Arcane Journeys Blog

2012 Calendar

2011-12-30T14:52:00.000-05:00

In addition to creating games, I make art.

Here is a new calendar I made, featuring many of my favorite prints, of works on paper. Get it at Redbubble

Get it at Redbubble

The Journey to New Earth, updated again

2011-10-28T00:37:00.001-04:00

I got a suggestion for a useful feature in this game, and while I was adding it, I decided to add some new items and encounters. Also changed some numbers to make it play better, and keep things moving. As I mentioned in a previous post, I initially made this game when very sleep deprived, and thought the result was thin, but as I keep adding to it and refining it, the game I intended to make keeps showing itself more and more.

Here's what's new:

- Added a new planet encounter, the storm in the wilderness.
- Added a new city encounter, a shady person.
- Added Mining Lasers, as well as two new secret mystery items.
- Now, in relevant encounters it shows how much stuff you have, so you can better determine a course of action.
- Now, there is a limit of 7 shrines per planet, down from 12. Also, shrines give you double their previous reward for building them.
- Added a small virtue reward for talking to people but failing to convince them of anything.
- Widened the main display, adjusted some encounter chances, and fixed a few typos.

Book of Games available on iTunes.

2011-09-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

I just released my book of original card and dice games as an eBook, available on the iBookstore on iTunes.

Click here to see it

Iterations

2011-08-31T09:19:00.001-04:00

I like to think of everything on my website as being in draft mode, meaning it could be constantly revised and made better. I find that I keep learning and focusing my understanding as time goes on, and sometimes when I come back after a long period of time away from editing the website, or the online games, I see more clearly new things that I would like to do to streamline them.

I think it is good to be adaptive like this and open to learning because it can make your end product better in the long run.

The Journey to New Earth

2011-08-17T01:19:00.000-04:00

I made some changes to this online game to make it easier to find the quests you need to do in order to win. I originally made this game when very sleep deprived, and until the last major revision, I thought it was kind of a thin game. But while adding these new hints for the quests, I was reminded of how much better it is now. I used to find all sorts of weird bugs, which had been introduced due to lack of sleep. I think there are some more minor changes to be made to make the game better, but it is fairly good anyway.

Updates to the online game, The Well

2011-07-29T08:37:00.004-04:00

I got excited that my new local server is working, so I made some changes to The Well, to make it more visually interesting and streamlined, as well as fix some minor bugs.

One of the main things I did was add pictures to five of the non-monster encounters. Also, I took away some boring text, and added more informational text that shows up when you hover over a monster's special ability. Overall, the encounter screens are prettier and more streamlined.

Another thing I did was change an encounter, the altar, that showed up on some fixed levels, so that has a random chance of appearing every 5 levels of The Well. The overall chance is about the same, but this is more exciting.

New Local Server Running

2011-07-22T00:55:00.002-04:00

The computer I used to develop Arcane Journeys on stopped working about six months ago. I finally got around to setting up a new machine (which I am writing this on). It was kind of a pain, because I had to learn bits of esoteric knowledge about computers to make it work, but it means that I can edit Arcane Journeys again with ease. Now I'd like to think of some fun changes to make.

Windows games prices cut in half!

2010-12-22T00:42:00.004-05:00

I decided to lower the prices of my windows games.

Now, Adventure Solitaire is $4.99, half off of its previous price.

And Angelus the Necromancer, is only $3.99, more than half off of its previous price.

Visit Arcane Journeys to find out more.

Abstract Art Calender

2010-11-19T12:26:00.001-05:00

One of my other pursuits, in addition to creating games, is making art.

Last week I made these calendars for 2011, which feature paintings and collage I made.

Get a copy at RedBubble.

Get a copy at RedBubble.

Top 5 Tips to Make Your Game Great

2010-10-10T23:37:00.004-04:00

1. It shouldn't be boring. Find the boring spots, and either take them out, simplify them, automate them, or compress them.

