artistic differences this is pretty much exactly what I had imagined. I am so close to bringing this thing live (or at least a playable BETA) I can almost taste it. Although the developer and perfectionist in me is telling me to hold back and wait till everything is just right. There are still some parts of the game that aren't fully operational, for example the whole Military Academy/ Leaders section. But once we get that working I think I can take a week or so to clean up simple pesky bugs and I would be happy with releasing. But that is something Brett and I will have to discuss. Alright everyone happy gaming! -Frank

Well the last week or so has been a crash course in CSS implementation and layout design. The biggest thing I learned was that I should have STARTED with the layout and then built the website on top of it. Rather than create the game and then try to fit a framework around it. The fact remains with Conrohl that it took may have taken a little longer than originally estimated but it in the end it has come out pretty much how I wanted.

Some of the more stubborn problems I came across were screen resolution and browser compatibility. Which then led me into another crash course of having to learn about the differences between Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari (the big three browsers). It got rather frustrating when the site looked great in one browser it but fell apart in the other. After working through the browser differences I had to choose how I wanted to setup to resolution. As I learned it is impossible to make the site 100% compatible with every screen size that every person that comes to the site could have. So I settled on a on a width of 1150 pixels. Yes there are a large number of people that still have an 800x600 but I am willing to guess that the majority of people using this site will have something better than an old 15inch monitor set on the lowest setting. As I review Google analytics and determine that a majority of people aren’t able to see everything then I will go back and alter it. But for now I think it works well.

-frank

So we've been getting a few game testers to trickle in and we've decided that it’s probably time to start concerning ourselves with the look and feel of the game. So I've taken the last week or so and stopped development of the game and started focusing on the presentation of the content. Just when I was fully comfortable at manipulating data and organizing the navigation from page to page and BAM I have to completely change gears and start focusing on developing my artistic side. Step one seems to be a bit of a sticking point for me and that is selecting a proper color palette. Now we made a decision a while ago to go with a general black background to mimic the emptiness of space although I think it is the right decision I believe it makes it a touch harder to design an eye friendly color scheme. So I have been doing a lot of reading and researching other sites that look good and trying to find something that works. Also, I've come across the font Huxtable that is currently being used in game. To me it is crisp and detailed enough to be readable but fancy and scripted enough to exist in a fantasy/ sci-fi game world. I'd be interested to hear other peoples thought about it. Also, if anyone knows of any black/dark websites with good color schemes please just pop a reply in the blog. Alright time to put on my beret and bust out the easel I’m about to go make something beautiful.

-Frank