Teaser: WebGL Update

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    • about old pc users

      these people are basically poor and can't even buy new pcs so they play free games as they are poor
      so many play bytro labs games

      but they can't buy gold as the rich minority how will bytro make money then ? ?( ?( .

      lets check how bytro can use it for its advantage without annoying the user

      make a little band of ad at the right of the page it stays permanently

      when a user opens a match make a pop up ad. and it can be closed

      + this can be deactivated by paying some cash
    • Restrisiko wrote:

      One day on the map is equivalent circa a half year, so about every 8 minutes it's a new day.
      Weather can change several times a day - if changing weather conditions would be displayed graphically there will probably be a permanently annoying screen changing.

      Anyway, different weather would affect both sides of the front and such conditions and their effects are already included and simulated by the X-factor.
      I would think that adding weather effects would be purely cosmetic for the purposes of this game. And, given that possibility -- as cosmetic -- I would enjoy having clouds slowly moving across the map, so long as they aren't fully opaque. Of course, if the game's zoom levels were given a height effect, then zooming out would make sense for clouds to appear closer to the ground (like we've risen above them) and THEN they'd become more opaque.

      The ONLY way in which I would support weather as having an effect would be to add a random even factor that affects provinces, whole nations, or entire regions where the weather might cause production of resources to slow down or units to slow down their movement. But this would be totally unrelated to graphical weather for the purposes of gameplay. As I just said, the graphics of weather should only be cosmetic. Of course, those random events would have to be incidental, and not too common. AND, they'd have to be truly random, with events of all types being possible......

      ......like wealthy investors giving a free speedup of the production of one random unit,
      a charismatic loyalist gives a passioned plea for more enlistment which gives rise to a free militia,
      a plague causes manpower growth to be halved,
      a major storm causes a factory(ies) to temporarily pause their production for a few hours,
      etc....

      there are so many possibilities that could spice up this game without making it too difficult to play on a level field. Heck, there could be......

      ......earthquakes which cause 50% damage to all non-foot ground units in a province,
      or a suddenly-new discovery of an untapped resource found by your nation's chief geologist,
      or a resource you've been using has suddenly run dry (or gets reduced from a double to a single),
      or maybe you could have a baby boom which increases Manpower rates for all provinces by 50% for three game-days.....

      I mean, the possibilities are endless and they could be tested in beta by the FP players and then voted upon, here, to see which ones ought to be included. Of course, the programming might add to the complexity, but they can start with a basic random mechanism and add only a few events to experiment with. This is something I've called for before, because I think random events are needed for slower strategy games....they really help to mix it up without causing too much imbalance.

      Now, back to @Restrisikos point. Though, having a regular weather phenomena that directly affects gameplay might be harder to implement -- logistically -- and it would probably be harder for many players to wrap their minds around, trying to learn how to take advantage of it, or at the very least, trying not to be disadvantaged by it. At least with random events, the effects would be instantaneous and animations could even be added at a later time once the WebGL suite is better understood and utilized by the developers.

      freezy wrote:

      Ever played a 100p map on day 60, where scrolling and zooming the map is super laggy? Well with WebGL not anymore, it's basically like scrolling and zooming in google maps
      Actually, because of loading times for map pieces, Google maps can often be quite slow. Though not the movement, you can scroll around with ease, but the images will be crap until new map segments get loaded.

      Something to think about, unless the entire map gets loaded regardless of zoom factors, etc.

      freezy wrote:

      Additionally it enables us to include more graphical features down the line, although our first WebGL version won't be much different from the current CoW. But things that will be possible for example are real 3D units or fighting animations.
      I've always suggested using 2D animated sprites...which is simpler to implement. But if you want to have animated 3D objects, that'd certainly look more natural, but wouldn't that also require more intense and require more processing cycles, regardless of CPU or GPU?

      abdoer wrote:

      about old pc users

      these people are basically poor and can't even buy new pcs so they play free games as they are poor
      so many play bytro labs games

      but they can't buy gold as the rich minority how will bytro make money then ? ?( ?( .

      lets check how bytro can use it for its advantage without annoying the user

      make a little band of ad at the right of the page it stays permanently

      when a user opens a match make a pop up ad. and it can be closed

      + this can be deactivated by paying some cash
      There already is a band on the side with ads. Though I block the ads, the band still makes a blank appearance on the normal web version. I can't imagine they trying to squeeze that in on mobile. That'd pretty-much reduce the playable area to a pittance on a phone or smaller tablet. Oh, and the existing ads can already be disabled by buying something in the store.