2. It shouldn't be too hard to do over and over again. If you had to do something 100 times in a row, how would you make it easier to do? Can you make something happen with 1 mouse click instead of 3? You would save 200 clicks! What if you had to do it 1000 times in a row?

3. It should be easy to remember how to play. Human short term memory has limits, and those limits are part of what you are working with when designing a game. If people can't remember the rules, especially in a board game, it's probably too complicated. Thing of chess or go. What makes those games good is not the complexity of the rules, but the complexity of the emergent strategy.

4. Honestly evaluate whether or not you have fun when you play it, or play different sections of it. If it isn't fun, it needs changing, even if it is clever or well done. Fun is one of those things that isn't about 'balance' or strategy, or game mechanics, or sophistication. People have fun chucking rocks into water, for example.

5. Listen to what people say after they have played your game. Most people aren't clear about what exactly they didn't like, but they can tell you when and where it occurred, and this is useful for leading you to trouble spots. Usually they will give you ideas for solutions that don't fit your design, but they know what needs work, so pay attention, and come up with a good solution.

-Jim DuBois
Arcane Journeys

One way to be happier

2010-09-26T16:40:00.000-04:00

When I play a few board games that I like with friends each week, I am happier. I thought I would speculate on why that is:

1. I get to be with my friends. And we have something to do together. It stimulates my tribal desires to do social things. Afterwards, we have shared memories.

2. I get to focus on a different world. A self-contained, completely handle-able and dynamic world. It is good to take a short break from the overwhelming, not control-able actual world.

3. I get to exercise my intellect and solve problems.

4. I get to imagine.

5. I get to feel powerful.

6. I get to be challenged.

7. I get to roll dice, and see what numbers come up. I get to draw cards randomly. It engages my simple sense of curiosity. What's next?

The elements above are present in many other activities which make me happy, as well, which to me means they are important parts of being happy. What is special about games, though? I think it is the dynamic aspect of the simulated space you play in which mimics to a degree the space you inhabit in the world, and thus gives your mind an environment in which it already functions well. It gives your mind a chance to make decisions that affect the limited world of the game, but have no consequences outside of it, which is a wonderful no-pressure situation to exercise your capacities in. It gives your mind a little playground to explore.

Playing games engages my mind in many different ways, and having an engaged mind is one aspect of happiness.

Why you shouldn't "balance your game"

2010-09-19T08:56:00.000-04:00

"Is the game balanced?" is a question a lot of people ask... when they don't know how to ask more precise questions. Overall game balance makes no sense, it is a misleading idea. Balance takes at least two different sides, so to just say a game is balanced leaves the question, "with what?" or "in what way?"

You can balance one aspect of a game against another, you can make sure two opposing sides are equal in strength and have the same chance to win, you can compare the amount of time invested in learning a game against the time a person might be willing to invest in playing it.

The two sides in chess are balanced, meaning they are of equal strength. In Monopoly, at the beginning, everyone has the same chance of winning the game, so you could say that one player's chance of winning is balanced when compared to any other player's.

You can pick any aspect of your game and see how it relates to any other aspect, and this is a good idea. You can balance the cost of items in your game, you can balance the strength of the enemies against the strength of the character at any particular point, you can balance the difficulty of a dexterity game, or the intellectual challenge of a strategy game, against the age level and sophistication of the players you expect to have. It's always good to compare and analyze different game elements.

So don't balance your game, balance elements of your game against each other, against your goals for the game, and against the intended players.

3 Reasons you shouldn't playtest your game

2010-09-12T23:28:00.002-04:00

1. Playtesting is boring. Playing is more fun. Play your game and check for problems. Play your game and see how it makes you feel. Play your game and see if it was fun. Play it and see how long it took, whether you want to play it again right away, things like that.

