Archived News Updates
Feb. 28, 2006
Oakwarrior brought it to my attention that I hadn't made any mention of the recently released info regarding the Haven Heroes. Well, now I can tell you about them AND the Inferno Heroes. :O) You can see the pictures and their biographies on the Heroes V Heroes pages (Haven) (Inferno).
In other events, I've updated dozens of pages today and finished incorporating the new navigation system here at the Lamp. There are obviously still some pages/sections that I'm working on, but we're making progress...quickly. :O) Today I added the H2 sections, the H3 sections, a few more pages for H5 and H1. Fiur is still busily plugging away at the H4 pages.
I've also had a few people ask me about Campaign walkthru's. Yes, I intend to have them for ALL the campaigns. But it's currently not high on my priority list. I am, however, accepting fan-made submissions for Campaign Walkthru's. So if you think you've got a winning strategy for a campaign, write it up in a text file and e-mail it to me. I'll format it to fit the site and you'll get full credit for your hard work.
That's it for now. Until next time....Happy Gaming!
Sir Charles
Feb. 27, 2006
I added in the new navigation system for the site today (I'm still playing with the color schemes for the nav. bars). You can see it in action on the Heroes 1, Heroes 4 and Heroes 5 sections. While there are still some pages under construction, there is quite a bit finished already. Hopefully everyone will be pleased with the results. I know I am. :O)
Fiur has also started adding content to our long-ignored Heroes 4 section. So far, he's added in the towns and troops pages for the Academy and Haven, the town page for the Preserve, and the magic page for Life Magic. Keep up the great work Fiur!
Sir Charles
Feb. 18, 2006
Fabrice (Heroes 5 producer) posted his second Developers Letter on the official forums yesterday. While it doesn't contain any real new information, it does give a bit of insight into the process of orchestrating a beta-test on a scale that Ubisoft has just pulled off. It's no minor feat folks. Anyway, here's what Fabrice had to say...
Heroes 5 dev letter
#2 : handling a beta test
It seemed quite obvious that we had to include the fans into the development process in some manner. I don’t think anyone can be considered as being the ultimate expert on Heroes questions, but having a few dozens or hundred people sending you ideas or feedback helps getting everything into shape.
The risk however, is to get overrun by the feedback, or to give in to all demands. Most of them are contradictory, and quite a part would be conflicting with other decisions or would alter the direction we are giving to Heroes 5. So it is a huge work to integrate these multiple opinions together and mash something out of that. Simply keeping track of the feedback during the closed beta test was a headache – but most communities have helped getting summaries out.
A disadvantage of making beta tests is the amount of work required to prepare versions and update them in a timely manner. It can disrupt the production process for a long time, and either you get late delivering beta updates, or you get late actually making the rest of the game, and most often you get late in both respects !
Finally, a disadvantage I see now is that, at some point, this has to end. Beta testers, who were frustrated at the start because of the amount of bugs, and also because the changes were not necessarily going to their liking, become frustrated again as they feel they need to be a part of it even longer, until the game is perfect or close to it. But as we enter a polish phase, treating a flow of feedback becomes less interesting and more dangerous : you need to nail down decisions on design points, and constant rediscussions only lead to delay. A game can only be as perfect as production allows.
On the other hand, running a beta test is an exhilirating experience ! You get in touch with hundreds of fans from all over the world, you get lengthy debates, historical summaries, polls, etc, all over your head. It is also a challenge to keep the exchanges running, and to keep the development in check with the requests.
Preparing and selecting people is interesting in itself. With the registration form we have put up, a very precise image of the typical Heroes fan was laid out, thanks to the 15.000 registrants. The average age of the registrants, for instance, was logically quite high, above 24 years old. A large (and untended) community was `discovered` in Israel. The hardcore aspect of the russian fans was proven. The vast fields of casual strategy players in the US, whom we need to get to try Heroes, was underlined. We could also sort out which were the influential communities
Then you have to organize the work in advance with communities and internal testers. We had to make out with the constraints and tools we had, in terms of forums, bug reports, etc. The number of spoken languages was a challenge in itself. Each community created language-specific topics to harvest the feedbacks. The update of activation keys had to be taken care of : we added one month of closed beta testing, and thus needed to distribute new keys around. We just ran into a similar problem with the open beta : too many players downloaded the version when compared to our plans
In the end, running a beta test is about getting feedback, and we had a truckload in this respect. Even by weeding out the duplicates and the unrealistic suggestions, we had a lot more than a thousand items in the list to browse, in just three months. I think around a large third of this has been integrated, although not quickly enough for the beta testers to actually see their ideas in the game.
Besides suggestions, getting the general feeling on the game was needed. At the time (september) we had been working on the thing for almost two years, and we started to have a blurred vision of the priorities. The E3 and Leipzig shows garnered very positive feedbacks, and all journalists were already enthusiastic, but we needed to get players` opinion. This was also made possible by the discussions on the forums with the fans, and with the communities. Being able to get an opinion prior to release is invaluable.
Finally, running an open beta test after a closed one is about reaching out to more people. You present the game – in its current state, it was not a demo and wasn’t polished – to a vast public besides the first fans of the closed test. I think this challenge was very correctly met, even with the downfalls of the version itself
Sir Charles
Feb. 15, 2006
I'm pleased to announce 4 new staff members to The Genie's Lamp. Fiur, Labyrinth, Oakwarrior and Zamolxis. Together, we hope to make The Genie's Lamp your first stop in all your Heroes needs. But enough of this self promoting. :O) We've got UPDATES!!!
