When I started this project I had to make a decision. Would I learn C or the web languages. My thinking was that since I wanted to have human opponents rather than AI, the web would seem like a good place to find them. Distribution would also be easier. Don't think things like steam were around back then, if they were I had not heard about them.

I think when people hear "browser based" they assume a certain style of game. Which is understandable, since most browser games are "like that".

But here you have something different. This is just like those single player 4X games built in C or whatever. I just used web based languages to build it in instead.

New game for free, count me in. Besides, I consider myself a beta tester, then again, this one is suppose to be a final version, yet, I guess it will be updated.

If I don't like it, I will tell you why. If I like it, I won't tell (I'm bad at writing so I'm even worse at writing reviews).

This sounds like it's worth a shot.

What? final version??? Where did you get that?

This is still Beta, I still have not added all YOUR great suggestions, how could it be finished? :D

Did you make an account just to advertise your game

Your account's still newer than his ;)

Also, the man needs beta testers. Hard to think of another way to gather larger numbers of them.

True but I wasn't being mean about it. So why can't all be groovy.

I agree mostly. Surely strategy games aren't so demanding regarding graphics effects that they cannot run in the browser. Avantages are that you are completely plattform independent and can make updates easily and control everything and maintain only one version. Disadvantages are that this means players must be online to play, that there is potentially a lot of internet traffic and that you need a capable server in case you must do a lot of thinking (path finding, ...).

But in principle you can have exactly the same features of a traditional 4x strategy game in a browser (just play in full screen mode and it should even look the same).

I like human opponents although I prefer to play with people I know. So a lobby where you can choose with whom to play would surely increase the appeal even more.

However the biggest point is that I don't really believe you when you say that your online game is different from the other browser games and more like a traditional 4x strategy game. I base this on timing.

A traditional game you can make several turns per day or none and are finished on a day or a week. Here you want probably one turn per day and stretch the game for months. This is much more like the old browser games, even if it is wanted. I'm not sure if it gives the same experience.

The second point is the number of players. With 4-10 other players it might feel like a traditional game because each player matters. With 100+ players per game it is just another MMO browser game.

And because I want to experience all this first hand, I pm you now and volunteer for beta tester. :)

By creating an exclusively online game, you're inexorably going to fall into the trap that many do of being consumed by a lack of players. And when I say "consumed", I mean that a lack of players is eventually going to drive those players that you do have away. The reason that most online games fail is because people are reluctant to make investments in a game that are likely to be useless in a short space of time.

And Trilarion mentioned it already, but browser-based brings its own set of problems, among which is the absurd amount of bandwidth that browser MMOs tend to consume, because you're not only transferring online play data, but also assets at the start of every session. It's not a cheap proposition, and it's the reason it's a niche market. Most browser game developers go through Facebook for the simple reason that it relieves them of the bandwidth issue.

Lack of players is a worry. I think that community is the answer there too. If the game can evolve a community that enjoys each others on-line friendship it has a chance. I doubt this game will ever have a huge player base. I'm looking for a small like minded group.

I spent much effort getting the data transfer amounts down. Some of the game is designed specifically to reduce data and the need to transfer it. But it has yet to be put to a true torture test.

You can kind of ask the browser to cache static assets, you could even try to put part of the game logic as javascript and run it inside browser. It might make a non time-critical thing like a strategy game feasible. After all GOGs main page is also not the thinnest thing.

I'm more curious how much fun it might be. If wanted I could report back.

Only for that session though. Once the browser cache is cleared, it needs to be downloaded again.

Not true. I store the map in localStorage, so all static parameters for the stars are only loaded once, unless the user clears it.

Just checked the amount of data downloaded for an average realm on login =50kb. I assume that is low?

We have started a new scenario, if anyone would like to jump in, we could still use a few more testers/players.