2. Playtesting sounds like a word used to legitimize a game by making it something serious. Games are supposed to be fun and entertaining. Testing is for equipment and science and gadgets. Test your brakes, but play your game. Play your game, pay attention while you do, make changes if you need to. Then play some more!

3. Playtesting is what you tell people you do as a job (if you are lucky and have a job in the business) instead of saying 'I play games for a living', so you don't feel so frivolous. OK. Maybe keep up the front, if you need to boost your ego, but still just play your game when it comes down to it.

Extending Replay Value in a Game

2010-05-09T16:32:00.002-04:00

I recently went through and updated the online game The Well, because after many plays through of it, I found certain parts, especially the beginning, to become more tedious. Instead of slogging your way through normal encounters, I wanted to spice it up with a variety of special encounters and monster variables.

The first thing I did was to add random monster boosts. Now, sometimes a monster will be "fast", which means you can't run from it as normal, or "Giant", which means it has a boost to its strength or charisma. There are many more random boosts, which help to make each individual encounter more exciting. They appear more often the further through the game you are, and also there is a chance that some monsters will have two at once, adding the further random element of what combination of modifiers might appear.

The next thing I did was to add about five special encounters at the beginning of the game which show up randomly, and give a player the choice of options as to how to deal with them. Most of the results give gold, experience, or items, in order to speed up the game. A few give out special new powers that increase the general power of the character.

The last thing I did was to make a bunch of little changes to item powers and encounter results, to make everything more balanced.

Overall, these changes make the game less predictable, and help speed a player through to the second half of the game, reducing play time and increasing the flow of the experience.

Rules for a Free Original Card Game, Target Practice

2010-03-29T22:36:00.002-04:00

I made some card games to try my hand at it, and make my games more approachable to the general population. I just decided to print the rules of one here, so you can play it. It is included in my book of games for sale here.

TARGET PRACTICE RULES v. 1 (Created by Jim DuBois, © 2000 - 2009)

STATS

* Number of Players: 2
* Duration: 10-30 min
* Atmosphere: light card game
* Theme: abstracted card capturing

COMPONENTS

* deck of 52 cards (no jokers)

OVERVIEW

Target Practice is a card game for two players where they take turns throwing cards at targets the other player has setup in front of them, trying to capture them by making their card land on them. The first player to capture all the opponent’s cards wins.

SETUP

Each player needs 1 deck of cards (or just split one deck and give half to each player - no need to count exactly half).

Each player sets up two rows of nine cards each, directly in front of themselves to serve as targets for the other player to aim for. They should be spaced the distance of one card sideways between cards in the row, and one card vertically between the rows (see diagram below). The resulting layout is one in which, if a player is good (or lucky) they can capture more than 1 card at once, up to four. The distance between the players’ sides can vary: the farther they are apart, the harder the game is.

Fred

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Sue

PLAY

A player throws a card at the opponent’s targets, trying to land on one of them.
If they do land on (come to rest on) an enemy target, they capture it.
If a player captures a target, they get to throw again.
If a player doesn’t capture a card, it becomes the other player’s turn.
After a player throws, their opponent collects the card they threw, as well as any targets they captured, and puts them into their deck.

WINNING

The first player to capture all the opponents targets, wins. They get a score equal to the number of targets left uncaptured in front of themselves.

VARIANTS

Handicaps

A better player can take a handicap by reducing the number of targets laid out in front of them, so their opponent has less targets to capture to win.

Variant 1: Speed target practice

Each player lays out 1 row of 5 cards spaced 2 cards lengthwise between the cards. Players throw at will! If you capture an enemy target, it stays on the ground, but you say that you have captured it, and the total number of targets you have captured. The first player to capture all the other player’s targets wins. If a card throw misses, just leave it where it lands. If you run out of cards to throw, collect some from the floor to throw.

Have fun playing,
-Jim DuBois

Updating Games

2010-03-10T16:31:00.000-05:00

One thing I like about having online games is that you can update them as you need to, whereas with a print version, or even a download only game, you have to release a new version or a patch.