Yes, yes...I know, I've fallen behind on my news updates. I've now added the new hero images and bios for the Academy and Dungeon towns that were released on the official sites a few days back. But today is a new one. Sylvan! These can all be views at their appropriate links.
I've also added in several missing screenshots that have come out recently. As well as 4 pieces of concept art of some rather nice looking Artifacts.
Lastly, a small bit of housekeeping, several people had been complaining that the background image on the main page wasn't showing up in their Firefox browsers. This problem has been spotted and fixed by one of our new team members Labyrinth. Don't be surprised if you start seeing news updates and new pages being posted by these new Lamp staffers. Feel free to drop by the Tavern and meet the staff along with all the other fine Tavern-goers.
That's it from me...for now. Until next time...Happy Gaming!
Sir Charles
Feb. 12, 2006
Well, I've finally decided on a final format for The Genie's Lamp. Thanks to Eternor for his help on the main page layout. I have however heard that people using the Firefox browser are experiencing problems with the main page. I'm looking into this problem, but so far...without success. Any suggestions are appreciated.
In other news, I've added the individual Faction History pages and the Artifact page for Heroes 5.
And one last announcement. The Genie's Lamp is now accepting town strategies for each of the Heroes 5 factions. If you think you've developed a winning strategy, let others hear about it. Send me your written strategy and I'll put your name in lights. *grin*
Sir Charles
Feb. 10, 2006
Fabrice (H5 Producer) posted a developers letter today on the official forums. Here's what he said....
Heroes 5 dev letter
#1: the town construction interface
The town interface in Heroes 5 has been a typical case of usability versus visual quality. We are reaching the final version only now, and I`ll describe a bit the process it has gone through.
The very first interface test we made was actually quite close to the final solution being implemented now. It was half a screen used to display all available buildings (quite similar to previous Heroes games), with the whole town itself shown on the other half.
Another test was made later last year, showing only the town itself, with a camera centered on the building to be done. You would cycle through all of the buildings one by one, getting the view centered on them, switching from one position to the next. With this solution you could see the town details up close and the graphical quality was used to its full extent.
It was much too slow though, and it was too hard to understand how you could build up to a specific building, so the cityplan was introduced. There all buildings were shown with logical links, and with a status (a color code) to show what was already built, what could not be built for some reason, and what possible choices you had at this stage. The full screen was used for this feature, and when you clicked on one building you would switch back to the town view with the corresponding building selected.
This seemed like a good solution but was still quite slow, and needed the player to switch between different screens for the simple operation of building a new structure. The betatesters have witnessed this solution being integrated over the end of last year.
Finally we decided to go back to the original solution, mixed with the latest one. The cityplan would be displayed over one half of the screen, and the building would be shown zoomed in on the other half. You would use the cityplan to select and choose which building to make. A last twist is the added option to either display the whole construction tree, or only available buildings on the cityplan.
Hopefully this one will work ;p
Nice to see that Ubisoft/Nival are putting the extra time to good use. :O) Keep up the great work guys!
Sir Charles
Feb. 9, 2006
It's been a busy few days here for me in the Lamp. I've been working around the clock on a complete site re-design. I've currently got quite a bit finished for the Heroes 5 section of the site. Today I finished the Heroes 5 individual faction Troops pages, The individual Heroes pages (which are still going to be updated some more), the 4 magic school Spells pages, the individual Skills pages for each factions' heroes, the adventure map location pages broken down into sub-categories, the news archive pages, the main news page and links pages, and last but not least, one Dungeon strategy page on the Gameplay pages provided by Infiltrator.
I've still got several things planned for tomorrow and the weekend. Hopefully I'll get the h5 artifact pages up and running and then it's on to the individual factions town buildings. After that, it's on to converting the old H1-H3 pages over to the new format. And yes, even getting to those long ignored H4 pages.
Now that I've got the basic format for the site laid out, I'll be bringing in some new team members to help out on the running of The Genie's Lamp. Many of them will be familiar faces to the Heroes Community at large. Until next time....Happy Gaming!
Sir Charles
Feb. 8, 2006
I'm currently in the process of changing the format of the site away from the frames format. Apparently it was quite annoying to MANY people. So...I've caved in to popular demand. *grin*
Sir Charles
Feb. 4, 2006
I've finished updating the Heroes V Troops page. Now I'm off to work on some troop comparison pages. I might not get to the Artifacts and Town pages today, but tomorrow looks promising.
I've finished the Troop Comparison page. Due to the fact that the game is still in a beta-stage, I won't go into too many details with the analysis however.
Sir Charles
Feb. 3, 2006
Well, I've finally gotten back to working on the site. :O) Today I've redesigned the Heroes V Spell page and I'm partially done with the re-design of the Heroes V Troops page.
Later this weekend I'll be updating the Artifacts, Towns, and a few more tidbits.
I'm also working towards adding a few staff members to the Lamp. Watch this news page for further updates.
Sir Charles
Feb. 1, 2006
As you may have noticed by my absence these past few days, life has been getting rather hectic for this genie. And with the longer days at work, its becoming apparent that I can't keep the site updated as quickly as I'd like to (and I'm normally a maniac for that sort of thing). So, I'm officially accepting applications. *grin* If you're interested in helping out at The Genie's Lamp, send me an e-mail, or leave a message in the thread at The Genie's Tavern or even in the thread on the Official Heroes V forums. I've received offers of help in the past and I'll be contacting those individuals, but anyone is eligible. Just drop me a line.
I'll have time to do some major updates on Friday and over the weekend. Until then, check out Celestial Heavens or Age of Heroes. They are both doing some heavy updates currently. But don't worry....I'll catch up. *grin*
Sir Charles
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