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Domination: Earth

1.13 Map Update v2


Mr. D

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Hi all,

As many of you know, our yesterday's release of the new Mapbox-based map didn't really go so well as many old Android devices turned out to be incapable of running it.

Accordingly, we're now discontinuing the use of Mapbox GL and moving onto another map service provider, which should perform much better across all devices and also work on Android 4.4 and Android 5.

Additionally, captured land shape is back to being circular again. :)

If you are experiencing any issues with the Earth View tab (GPS coordinate loading not going away or crashing the game, general slowdowns and lags while scrolling the map around etc.) please get version 1.13 as soon as you can. ;)

As always, any feedback is very much appreciated. :)

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I really dislike the look and I dislike the funcion. See my topic in technical support. And it is much slower than it was. I have a very old version of android too, and I didn't have much malfuncions in the previous versions of the game. There's some watermark over the right down corner too. In my opinion this was a bad update.

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55 minutes ago, Joris said:

I have a very old version of android too, and I didn't have much malfuncions in the previous versions of the game.

I've also never had any issues with Google Maps on my personal phone, but there are over 4,000 devices that didn't support Domination: Earth before and there are players around who've experienced regular crashes once every few minutes; at least 30% of our uninstalls and negative reviews were related to app's instability.
We simply have to adapt to as many users as possible and it's unlikely that we'll be going back to Google Maps in the near future, but it doesn't mean I will stop trying to improve the game and make everyone happy. ;)
As promised in the other thread, I will have a think about possible ways to add more colours and graphical variety to the new map.

55 minutes ago, Joris said:

There's some watermark over the right down corner too

Yes, I've added that copyright as a courtesy to the map's developers; we've had exactly the same with Google maps (a "Google" logo in the lower-left corner of the screen) as neither of those maps were developed purely by myself. :)
I can change its colour if it bothers you, but removing it completely would be unethical (all map providers politely require to keep some sort of a copyright notice).

So, is there anyone who actually *does* like the new update or anything about it? :) Has anyone's map performance improved since version 1.12?

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Thank you very much for the new map update. Glad to see the circles again. Moreover, everything looks much better now and loads much faster than before. 
Now I only see three point which could be better (but it's already by far better than before):

  1. Being able to turn the map again would be nice
  2. Lands don't load on a zoom level where I can see my whole base radius. So it's hard to track players or the Ai.
  3. If I see this correctly, there are zoom levels now. That makes it even harder to track players or the Ai.

But all in all, thank you for the fast improvement and nice to hear that there are less crashes now and that everyone can load the map again 

Edited by Ruvox
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Awesome, thanks very much for bringing some positivity, Ruvox! :)

In regard to item #2: I've actually added that in 1.12.3 in a desperate attempt to make Mapbox work faster (as seeing all lands *really* slowed things down before), but since I've made some performance optimizations in 1.13 and everything works a lot faster now (thank you for confirming that, by the way; I was wondering if it's just me :)) I am happy to bring the distant land view back in the next update, which will most likely happen next week.
I just can't continue spamming Play Store with new versions this week anymore. :)

8 minutes ago, Ruvox said:
  1. If I see this correctly, there are zoom levels now. That makes it even harder to track players or the Ai.

Actually, zoom levels were there previously, I've just adjusted their distance threshold. :) But what I did add is flag "clustering": displaying hundreds of lands situated within 1-2 pixels away from each other was a bit messy and caused performance issues, so lands that are too close now will merge into 1 flag (representing one random land out of the merged group).
However, if that makes things more difficult for you please let me know and I'll adjust the range/distance thresholds again. ;)

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8 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

what I did add is flag "clustering"

This looks nice and if this solves performance issues its even great. Things like clustering can always mess things up but it seems to me like you choosed the right level where to begin with clustering so it doesn't bother me at all.

12 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

Actually, zoom levels were there previously, I've just adjusted their distance threshold.

Never recognized this before, to be honest now it feels a little bit strange like you'd try to zoom to you preferred distance but then the magical hand says: no you'll take this distance. (Hope one can understand what I mean with that)

14 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

I am happy to bring the distant land view back in the next update, which will most likely happen next week.
I just can't continue spamming Play Store with new versions this week anymore.

Happy to hear that. I think it's more about that you have to much progress at the moment (guess you are/were working like with no break for a long time). Your fast reactions, answers and updates are one of the main reasons your game superior to others.

28 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

negative reviews

I knew there was something important I was forgetting about all the time:S

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3 minutes ago, Ruvox said:

I knew there was something important I was forgetting about all the time:S

Haha, thank you, I appreciate the positive feedback and I'm happy to hear you're enjoying "Domination: Earth" over our competitors! :) It's what keeps this project going (no point developing something that no one wants to play :D).

