And the winner is...

The UI design contest ended yesterday.  I had selected 2 designers from a field of 10 and now it is time to select a winner.  You can vote and check them out here.  Thank you to all the designers who participated; I expect to make a final decision within the next couple of days.

On the Conquest! front the age ended (Congratulations Perrin!) and I made modifications to the amount of land required to win (from 20 to 30%) and lowered the total amount of land available in game.  Attack limits are (finally) continent specific which, when combined with the increase in movement points a while back, should give players more to do.  I believe the only things now shared between a player's kingdoms are movement points and magical items.

I also made some significant changes to the core data structures used in the game, namely a player's kingdoms and class.  This does not affect gameplay in any way but it makes it easier for easier code maintenance.  Most of these changes affected "ancient" code (circa 2000) which was bolted onto over many years of development.  Eventually, this spider web becomes hard to wade through and is a constant reminder of, you need to fix that!

Certain magical items also saw a boost in the number of charges they have (i.e. Thieves Tools, Golden Cow, Mask of the Undead, etc.).  The charges are random but I thought it would things more interesting vs having all items either one use or unlimited.
 

On the Windows client side, I changed the colors again.  This client is just to allow people to play the game while a mobile client is under development.  You can download it here.

I also launched a new Facebook and Forum pages this week.  One of the suggestions I received was to host these items myself to improve the Conquest! brand by making them consistent.

Until next week, hope to see you in the game!