To All Zatikon Players

[mongolian]

sorry for not being specific enough, NOT EMAIL ADVERTISING.  Email banner advertising!  Which, please ring in, must be one of the all-time best spots for advertising next to google.com banner advertising for trigger words.  But, this is only my speculations. I dont have data to back anything up.  Gaming conventions would seem to be the best bet if someone wanted to put together CD's and print material.  I can even make all the graphics pro bono if you guys are interested.

[Norsker]

sorry for not being specific enough, NOT EMAIL ADVERTISING.  Email banner advertising!  Which, please ring in, must be one of the all-time best spots for advertising next to google.com banner advertising for trigger words.  But, this is only my speculations. I dont have data to back anything up.  Gaming conventions would seem to be the best bet if someone wanted to put together CD's and print material.  I can even make all the graphics pro bono if you guys are interested.

I believe I understood you the first time.  If it's an ad showing to a user when they are accessing mail, the average rate of return is zero(with some margin of error)

[Chronic Logic - Josiah]

I cleaned up this topic a little to keep it on topic, sorry guys

As for time limits the main problem I see with removing them is there are a lot of people who don't like to lose, especially with a ranking system.  So when the game starts to turn against them they will just stop taking their turn to avoid losing.  Also one of things I like about Zatikon is that the games are normally pretty short.  However it would be nice if you did have a "time out" option (maybe 5 mins) you could use once per game for when you get that phone call or someone at the door.

As for seeing all the moves on the board, I think the good players can normally see all the important moves on the board, but of course everyone makes mistakes which is how games are won and lost.  I feel there is a good balance of the amount of time you have compared to how much data you have to process.  You can also be looking at the possible moves during your opponents turn and if you have a good feel for the game you can get a good idea of what your opponent is going to do on his turn and plan for that as well.

For improvements to the game:
1. Cleaner/simpler GUI
This is in the works

2. Test zone to see how each piece moves/clicks
Nothing is planned like this yet, but in single player you can test quite a bit.

3. YouTube like video tutorials
We are working on a promo video, I think a tutorial video would be great, we will try and do that next.

Advertising is tricky and very difficult to make worth the time/money put into it.  We are experimenting with several of the ideas mentioned and will continue to.

Thanks for all the feedback, keep it coming!

[mongolian]

BTW, would you guys ever consider how to redesign some game aspects to be be more simple.  More specifically, how unit information could be displayed.  I'm not actually asking for anything to be coded differently, but displayed differenetly (but maybe that's difficult).  For example: it's really difficult to see as a new player the range a channeler can hit, which is a lot!  That and some of the unit stats are very confusing like # of actions 2/2 movement? etc.    

[sgainford]

First off, I think Josiah's clean up job was wrong and unnecessary. We're not in totalitarian dictatorship North Korea here. This is America (or for me, Britain) one of the greatest Democracies in the world, where people fought and died for freedom of speech, including some of my ancestors.  Forums are all about spreading ideas and creativity. Unless something very offensive pops up, then everything in forums should stay. I'm definitely a bit angry about having some of my things deleted, and Norsker little harmless Simpson comment. I thought it was quite funny and actually provoked me to become more creative and think about how Zatikon could be improved. But my mood has definitely changed now.

This will be my last comment on this forum I make, and hopefully some people see it before Josiah deletes it.

When Mongolian was talking about advertising and YouTube (and he is completely right about this game needing more advertisement) I went to YouTube and searched 'Chess Evolved' to see what popped up, for this is how I found Zatikon, by typing these words in Google. I mentioned this in a previous forum comment but maybe it's deleted now. What popped up was Beyond Chess.

I've actually just started playing Beyond Chess. It is like normal Chess however every time you make a move you also move a square on the board. Beyond Chess offers a whole new level of strategy because the board directly influences play throughout the game. This creates a new arsenal of weapons in addition to those already known by chess players. With new strategies comes new terms like Trenching and Boxing. So when you play Beyond Chess you must always be aware of your surroundings – not just where the pieces are at any given time, but where the squares of the board are also. The location of squares directly effects where pieces can maneuver. A key concept of playing Beyond Chess is manipulating the board to your advantage and to your opponent's disadvantage. By isolating his pieces and rendering them useless, you can paralyze your opponent's ability to threaten.

