These last days have been used to make the website more visible for search engines like Google or Bing for instance (so called SEO: 'search engine optimization'). That's something I never really cared of (and it was probably stupid) but my favorite magazine's november issue had a big article on it, which gave me tips and tricks to get RM's ranking higher, and a good reason to start working with it. I'm not yet finished with it, and the results aren't as good as I was expecting ... but it's anyway better, much better than what it was. Let's try to see the half-full glass instead of half-empty.
The number of users is very stable these days, even it felt suddenly with 30 units when a big case of multi-account was discovered and sorted out. A single user had around 30 teams all over the world and played with almost all of them. Impressive! Is RM that good? or is this user that sick ? The choice is your. I hope anyway we'll be able to reach 7000 real users quite soon.
The november month wil be used to fix some small issues with the game engine, as well as opening a new small section in RM to speak about real rugby (Heineken cup, tests, transfers ...). Nothing big, but a nice little place to exchange opinions and get informations about the Rugby world. this will give users a third place to use some time in RM (together with the transfer market and the forums).
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
All you want to know about combos
Isn't it amazing ? A new article less than 24 hours after the previous one.
I know I shouldn't do it, because it's gonna give you bad habits, but I want to give some explanations about "Combos", as I feel that it is not as clear as I thought for most of you.
First of all, I remind you that combos are not required. You can select one, two or none for your next game.
Then, what is happening ?
Sometimes in the game, the first player (let's call him mister Willis) starting an action may have a "flash" and think "I feel like starting a combo right now". Then the game engine looks like if there is some combo starting with the position mister Willis does have. If there is at least one, the engine chooses it (or one of them) and the combo is starting. If there is no available combo, mister Willis forgets about his cunning idea and continue to play as usual.
So, what does it means ?
- The first player of a combo must have the ball at the beginning of an action to let a combo starts. If you have 2 combos starting with the fullback and your fullback doesn't start any action, you'll have no chance to perform any combo
- There is some random in it. It will happen that no player will have a flash during a game, or many flashes. The average number of flash your players will have during a game is 2 per combo selected, which means it may be 0 or 6 for this game or that game.
Two more things to know to get it all.
- The little "flash" icon you'll see is a little ambiguous. In fact, it shows what "looks like a combo" and not what "is a combo". Let's take an exemple:
You have selected only one combo 9-10-15-7-2.
There is an action starting with the scrumhalf, who gives the ball to the flyhalf. But then the flyhalf is tackled. What is the start of an unfinished combo or not? We don't know it as we don't know what was the plan of the fly half if he had broken the tackle. Was he planning to give it to one of his centres or to the fullback because the team was performing a combo? We don't know. The game report shows it anyway as a combo, to notify you that it was "maybe" a combo. You see what I mean ?
- The combo stops of course when the tryline is reached, to score a try. It seems obvious but I got some user asking me why one of his player scored while the combo wasn't complete.
I think and hope you now have all the necessary information to understand the combos. Use the comments if you have some remaining questions, or to tell me that my explanations are clear enough now.
Keep in touch, probably at the end of this month
I know I shouldn't do it, because it's gonna give you bad habits, but I want to give some explanations about "Combos", as I feel that it is not as clear as I thought for most of you.
First of all, I remind you that combos are not required. You can select one, two or none for your next game.
Then, what is happening ?
Sometimes in the game, the first player (let's call him mister Willis) starting an action may have a "flash" and think "I feel like starting a combo right now". Then the game engine looks like if there is some combo starting with the position mister Willis does have. If there is at least one, the engine chooses it (or one of them) and the combo is starting. If there is no available combo, mister Willis forgets about his cunning idea and continue to play as usual.
So, what does it means ?
- The first player of a combo must have the ball at the beginning of an action to let a combo starts. If you have 2 combos starting with the fullback and your fullback doesn't start any action, you'll have no chance to perform any combo
- There is some random in it. It will happen that no player will have a flash during a game, or many flashes. The average number of flash your players will have during a game is 2 per combo selected, which means it may be 0 or 6 for this game or that game.