4 minutes ago, Ruvox said:

Never recognized this before, to be honest now it feels a little bit strange like you'd try to zoom to you preferred distance but then the magical hand says: no you'll take this distance. (Hope one can understand what I mean with that)

Ahh, I thought you meant "visibility layers" for map content! But now that you've mentioned it I can see the "magical hand" you're referring to. :) How weird, I haven't noticed it!
That definitely wasn't there before and is a feature silently introduced to us by the new map provider. :)
But it also means fewer marker re-size events triggered by "micromovements" of the camera, which is a positive thing for the game's performance.

5 minutes ago, Ruvox said:

This looks nice and if this solves performance issues its even great. Things like clustering can always mess things up but it seems to me like you choosed the right level where to begin with clustering so it doesn't bother me at all.

Awesome! :)
In this case I will simply increase visibility distance for all markers.

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Great, it works again! I like new tooltips (I was missing the ability to do something with the object without going to menu and searching it again). It is working 10 minutes and no crashes! The map is much clearer now, without any garbage so it is easy to find game object and my location mark. When I zoom to city level I see a whole picture with green and red flags. I like that wall icons are replaced with flags to easily see my and foreign ones. It makes the game more interesting to play but I wish that the game would require me to visit enemy lands not just attack from anywhere.

Things that I wish to have:

  • One-hand zoom. It is very useful in transport and in cold weather. Now it just zooms in the map on double-tap. No way to zoom out.
  • One-hand rotation. Oh, there is no rotation at all now. Not critical but that would be handy.
  • It is still hard to distinguish my and enemy buildings when the map is zoomed in. They just look the same. At least now I can zoom out and see flag's color. Maybe flags should be displayed on every zoom or the colors of buildings should be changed, not sure.
  • Mark my heading somehow on blue icon of current position (using compass).

Performance is not so fast, it seems it mainly depends on the server response,not sure. Anyway it is quite playable.

Edited by AntKeeper
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Thanks for all the updates! 

The last one made it much faster once more!  However I noted a downside... I can no longer zoom out and see the total extend of my largest land (since the circles disappear when you zoom out). While I understand this has to do with flags merging and speeding things up, not being able to see the extend of my land is quite a downside...

I realize my size is above average but I do hope this might be changed?

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19 minutes ago, The one true king said:

Thanks for all the updates! 

The last one made it much faster once more!  However I noted a downside... I can no longer zoom out and see the total extend of my largest land (since the circles disappear when you zoom out). While I understand this has to do with flags merging and speeding things up, not being able to see the extend of my land is quite a downside...

I realize my size is above average but I do hope this might be changed?

Yup, don't worry, this is something I promised Ruvox in my post above - viewing lands from a great distance will return in the next version. ;)

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@The one true king @Ruvox sorry guys, I know I said that there won't be anymore releases this week, but I just couldn't help myself (yes, I am a workaholic with an OCD). :)

Version 1.13.1 will shortly appear on the Play Store and will increase visibility distance for flags and their lands, as well as include fixes for the Alliances and Tracked Players pages (which used to crash the Earth View map in 1.13.0).

Please let me know if everything looks ok now! ;)

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That's what it actually always did before! :)

What I've changed is that the camera now resets to a distant zoom level so that you could see every lands in bulk straight away.

The tracking function never actually focused on enemy positions, as it highlights enemy lands around all of your bases (so there's potentially more than one spot to focus on :) ), but you can still move camera around and zoom in after the tracking system gets enabled.

Let me know if that doesn't make sense! :)

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Thanks mr d!

Indeed the circles work netter now! I guess my biggest land can double now and I should be able to see it.

Tracking i still wonder... i have a feeling that when i move the map the tracking is lost? I cant check for certain but the ai base at my paris base should return any day now and i guess i should be certain nu that point. 

Thanks though!

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Maybe it is me, but it seems the arrival new resources (and their plants) somehow changed in one of the updates?

I used to get a few new ones when my lands grew, but now those messages are no longer coming and I see no new resources?

Also the number of plants seems be get fewer as well, but I guess that is still in the range it might be chance or that I am slightly less active (but I can see the drop).

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I encountered the same thing directly after the update. Land upgrades wouldn't bring me any new resources. So is this 

16 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

global limit to resource density in a particular area

a part of the update ? Or do upgrades of a land within a 100+ land just don't spawn resources any longer ?

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Nope, this wasn't part of the update (density limit was there since October 2017); I'm guessing it's just a lucky coincidence and you've finally accumulated enough resources by now! :)

Try picking up a few and see if that changes the situation. ;)

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