Recently I updated two of the online games. The first, The Great Desert, now has a picture to go with each encounter. It makes the game more viscerally appealing, and therefore more fun.

The other game I updated was The Subterranean Realms. When playing through it, I noticed it dragged a little, so I made your hero gain better bonuses from fighting harder monsters, heal up to full more quickly and automatically defeat weak monsters. All in all it goes quicker, with less 'dead spots', which makes it more fun.

Ethics and Morality in Games

2010-03-03T16:06:00.000-05:00

The motivation for creating the second game, The Great Desert, on Arcane Journeys, was the question, "Can you have a game without fighting other humans or fighting anything at all, with positive moral values, instead of more traditional "values" of greediness and selfishness, and still have it be fun?"

What if you are trying to create art from junk, and bring tranquility into the world by meditating? Would people be drawn in? The answer was yes. People find the game interesting, and they don't even stop to question the positive values as out of place.

For many years afterwords, whenever one friend who played it a lot saw artists creating art from cast off materials would say, "There go people creating art from junk again." Another person had dreams about feeding her people as they wandered in the desert.

Also, in the first Arcane Journeys game, The Well, I decided to have you collect gold not for yourself, but to buy supplies for your tribe, since that was more ethically in line with my values. It also doesn't seem out of place or less fun to the players.

Deciding to have more positive moral values in games has been a great ongoing experiment, and forces me to really think about the influence any piece of art might have on the culture and society. I decided that even if what I did was just a drop in the bucket, I didn't want to give up the chance to add the drop.

Racism in Games

2010-02-24T16:57:00.000-05:00

I remember going to hear someone talk about the impact racism has had on their life. As I listened, I thought about how, in a lot of games, especially Role-Playing games, there are often 'non-human' enemies, who you go out and kill and take their money and belongings. I thought then that having a goblin with green skin as an enemy was a kind of playing out of the underlying beliefs of racism, the idea that people who are different from you are less human.

After listening, I decided I would try to think more about the underlying messages or stories in games I invented. I decided that for enemies I liked robots and undead, for the reason that they weren't living creatures, they were obviously something enchanted, and not just a humanoid with a different skin color.

I applied this decision to the first game on Arcane Journeys, The Well, in the hopes that a little thinking could help influence the world to be more what I see as an ideal, which is the unity of human beings across largely artificial boundaries such as "race".

Majesty and Majesty II

2010-02-17T16:49:00.002-05:00

More than ten years ago, I worked at Cyberlore Studios and was the lead designer on a game called Majesty. I had come up with the original idea, and worked with a team to make the game come out well. And the game was well received, and is still selling copies through an online service today. You should at least play the demo of it.

But one thing that always bugged me about the industry is the overall lack of respect for game designers. For some reason, it was one of those things that they thought anybody could do. Also, when a project went well, it was a team effort, and when it went badly, it was the fault of the designer. The pay scale at Cyberlore Studios, where I worked at the time, in order from highest to lowest paid, went: owners, managers, programmers, artists, game designers, play-testers. Kind of funny when the goal is to make a good game that the people have the most specialized knowledge about that aren't paid more.

Anyway, a few years ago, Cyberlore - which is now defunct except in name and idea ownership - decided to outsource the intellectual property for Majesty to a company to make a revamped version to be released as Majesty II. They wondered if I was available to do design work, and I said only if I got a direct royalty, because I felt that was one lesson I had learned about letting good ideas out into the world. They said no, and went on with the project. The end of the story is that Majesty II came out and was very pretty and well programmed, but the players had lots of complaints about the design.

I guess they got the design they were willing to pay for.

The Law of Large Numbers

2010-02-10T16:40:00.000-05:00

Math is one of the important skills needed to create a good game. The other day I was flipping through a friend's math book, and learned about the Law of Large numbers.