      Like I've said countless times before in many corners of the forum, Bytro needs to offer merchandise, both in-game and real world. Maybe this new graphical feature will give the developers more incentives to implement the in-game merchandise, like skins, animations, etc....you know, stuff that doesn't affect gameplay between players but can make the game more fun and interesting for the individual user.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3
    • It looks like we're back online.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3
    • Diabolical wrote:

      ..events of all types being possible......
      ......like wealthy investors giving a free speedup of the production of one random unit,
      a charismatic loyalist gives a passioned plea for more enlistment which gives rise to a free militia,
      a plague causes manpower growth to be halved,
      a major storm causes a factory(ies) to temporarily pause their production for a few hours,
      etc....

      there are so many possibilities that could spice up this game without making it too difficult to play on a level field. Heck, there could be......

      ......earthquakes which cause 50% damage to all non-foot ground units in a province,
      or a suddenly-new discovery of an untapped resource found by your nation's chief geologist,
      or a resource you've been using has suddenly run dry (or gets reduced from a double to a single),
      or maybe you could have a baby boom which increases Manpower rates for all provinces by 50% for three game-days.....

      I mean, the possibilities are endless..
      Yeah, funny ideas; I also have some ..

      .. flu- or diarrhea epidemic that causes all units to lose 50% of combat power, and infantry, militia and commandos in addition lose 50% of their HP ..
      .. heavy accident in an ammunition factory causes lack of ammunition supply, causing all tanks (or planes, vessels etc..) for 48 hours only damage every 3 hours ..

      .. strike and stoppage of medical and technical personnel prevents automatic healing of units at the next day-change ..
      .. death of the mother of the President, therefore are for 48 hours all attacks are suspended and no new ones are possible ..

      .. visit of Walt Disney in the capital increases the morale of all provinces by 30% for 7 days ..
      .. intervention of extraterrestrial powers that reduces all research to 1 minute and increases the combat power of all motorized units by 573% ..

      :00008674: :00002508: :00008674:
      OKOK..; I beg your pardon - were just spontaneous thoughts

      Browser games are an ingenious business idea to lure out money ..
      ..... >> more or less cleverly camouflaged as a real game <<
      .... .. so beware of caltrops, spring-guns and booby traps. :00008185:
      Warning! Texts above this signature may contain traces of irony! :D
    • On browserleaks.com/webgl you are also able to see, if you may encounter problems with WebGL or if you are good to go.



      Simply check the Major Performance Caveat, if it shows 'False' you should not have any problems. If our system notices this is 'true' for you we will show you Call of War without the new renderer. After the release there is still time planned to make adjustments and improvements in case of browsers/devices specific problems. During this time you will have the option to turn it on and off but the current long term goal is to make WebGL the only renderer and turn the old one off to not have two systems running.
      Sarah / Sasri
      Ex-Community Manager
    • Here's a question. What if you have WebGL disabled in your browser? I mean, once the toggling support between graphics is closed and you only use WebGL, how will people play if they can't use WebGL? And not just for those who choose (willingly or not) to deactivate WebGL, but what about those whom can't get the appropriate upgrades or drivers to enable WebGL without a "Major Performance Caveat" being "true"?

      Many players of Call of War and other Bytro titles use company computers or school computers, etc. And, though most of those presumably would be physically capable of running the software, might -- by corporate IT policy -- not be allowed to utilize special non-CPU-driven graphics, or some such.

      Finally, some people have situations where they aren't using a graphics card. I've been in situations where my onboard graphics chip was burned out -- in three different laptop computers -- and I had no choice at the time but to use CPU graphics. Will people in that circumstance simply be S.O.L.*?

      *(For those who don't know that acronym, S.O.L. means "$#!& out of luck". )

      Oh, and I've got nothing against having the graphical option, especially if it actually runs smoother, but cutting off the alternative will hurt a lot of the community who may no longer be able to play. As was said by someone else in this thread, poorer people playing free-to-play games may not be able to afford a possibly-needed hardware upgrade just to continue playing said game.