Two more things to know to get it all.
- The little "flash" icon you'll see is a little ambiguous. In fact, it shows what "looks like a combo" and not what "is a combo". Let's take an exemple:
You have selected only one combo 9-10-15-7-2.
There is an action starting with the scrumhalf, who gives the ball to the flyhalf. But then the flyhalf is tackled. What is the start of an unfinished combo or not? We don't know it as we don't know what was the plan of the fly half if he had broken the tackle. Was he planning to give it to one of his centres or to the fullback because the team was performing a combo? We don't know. The game report shows it anyway as a combo, to notify you that it was "maybe" a combo. You see what I mean ?
- The combo stops of course when the tryline is reached, to score a try. It seems obvious but I got some user asking me why one of his player scored while the combo wasn't complete.
I think and hope you now have all the necessary information to understand the combos. Use the comments if you have some remaining questions, or to tell me that my explanations are clear enough now.
Keep in touch, probably at the end of this month
Monday, October 19, 2009
Beginning of the 12th season
Among the complaints I regularely gets from users, the biggest one is, without any doubt, my lack of information to users. What's been done, what is in the pipe, what what will come later ...That's the main reason for this blog. I'm more the kind of guy who prefer doing things than speaking about things ... but I'll try to force myself to come regularely with some fresh news. My goal is to write an article at least twice a month. We'll see if I reach it or not.
So, first of all: a little information about the situation.
- The game engine V3.0 is now in use in the whole website. I'll make probably a post more specific about that later but I already can say that a v3.1 is going to be released at the end of this season for friendlies only. Which means we'll use v3.1 for friendlies and v3.0 for cup, league and international games in the season 13. The season 14 will use only v3.1
- A little add-on very useful came last week end. You're now able to cancel the sale of a player you just put on sale if you made a clumsy click or filled in a wrong minimum price. You have only 60 minuts to do it though.
- The domain http://www.rugbymania.org/ is back under my control. I owned it for 2 or 3 years ago but I managed to make it unavailable and unusable for months. Now, I finally succeeded to get the hand on it and it's under control again. Using http://www.rugbymania.org/ or http://www.rugbymania.net/ won't soon make any difference.
During this season, the following things are going to happen:
- Work on national teams to prepare the first World cup, probably happening in the beginning of februar 2010.
- Analyzis about the things which will be a part of v3.1 (more tactics, more displayed information for games analysis, possibility to kick for line-outs, up-and-unders, defensive kicks ... )
- Small other things (delete all players bookmarks, league forum, more stats, better layout ...)
Keep in touch
So, first of all: a little information about the situation.
- The game engine V3.0 is now in use in the whole website. I'll make probably a post more specific about that later but I already can say that a v3.1 is going to be released at the end of this season for friendlies only. Which means we'll use v3.1 for friendlies and v3.0 for cup, league and international games in the season 13. The season 14 will use only v3.1
- A little add-on very useful came last week end. You're now able to cancel the sale of a player you just put on sale if you made a clumsy click or filled in a wrong minimum price. You have only 60 minuts to do it though.
- The domain http://www.rugbymania.org/ is back under my control. I owned it for 2 or 3 years ago but I managed to make it unavailable and unusable for months. Now, I finally succeeded to get the hand on it and it's under control again. Using http://www.rugbymania.org/ or http://www.rugbymania.net/ won't soon make any difference.
During this season, the following things are going to happen:
- Work on national teams to prepare the first World cup, probably happening in the beginning of februar 2010.
- Analyzis about the things which will be a part of v3.1 (more tactics, more displayed information for games analysis, possibility to kick for line-outs, up-and-unders, defensive kicks ... )
- Small other things (delete all players bookmarks, league forum, more stats, better layout ...)
Keep in touch
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