The basic idea is that if you toss a coin many times, say 100, you should expect to get about the same number of heads and tails. If you tossed it many more times than 100, like 10,000, you would expect to get even closer to a 1:1 ratio of heads and tails (closer and closer to 50% heads and 50% tails). The more times you repeat the experiment, the closer you should get to the true theoretical average of heads and tails.

It made me think about the number of types of events or encounters which occur in any particular game, and the ratio between them and the number of turns it takes to play through a game. As the number of turns to play increases and the number of types of events decreases, you get a more even, predictable, and possibly boring experience in terms of variety, but as the number of turns to play decreases and/or the number of types of events increases, you get a less predictable, more chaotic experience.

So if your game seems repetitive and boring, you might experiment with decreasing the length of it, or increasing the number of types of things you do in it. On the other hand, if your game seems too wild and crazy or overwhelming, you might experiment with increasing the length of it, or decreasing the types of things you do in it.

Undoubtedly there are many other ways to think about using the law of large numbers and probability to understand game design better.

Enhanced Monsters & Bonus Credits

2010-02-03T08:31:00.000-05:00

I updated the online game, The Well, to include monsters with enhanced powers. Now, about 1 in 10 times you encounter an enemy, it will have enhanced powers, such as 'fearsome' and 'relentless'. This add more variety and challenge to the game, especially over many plays, since you probably won't see all the enhanced powers in one game. Occasionally, a monster will have two powers, which is cool and frightening.

I also had to reset the high scores, since it is likely that the best scores will be a little worse than before. So now is a good time to play, since you can get on the high scores more easily, and therefore get bonus credits.

Laziness and Apathy?

2010-01-26T09:00:00.003-05:00

Tonight I found and fixed and bug on the site where people were unable to sign up to play unless they used a promo code. This has been broken for about two months. The funny thing is, of all the people who tried to sign up and got an error message, none of them reported it to me. That means hundreds of people saw it and did nothing. I am a little in shock about that. Usually if I see an error on a website, I will report it. Maybe that's because I make websites? Who knows. Are people just generally lazy and apathetic? Perhaps.

A while ago I heard someone talk about the idea of being powerful, and deciding that in every situation you come into contact with you will make it go well. I really liked that perspective, because it lets me do more in the world, and get outside of some of the weird selfishness that is promoted in society. It could also be said as: if something's broken, fix it.

Instead of being only lazy consumers of things, maybe the world could be a little better if we all contributed more to making it go well.

How I made 37 cents on the internet

2010-01-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

All over the internet there are these offers and amazing ways that we can all supposedly make money almost without effort. And they all seem like scams. Even the legitimate ones draw you in with similar ideas. I signed up for Google AdSense, just to see what would happen. After a year, I hadn't made enough to get even a single payment from them, and then they disabled my account. Recently they re-instated my account, after I explained that is was my girlfriend trying to help me out.

In between the the disabling, and the re-enabling, I tried Adbrite, an alternative ad service. It was up for about two months, and I made 37 cents (which I will never see).

What I am learning is that there is no real secret to making money from your websites. The only thing you really need is visitors. Then you can make money off ads, or even off of offerings you sell. Without the traffic, you can't make money. And getting traffic takes lots of steady work, like lots of endeavors do. You have to have good content, and continually promote yourself. Also, there is a huge luck factor.

Seems basic, but important for me to write this note about it.

Free vs Pay

2009-12-24T21:00:00.000-05:00

I was going to write up my thoughts about free vs pay to play browser games, and will do so, but also found an article that covers a lot of ground from a point of view I can relate to: Free vs Pay

My views are that I should get paid for doing the work of creating games. I don't care where the money comes from (except for I would prefer it came from moral work), but I do want some as compensation. If I came up with a good way to get money but not have players pay, I would do it.

I think that since the reproduction, distribution, and maintenance costs of electronic things like games, and MP3s and so forth, is quite low, we have to face that usually revenue from those things was used to subsidize creation costs. Now that that can't happen it seems more obvious that we have never really paid artists for the creation costs of their work, at least not in the USA.