      BTW, the sample .gif in the front page shows a fairly smooth zoom function. But will there be specific zoom intervals that a player can choose to use if they don't want to have to zoom by a gradient? Many of us old-timers are -- after all -- quite set in our ways, when it comes to playing this game after several years.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3
    • Diabolical wrote:

      Here's a question. What if you have WebGL disabled in your browser? I mean, once the toggling support between graphics is closed and you only use WebGL, how will people play if they can't use WebGL? And not just for those who choose (willingly or not) to deactivate WebGL, but what about those whom can't get the appropriate upgrades or drivers to enable WebGL without a "Major Performance Caveat" being "true"?

      Many players of Call of War and other Bytro titles use company computers or school computers, etc. And, though most of those presumably would be physically capable of running the software, might -- by corporate IT policy -- not be allowed to utilize special non-CPU-driven graphics, or some such.

      Finally, some people have situations where they aren't using a graphics card. I've been in situations where my onboard graphics chip was burned out -- in three different laptop computers -- and I had no choice at the time but to use CPU graphics. Will people in that circumstance simply be S.O.L.*?

      *(For those who don't know that acronym, S.O.L. means "$#!& out of luck". )

      Oh, and I've got nothing against having the graphical option, especially if it actually runs smoother, but cutting off the alternative will hurt a lot of the community who may no longer be able to play. As was said by someone else in this thread, poorer people playing free-to-play games may not be able to afford a possibly-needed hardware upgrade just to continue playing said game.

      BTW, the sample .gif in the front page shows a fairly smooth zoom function. But will there be specific zoom intervals that a player can choose to use if they don't want to have to zoom by a gradient? Many of us old-timers are -- after all -- quite set in our ways, when it comes to playing this game after several years.

      So far I have not yet heard from anyone that he wasn't able to see what's on the WebGL links. As I mentioned before we will try to tackle the problems that players encouter that makes them unable to play with WebGL, but at some point the old renderer will be turned off. We will definitely try, that by then all players are able to use the new renderer and also monitor how many people are affected etc.

      Regarding company and school computers. We are of course talking about a new technology here, but that doesn't mean you need a high-end gaming PC. Call of War will still run also on older devices and laptops and will not need a high-end graphic card. If your onboard graphics chip does not work, your whole PC won't work, but an external graphics card is not necessarily needed to play Call of War with WebGL.

      Since zooming is done by the mouse wheel you should be able to change the zoom/scroll behavior in your mouse settings. Nothing should really change here except it feels more smooth :) The game itself won't offer you any options in this regard.
      Sarah / Sasri
      Ex-Community Manager
    • Sasri wrote:

      If your onboard graphics chip does not work, your whole PC won't work, but an external graphics card is not necessarily needed to play Call of War with WebGL.
      I can tell you that this is patently not true. I have had the onboard GPU burn out on three different laptops (from cracked welds caused by repeated overheating/cooling via graphic-heavy demands by some more intense games. In those instances, I was unable to use my computer (aside from Safe Mode) until I set it to utilize only the CPU for graphics. Of course, this meant I couldn't use my better games anymore, but I could still use my computers for other things.

      BTW, using a computer (PC) in Safe Mode automatically uses the CPU for graphic rendering, not the GPU....the GPU is switched off.

      Sasri wrote:

      Since zooming is done by the mouse wheel you should be able to change the zoom/scroll behavior in your mouse settings. Nothing should really change here except it feels more smooth The game itself won't offer you any options in this regard.
      I didn't mean a difference in how you zoom, according to the behavior of the mouse scroll wheel. I meant that, when you DO zoom, are you going by a gradient, or by specific "stepped" levels. In other words, it's a graphical setting within the game's renderer (in this case, WebGL). You can program specific zoom levels (which the current format is clearly set to jump to on PC (though not on Mobile, it seems, which has a fake optical zoom that appears to be smooth, but really isn't)).

      But, on the new version, I assume you are removing the zoom levels (except for a max and min, I presume) such that there are only percentages of the range which would have no (or only very small) ticks. But, despite that, you should be able to create artificial zoom levels (ticks) which can be turned on by the user, such that they can simulate the effect of the older way of viewing the game. This way, you can have your cake AND eat it too.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3