I have been working on Fortay non stop lately, mainly because I am done with high school which means for this moment, I have a load of free time on my hands. In addition, there has been an extension for the Build Your Own Board Game contest which helps me significantly. I now can fix up the interface and the several bugs that cripple the game. There has not been an updated download for the hub yet as I feel like the version I have been hosting is not totally stable. Although there is a severe bug on the current released version that disables the movement, I deem I may update earlier than I desire.

Currently I have added in a timer for each turn/round, which is about 50 seconds (according to the lag within the game). I have also added in a new faction and two new units for the Taligons, a cleric and an ice mage. There has been a ton of support for this game so far, which is awe-inspiring in my opinion. I have also received some suggestions that I may take into consideration such as a unit that disables an enemy from attacking for one round and a unit the poisons an enemy.

There have been more than a few bugs that I have fixed in this upcoming update. As stated before, there was a bug which disabled a whole team from attacking for one round if you kill an enemy. Another one, which happened rarely, was if you drag over a unit once you have already attacked, when it is your turn again if you right click the unit it will automatically attack (reporter: The Sender). I am currently working on this tough bug where you can attack enemies through the wall.

As I finally realize that I do have about three more days to work on this before I must submit it to Gughunter, I have been looking at random turn based games for interface ideas. Originally I made an interface which was similar to this, but I ended up not liking the design. As a gigantic fan of XCOM and Battle for Wesnoth, which I gather a lot of my inspiration from; I am leaning towards making something similar to those interfaces.

Since I am planning on removing the interface, the status bar on the bottom will no longer be available for the users to view whose unit is whose. I was pondering with this small little idea. Allow a user to hover their mouse cursor over a unit, while doing so an image, seen only by you, will appear under the cursor telling you who owns the unit and possibly that unit’s name and health. User's key names tend to get a bit long some times and may distort the image and or making it look less professional. I perhaps will make a maximum text length in which the image will provide.

This next topic has been an appealing issue throughout the game’s short life, a lobby system. Countless players have logged into the game asking if they can start playing right away. Regardless if I want them to play or not, regrettably I must say no as a game is currently going on. Even though they tend to stay and play the following game, I sometimes get about five users online at once who are all just watching the game. This is where the lobby system would come in, players would be able to create their own room in which other players can join to battle them or watch the game commence. This is not as easy as it sounds. Though I created such a system before, I really start to wonder if this game should have one or if it is worth my time.

ACWraith made an excellent point, someone requested that I add such a system as there is only one sever forcing the players to join mine. He replied, ""Only one server"? Unless I'm missing something, anyone can download the game right from the hub page and run as many servers as they want. Lots of games work that way. BYOND is not just a tiny list of Live games! It seems that when someone has a single server, then people ask to have GM powers. Yet, if people are given the power to run their own servers however they want, then they rarely take the opportunity. Granted, they might not be the same people in both cases, but it drives me nuts! 172.16.0.1 is offering you all power for free! Use it!" (ID: 638192).

Before this comment I was leaning towards having a lobby system, now after I think about it, I rather have people host their own server and give them the power to ban, kick, mute, who ever they wish. Also, there would be less lag, having four games going on at once on one server does not make sense when you can have four servers online. It seems like no one wants to take a stand and actually hosts their own game, but instead they wait for a server to appear. This tends to be a tendency I have seen throughout most of the community within BYOND. Everyone will flock to just one server and never host their own.

So as of right now, I will not create a lobby system any time soon, it is more of a hassle for me than an achievement. Bug testing will be even harder to do and to fix.

One last idea I came up with before officially posting this on my blog. I assume players may like being in one server as they can easily communicate with players who want to play the game. I have an idea of creating a mini chat room that would be hosted on the Fortay hub. Within this chat room you can, of course, chat. But in this program it would show a list of currently hosted servers that are on the hub. In this case players can go and join from the link provided. That way you can play the game and chat at the same time. But if you have a better idea feel free to post, I will like to know your opinion on this subject.