Maybe a new system which pays artists to create things, and them lets the public get them for free would be a way to satisfy many people at once. I guess you would have to convince people to pay for creation up front. Would it work in general? Would you contribute to a musician's upkeep while he or she made a new album, if the album would be free to everyone afterwords? I'm not sure I would. If they were really great, and I had the money I might, though. That means most people probably wouldn't.

But what if people could do other things like cook meals for or offer housing to an artist while they made art?

-Jim DuBois

Adventure Solitaire for windows

2009-12-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

The new version (1.2) of Adventure Solitaire for windows is out, with a great new feature: hover help. This gives you information about items on the map you are hovering over, so you don't have to go look them up in the help section.

Also, as an experiment, I reduced the price from $19.95 to $9.95.

This game is a unique and fun blend of fantasy adventure and solitaire cards. You really have to give it a try to understand what it's all about. I got the idea for it as I was thinking about abstraction in game design. I often wonder, in the creation of games, about how much you can take out, abstract, or compact, in order to condense and intensify the game experience. It is a very different approach from creating 3d worlds for video games, and more similar to a board game design approach where you have to work within restrictions like people's memories, table space, etc.

Originally I made Adventure Solitaire for the Palm Pilot, and it did quite well on that platform, so I decided to make a version for windows.

Several of the other games on my website, 2 of the online ones, and one of the card games, are derived from Adventure Solitaire. This tells me that I was onto something good and elegant in the original design. I really like when that happens.

Adventure Solitaire for windows

More Experiments with Advertising

2009-11-27T19:22:00.000-05:00

The other day I got an email telling me that my Google AdSense account had been disabled because they had detected invalid click activity. It turns out my girlfriend had been clicking on the ads to try and make me more money, but not because I asked or did anything to promote that. What can you do in a situation like that? I sent an appeal to Google. We'll see what happens.

It really bothered me to have the account disabled, because I had just been reading this book, "Free", and even though it was very irritating, it made me think about experimenting with how much play time I give away for free in my online games, and my ideas about prices in general, and I was a litte bit inspired to try and give things away for free in order to get more traffic, and therefore more ad revenue. Now I need to think some more about what to try.

In the meantime, I decided to try putting up AdBrite ads, which I discovered when I googled 'Alternatives to Adsense'. I also put up an ad from the Advertise Your Game service. It is interesting to learn about these things, and I am curious to see how they work out.

Advertising, Experiments, and Money

2009-11-13T13:29:00.000-05:00

Being a self-publisher has led me to try many different things in order to increase my exposure on the web, as well as make money with my creations. Selling games directly was one idea, which sometimes worked, but sometimes didn't. A combination of free and premium service with virtual currency for the online games has been an OK way to make a little money but that has also been sporadic.

So, I decided to try putting advertising on Arcane Journeys. I was hesitant because advertising interferes with clarity of design often, and detracts from the main offerings, but I thought maybe with Google Adsense it might be ok. Well, after a almost a year, I haven't made the $100 minimum required to withdraw money from my account. Maybe I'll reach it in a few years. The result being that I still need more exposure to make money.

Then a casino contacted me, asking if I would put an ad on my page if they paid me a monthly fee. I was hesitant again, but they paid right away, and now that one boring text ad at the bottom of the main page makes the most consistent money on the site. I halfheartedly went looking for more casino ads, but came up empty.

Recently I decide to try TrialPay, which is a weird twist on the advertising scheme, where when a person signs up for someone else's offer, you get paid, and the person signing up gets your thing as a bonus. So far, lots of people have looked at it, but no one has done it.

I thought I would write about these experiments in order to give a perspective that was different than the 'make money with no effort' & 'succeed beyond your wildest dreams' often seen on the internet.

