It Has Begun

Hey er, any news on kong yet?
 

No news at all.

i take it since the map navigation system is being rewriten the game can't be played

lmfao, not even close bro.  I was debugging some calculation routines, which are now resolved.  The game was down for about a day... early this week.  It's perfectly fine now.

Alright, I've been giving this a go for a bit now, and got to lvl 10... Then I decided to evac everything and roll for a new spot. The first one I got was too bland, the second was right next to Area 11 and I suicided, and the third... Next to some abandoned place, so I left. The fourth, however, was one quadrant away from an orb. I started snaking over to the orb, my hope growing with every tile captured... This was it! I was finally going to stop being a lurker! I successfully captured the orb and here I am. Hooray for point generators!

Fuck yeah!  Congrats man!

well youre lucky that lolwut shielded you, but i would have left you with one tile on the orb if he didn't, just to farm you, also I was disadvantaged that I was on my tablet. Everything was laggy...
Edit: I can't connect to chat from my college but I suppose you called him for help.

It's great so far. Clearly still a long ways to go, but definitely on the right track. Can't wait for yet more updates!

There's nothing fun about the early game.  

I literally just spent 15 minutes clicking and waiting 5 seconds then clicking the next tile without knowing why I was doing what I was doing and for what end.   Every once in a while, I get a level up, and get to pick a technology, with no information about  what technology is good or bad and / or how it benefits me.  But whatever, I'll still click because why not.  The problem is that I have no idea why I'm clicking.  Here are some of the questions that were floating in my mind as I was playing this: 

What does leveling up give me?  Why should I care?
Where can I find other people to attack?  There's no attack tab is there?  Am I blind? 
What's the difference between the colors of tiles?  
Do I want a big empire or small one?  
What do weapons give me if I can just attack any land and win it with the first weapon I get?  
Is there some other way to level other than land?  According to the high scores, "blob" has 4470 land but is only level 17, while CreamyVille has 51 land but is level 24, what the heck is going on there?  That means that blob has spend almost 4 hours farming land, while CreamyVille spent only a few minutes farming land, but is nearly 3x his level.  Something doesn't add up. 

This game doesn't have a new user experience yet, and that new user experience is arguably the most important thing that any game needs. I'd encourage you to add a section that hooks / compels a new player to understand what they're doing, why and keep them in the game before working too hard on other sections.  Bloons Monkey City might give you great inspiration on how to do that.

Please don't ban me from konghack for giving this advice.  It comes from a place of constructive criticism, not maliciousness.  

Land size != Level.  When you attack tiles, you gain XP.  You don't lose XP when you evac or abandon.  Maintaining a properly sized and shaped nation helps keep your geographic efficiency at 100%.  Your geo eff % is the percent chance you have of claiming vacant land, and your attributes are multiplied by it when attacking and defending.  That is to say, at 50% efficiency, your attributes are calculated at 50% of their value when you attack or defend.

The game is very grindy when there are only a few players.  PVP awards a ton of XP, especially the greater in level difference you are.

lol_wut was very gracious and has written a full tutorial.  Granted, since I've been re-building the mapping mechanism, it has fallen a bit behind, but I instructed him to not update it for a couple weeks as I'm continuing to make large UI changes.  You can find that tutorial (with a good 99% being valid) here: https://konghack.com/topic/9379-khwar_tutorial

The click time has been reduced to 3s for a few weeks now, and I just doubled checked the DB to confirm that no one has a time longer than 3s.

I have no idea what you mean by an "attack tab".  You attack other people on the map.  We reset the game about a week ago when I started all of the mapping upgrades, and not everyone has picked the game back up.  Imagine playing World of Warcraft with only a couple people signed into the entire server.  That's the state we're currently in.

No worries about a ban.  You actually took the time to write a thoughtful, descriptive post.  Most people that wind up getting banned shit out whatever half-ass brain fart they have and move on.  They get banned. :D

Anyway, I have no idea how long I have, but I'm going to try and get as much done as possible today to polish up the edges of the world. 

am i the only one getting lag? guess it's time for a new pc then

I wants to plays, cant wait till it is back up!

It's not down...  You have to actually go play it before you can play it... I guess?

Just WTF...

Ill try this

Awesome Game +9999