They give a quote on their website from Frederick the Great to his Generals in 1747:

'I approve of all methods of attacking provided they are directed where the enemy's army is weakest and where the terrain favors them the least.'

Then the developers of Chess Beyond add 'Judging from his quote, Frederick the Great probably would have been a great Beyond Chess strategist. Too bad he was born in the wrong century!'

The developer of the game is actually a Marine. He created the concept of a moveable board to more closely reflect modern warfare and to take Chess to a whole new level never before seen. He even played it in Iraq when he was out there fighting!

He states that 'A true test to one's personal ability is to play in an ever changing environment in which you must think, analyse and adapt using your own creative mind.'

The game takes some getting used to but I think it is brilliant and at the moment I think really does deserve the name 'Chess Evolved'. I think you Zatikon developers should take notice of their website and the things they have achieved: http://www.gobeyondchess.com/pages/home.htm

Of course they are feeding off an original game that has always been and still is immensely popular; however they have definitely done some good advertising. First, as already mentioned, they are snugly under YouTube as 'Chess Evolved'. I think you Zatikon Developers should fight for that spot. Also they have developed a Beyond Chess Strategy Guide PDF document to help out beginning players along with an online tutorial. Zatikon definitely needs something similar.  They also set a day and time for people to jump online and play each other. Concerning your tournament idea, this could be a way you could do it. 'Tuesday night 8pm, everybody online to play their tournament game.' If you don't go online at that time and day then you lose. Some players might argue about what happens if they can't make that time on that day. Well real athletes or tournament Chess players have to show up at the venue and play. If they don't then they have to forfeit. However, if you want to be a bit nicer then you can have each player have like a holiday day off or something. So I think this type of thing could definitely work.

And now, I will leave you Zatikon with these last words:

Healthy competition, will power, creativity and freedom of speech has made America one of the greatest countries in the world. Continue those ideas Zatikon Developers and Zatikon could be one of the greatest games ever made in America.

To all you Zatikon players, keep up all your great comments. The Zatikon developers are lucky to have such dedicated players who offer for free such great ideas and feedback.

I wish you all the best for the future

Sean Gainford

[mongolian]

I started blogging on the zatikon strategy blogger.  Not sure if I am allowed to give the URL out to people, so I'll let someone more official do that.

Sean, Just start up a new thread.  Ideally, he should have moved the irrelevant discussion to a new thread, but I dont see it being a big deal.  It's still more important to keep the discussion focued on target just for this thread specifically.  3 pages long, someone is already going to get the points lost anyhow.  Keep in mind, I'm just another Zatikon player, so I have no bias except to see the discussion move forward.  

PS - I love random comments in most threads
PPS - Please feel free to remove this comment.
PPPS - not enough people read forums anyhow, heh.

[sgainford]

What? You mean nobody reads these forums! What am I wasting my time for then?   .

Well said Mongolian.

Take care Mate. I'm off to play Beyond Chess!

Sean

[Lunaraia]

seeing as this topinc seems to get lots of views lately, I just wanted to point in that while Kran handels the units in his Zatikon Guide and Mongolian has his strategy Blog, I realized that while those 2 cover most about the units themselves the basics are all left out, so im opening a thread where I vill cover the Basics about the game

[mongolian]

Shoot,your right Lunaria.  Kran is much better suited to be the Unit(strategy) guy and me the experienced.  We can still switch.  Here is the blog..hopefully I dont get punished for posting the link:

http://zatikon.blogspot.com/

PS - never stop posting Sean.  Don't let the terrorists win.

[sgainford]

Well Xazn has asked me to be the beginner blogger. I told him I'm probably not the best person for it because I'm actually not a huge gamer and still not happy with certain aspects of the game, like the time constraints. And I'm not sure if he has seen my little North Korean comment yet 

Maybe I'll tell him yes, but only as long as I get to post something about the Simpsons once in awhile.   

[mongolian]

I don't know anything about Korean's.  All I know is that I was made to break down china walls.
No, that actually makes you a perfect candidiate for beggininer then.  As long as you don't mind being censored in case of inappropriate content.  Ie: rascist, sexist, biast jokes, I imagine.

