Today, a new version of DRTS Game goes live. Time flies, the last release is already a year back. As I had more time to work on the game recently, I addressed the issues discovered in last years version. Today's release brings many improvements in the user interface, especially in the multiplayer part.
The new leaderboards are perhaps the most prominent feature in this version. You find the leaderboards at https://play.drtsgame.com/leaderboards
On the leaderboards page, you also see the most recent multiplayer games. Links there lead to players profiles with statistics such as how many games they won and lost.
Other improvements include:
- Help people meet and communicate in the chat: Added display of time and sound effects to the chat messages.
- Improved navigation with the introduction of dedicated URLs for different game modes. URLs also help to reach those modes using bookmarks in your web browser. For example, when you want to start a game against bots, instead of clicking trough the navigation, you can use this link: https://play.drtsgame.com/play-with-bots
- Improved the user interface to help find where you can change your display name: It now displays a popup when you hover a pen or mouse cursor over the button to change the name.
- Fixed the bug where the backend would forget your display name. Also, fixed propagation of player display names to all UI components.
- Fixed a bug that caused a high CPU load in the main navigation view.
- Fixed the armies trails in the game world. In earlier versions, a moving army left a visible trail on all territories it moved through. This trail resulted from wrong application of the territory occupation mechanics. The trail prevented players from moving their armies in secrecy.
- Improved the writing in the tutorial to make it easier to understand.
- Simplified login: Reduced the number of navigation steps for the login process.
- Fixed the disappearing of chat messages on server restart.
Thank you for testing and making these improvements possible. Special thanks to kartezjusz2009 for their detailed feedback and suggestions for improvements.
I am looking forward to meeting you over at play.drtsgame.com!
