Welcome back, warriors, to yet another exciting preview of the much-anticipated Travian: Legends app, with some special surprise features that we’re keenly working on!
Remember our last mobile development diary?, then you’ll recall that we’re committed to delivering you, our players, a seamless experience to construct, conquer, and chat with your fellow players. And, of course, all of this from literally anywhere, anytime, while preserving the unique ambiance you’ve come to know and love from the browser version.
The nifty touch screen and overall user-friendly nature of mobile devices open a world of exciting possibilities for us. It’s encouraging us to ensure that all essential information is easily accessible, right at your fingertips. It can be tricky, but our team has crafted some features that promise to enhance your experience with the mobile app.
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| Regular resource transfer in the browser version. | Offering resource transfer for all resources in one window in the app for convenience. |
Message templates, Anyone?
Each time we consider adding a new feature to the app, we stop, wonder – and ask you, our players – its utility and its key aspects.
Take, for instance, the in-game messages. Many alliances already use external messengers like WhatsApp or Discord for more involved discussions. However, in-game messages still hold their ground, particularly when orchestrating immediate in-game actions and linking game elements like reports or locations.
Usually, in-game messages revolve around basic Travian scenarios, such as rallying support or sharing coordinates and timing for a strategic strike. Given that typing on mobile isn’t as quick as it is on a PC keyboard, we’re planning to offer our mobile players the luxury of saving message templates. These can be effortlessly reused and tweaked with minimal fuss. Pretty neat, right?
We have some other ideas as well to make a call for support or attack rally fast, easy and well visible on the small screen, so there is more to come on that topic in the future!
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| Concept of the message template editing window. | Concept of the map with compass, axis, and crop finder. |
Cleaning up the Map
While we have a functional but very basic map in the app since the very first playtest, we felt it’s time this crucial feature gets the love and care it deserves. Rest assured, we’re busy crafting some of the features you’ve come to appreciate from the browser version, like the crop finder, for example.
But the touch screen also allows for easy scrolling and zooming on the map, so we are experimenting how to make the best use of that. The zoomed-out state, for example, gets tricky to read on a standard sized mobile phone. To keep important information visible, we are reducing details on the map and replacing icons with simpler versions in clear colours where possible.
For better orientation, we added coordinate axes and a compass pointing to the currently selected village of the player if it is off screen. And to make it easier to find others without fumbling for coordinates, we will allow to search directly for a player name.
We are already very excited to let you all try the improved map and hear your feedback.
Speaking of Feedback…
So far, you’ve only been able to play the early parts of our game on one server. But what about the intense battles later? Or about building a world wonder and winning a game? Shouldn’t we make sure you can use the app right until the end, whether you win or lose?
Yes, we should! In our next round of playtesting, we want to let you do more. We’re going to open up regular servers at different points in the game for you to test. We’ll also keep the app running so you can try it and tell us what you think while we work towards releasing the full app.
If you’d like to be part of this next step, keep following the mobile dev blogs for more news on the upcoming early-access app! We’d be delighted to have you onboard for the journey. That about wraps it up for now, so until then!
Elke,
Producer Travian: Legends Mobile