-Jim DuBois

Cards & Dice and Game Design

2009-10-06T22:43:00.000-04:00

I’ve been making games for most of my life. A lot of them have been on the computer, and designing games for the computer has its advantages, like the ability to automate things, and handle large amounts of complexity and simulation. It also has its disadvantages, like it’s too easy to make things overly complex, and veer away from simple and elegant styles which are the heart of good game design. Also, you need a computer to play, so it has particular monetary and space requirements, especially for many people to play together. And playing on the computer, even with other people, isn’t as socially rewarding, at least not for me, as playing a game with people in real life.

I decided to invent some card and dice games in order to show what I do as a designer to a wider audience, and also to challenge myself to make games that had to be elegant and fit into stricter design constraints than computer games do. In some ways I think it is easier to make a decent complex game than it is to make a good simple game. With simple games, if you don’t get the rules and design right, the game usually obviously doesn’t work, and you have to go fix your core problems. With complex games, it can be trickier to detect and fix, but you also have more options for addressing it, such as inventing new systems and rules (or simulations or whatever on the computer). So making a good simple game forces you to get things right, which is a good challenge.

I have played all the card and dice games on my website in this book, for a total of hundreds of hours. They have been really fun to create and share with people. I hope that you get a chance to enjoy playing them.

Get the newly released book containing 7 original card and dice games at Lulu.com

Old Palm Games for Free

2009-09-30T00:12:00.000-04:00

I think it was about a year ago that I decided to finally stop be a Palm OS developer entirely, meaning no more updates or promotion of the old games I had made for the Palm, because no one was buying them anymore. Then I realized the games could at least be available for free for people to play on their emulators or old devices, and maybe there was still some mileage left in them for somebody somewhere.

So I started releasing the games for free on Arcane Journeys. So far, the first three games I made, The Well, The Great Desert, and The Ruins of Ashkelon, are available for download. I plan on releasing the rest of them over time.

One thing I learned about being an independent developer is that the amount of work you need to do to keep up with technology is ridiculous. People ask/tell me that I should port games to the iPhone, and I'm like, "That sounds like a lot of work. Which may or may not pay off, for some undetermined amount of time... I think I'll pass for now." Who knows what device you will have to write for in the future? Right now I'm trying to focus on the website because at least it will still have a platform to run on in 10 years. Unless the internet and browser become obsolete. Who knows?

Optimizing Page Speed

2009-09-22T20:53:00.000-04:00

In between other projects at Arcane Journeys, I spend some time thinking and learning about how to make the whole site run faster. One reason I do this is because I have a tiny shared server, and want to get the most out of it that I can. This is an overview of what I've done, with some interesting links to learn more.

One tool which was invaluable to me was Page Speed, a Firebug/FireFox add-on which analyzes your a page of a website and gives specific things you can do to make it faster. Some of what I did after running Page Speed was optimized some of my jpeg images, removed some unused CSS from my templates, as well as learn about some uses of CSS that are less efficient than others. other things I knew already, but had missed some instances, such as always setting the height and width of images in HTML, so the browser doesn't have to resize them on the fly.

Since Arcane Journeys is mostly written in ASP, I looked at sites like ASPFaq.com, 4GuysFromRolla.com and Microsoft. I learned about disabling the session state on pages that don't need session variables, to use 'option explicit' on every page, as well as that concatenating strings (by using the & operator) in loops, especially with lots of text, is very slow.

I'm sure there is always more to learn, and some of the ideas I ran across I couldn't put into practice due to the shared server, but I really feel like the changes helped to make the site faster, and they made me feel way better and smarter about things too.

Trial Games

2009-09-21T15:03:00.000-04:00

The other day, I added free trial games for the online games. They let you try a game without spending credits, to see if you like playing it. Games with free trials are: The Great Desert, The Lost City, Western Dunes, Ancient Catacombs, Outer Ruins, Subterranean Realms.

This feature was suggested to me by a player.