Keeping focus on this thread, can someone officially tell me if it's possable to make a Zatikon Lite version.  More specifically, I'm thinking about mirror armies, 8 basic units and human vs human (although human vs computer could be an option too) as a new game mode.  The mode is geared for simplicity and should attract new players,chess players and meanwhile make Zatikon look fresh with a new game mode. Goal: No healing. No summoning. No Gate Guard. No Units that are confusing to use. Just fast games and mirror armies. Each side gets the same units below or something similiar:

1 general, 2 tactician, 1 rider, 1 ranger, 1 archer, 1 bowman, 1 swordsman, 2 footman, 1 ballista, 0 gate guard

[xazn]

Well Xazn has asked me to be the beginner blogger. I told him I'm probably not the best person for it because I'm actually not a huge gamer and still not happy with certain aspects of the game, like the time constraints. And I'm not sure if he has seen my little North Korean comment yet 

Maybe I'll tell him yes, but only as long as I get to post something about the Simpsons once in awhile.   

HAHA!

[Norsker]

Shoot,your right Lunaria.  Kran is much better suited to be the Unit(strategy) guy and me the experienced.  We can still switch.  Here is the blog..hopefully I dont get punished for posting the link:

I was also intending do 'units', but I suppose we'll work out who's doing what.  Kran knows his Zatikon, but English is not his strong suit, so he probably wouldn't be the best choice for a blogger.   Since I can't edit your post, I had something you might upload in regards to the tactician.  Personally, I always thought Lunaraia's strength would be suggesting setups.

Tacticians, like all command units, fit nicely into the adage that 'you don't know what you have until it's gone'.  Losing a command unit isn't a killing blow like losing a 550 point dragon would be, but it can be a pretty brutal hamstring.  You may not need that extra command every turn, but I can't count the number of times one command has made the difference between a failed assault or defensive maneuver and a successful one.

Typically, try and deploy tacticians as early as possible-you do frequently need to get attack units out to defend your castle early on, but tacticians should be pretty high up in your deployment order.

And here's an addition I currently would make to the general:

One of the most common mistakes I see new players make is not playing the general(and other reduced deployment units first) first;  in almost any game, it should be the first unit you deploy.  There are some exceptions; for example, if you draw a dragon(which costs all of your starting commands to deploy) you may want to play the dragon immediately because your success may depend on aggressively charging your opponent's base before they implement significant defensive measures.

[xazn]

Shoot,your right Lunaria.  Kran is much better suited to be the Unit(strategy) guy and me the experienced.  We can still switch.  Here is the blog..hopefully I dont get punished for posting the link:

I was also intending do 'units', but I suppose we'll work out who's doing what.  Kran knows his Zatikon, but English is not his strong suit, so he probably wouldn't be the best choice for a blogger.   Since I can't edit your post, I had something you might upload in regards to the tactician.  Personally, I always thought Lunaraia's strength would be suggesting setups.

Tacticians, like all command units, fit nicely into the adage that 'you don't know what you have until it's gone'.  Losing a command unit isn't a killing blow like losing a 550 point dragon would be, but it can be a pretty brutal hamstring.  You may not need that extra command every turn, but I can't count the number of times one command has made the difference between a failed assault or defensive maneuver and a successful one.

Typically, try and deploy tacticians as early as possible-you do frequently need to get attack units out to defend your castle early on, but tacticians should be pretty high up in your deployment order.

And here's an addition I currently would make to the general:

One of the most common mistakes I see new players make is not playing the general(and other reduced deployment units first) first;  in almost any game, it should be the first unit you deploy.  There are some exceptions; for example, if you draw a dragon(which costs all of your starting commands to deploy) you may want to play the dragon immediately because your success may depend on aggressively charging your opponent's base before they implement significant defensive measures.

Nice add on info!

[mongolian]

"I can't count the number of times one command has made the difference between a failed assault or defensive maneuver and a successful one."

I think 95% of player's can't see the difference.  It can matter in many scenarios.  And yes, it can mean a complete win or lose in a game all due to being able to perform that extra action.

I will devote sole posts just to each unit, but I wanted to start out with some general statements.  I also, don't want to dwelve into too much information.  If your new to a game, it's going to be very difficult to follow as-is.  Too much information meaning that it's not always best to point out every noch and cranny when making posts.  If a post is about "actions", I'm going to losely base it on that.  If a post is on one particular unit, I'm going to break it down more specifically into categories of how to use that particular unit.  Every 'Mage' unit for example deserves it's own post, meanwhile general/tactician, despite being complex, should be lumped up with similiar units.