Show Media Item - Planets Nu RoadmapPlanets Nu Roadmap
Sunday, May 12, 2013
There has been a lot of discussion on the new activity threads about the new version. Much of it very positive and some of it critical. I'd like to talk a little about the direction of Planets Nu and why we've made some of the recent changes. Particularly the new Activity Feeds.
So what happens next? First off, we are going to continue working on the messaging system to address some of your concerns and make it easier to use and search and more expressive so you don't miss any of the action and can post your crazy Tribble-Borg pictures that we all love.
We've also been making a lot of improvements to the back end to make host faster and extend the API (version 2 is coming soon). On the client we intend to integrate more of the awesome userscripts that people have been making.
Lastly, we've got some plans rolling on how to reward players for reliable play.
Overall, as always, there is a lot of work to be done but we are committed to taking your feedback and continuing to improve each week toward a better and better game playing experience.
Thank you for your support on this latest release. Please post constructive, and well thought out ideas on how to improve the site on the feedback site at http://planets.uservoice.com. We read and listen to your posts!
Warning, a little bit of tech talk follows:
The primary reason for the new version is to integrate the website functionality and community forums with the main application in a single HTML5 architecture. HTML5 is about the only universally agreed upon platform that will run on any device and looks to be a primary architecture far into the future regardless of operating system or browser. With the new version we now have all of the main functions working on this one platform. In fact, this entire application can now be displayed with just a couple of javascript/css includes.
Now that the entire user experience is in a single application we have the option to publish the app in many different ways such as making it a stand alone desktop application or app for other platforms like iPads and Android. Now that we are on a single platform, making forward progress will be much easier.
The most difficult part of the transition for many users has been the Forums. Understand, it is because of the extreme value and importance we put on the forums that we chose to build our own new forum/messaging functionality and integrate it directly with the application rather than just using 3rd party forum functionality (or our existing forum functionality) off on another site. We want people to stay inside the application and be able to do all their talking whether they are playing on an iPad app, on facebook, or on their browser without having to go to two different places to do so. That said, building a fully functional forum or activity feed system is a very big job and it will take some time. Consider this version 1 of the new forums/messaging.
So what happens next? First off, we are going to continue working on the messaging system to address some of your concerns and make it easier to use and search and more expressive so you don't miss any of the action and can post your crazy Tribble-Borg pictures that we all love.
Next, we're continuing our focus on new users. That means improving the tutorials and documentation coming from your in-game robotic assistants. In the long run players should never have to leave the game for basic documentation questions. We also want to complete the language localization process so players can play in their language of choice.
We've also been making a lot of improvements to the back end to make host faster and extend the API (version 2 is coming soon). On the client we intend to integrate more of the awesome userscripts that people have been making.
Lastly, we've got some plans rolling on how to reward players for reliable play.
Overall, as always, there is a lot of work to be done but we are committed to taking your feedback and continuing to improve each week toward a better and better game playing experience.
Thank you for your support on this latest release. Please post constructive, and well thought out ideas on how to improve the site on the feedback site at http://planets.uservoice.com. We read and listen to your posts!