Facebook Application Review – Wrestler

wrestler2You are the manager of a potential new star wrestler, he/she is an unknown, but it’s your time to create them, give them a stage name, give them a custom appearance, from difference clothes, physique, props and controlling the entire appearance with one of the best and fullest character customers on the platform. You can also fill out their biography, what they are “doing” and their “saying” is, as well as their special move, which I’ll talk about more Later.

Wrestling matches are done in a turn based style, at the start of each match, each wrestler starts off with 100Health”, and 50Momentum” each.; With Each round, You can try one move after another, until you fail, or your opponent(s) blocks a specific move of yours, then you finish your turn, and it’s your opponent, and you have the choice of blocking a move.

Each of your Moves not only does it damage your opponent (and sometimes yourself), but also it will effect the momentum, so a successful move will each alter your momentum, and decrease momentum of the same value to your opponent (min/max of 0 and 100).
The opposite is true for a failed move, and even more for a block, and this hurts the player who fails a move by damage and momentum. Each move takes up an unknown amount of how much “energy” you have for that Round, and it averages out that 3-6 moves can be done per round, depending if you use a few “Big” moves, or a lot of “Small” moves, which is usually valued by how much damage they do and how accurate.
You start off with just a couple of moves, and with “Wrestler Bucks” gained in the game from wins, you can get a lot of moves which some fans of wrestling will recognize. There are many types of moves, from the low risk moves, which are good for starting your Round off, some are high risk and best when you have the advantage with high momentum.

Do you go it alone, or Join a “Stable” or create your own? The choice is yours, but options are there for which ever you choose.

The Stable Matches get really competitive, they are essentially still single, one on one matches, but all your team mates who entered, also have 1 on 1 matches with someone in the opposing stable. Winning a point for your side is done by winning each of those singles matches. This is where the “distract the ref”, and the “illegal” moves tend to come into use most often; this is where a stable member can run in on another stable members match and distract for you. Gives you a slight edge to be able to access this “illegal” moves for one hit.

Tag Team Matches come in later, and became a great addition, and are a really fun type of wrestling, allowing for a pair to play together, and “tag” each other in and out of the turn based combat system. This an already interesting combination of more than just 1 vs 1, and require a bit more planning with your tag team partner, than Stable Matches. Other than the tagging in an out of active wrestler, the game is played in a very simular way.

There are a few free items, that effect your appearance, but most require using “Wrestler Bucks” which is gained mostly for each wrestler match won, likewise winning overall a stable match / tag team Matches gives small amount of points as well.

facebookMy Profile on Wrestler, my character Dev-Lethos

As I mentioned earlier is the ability to create a custom move, designing it’s risk factor, momentum change, damage done, and accuracy, this shows off how each move in the game is done, and keeps things balanced. With more damage, comes more risk, often with the chances it won’t be as accurate unless you have the advantage. This gets added to your profile within wrestler, and shows you’ve reached a milestone in the game to acheive this expensive Move.

Your momentum is a big part of when to use majority of the high risk moves, and when to it’s wiser to use low risk moves, and of course the opponents health when to go for the pin, or to try to use a sleeper if your feeling lucky, since your opponents health doesn’t need to be as low, but it’s still unlikely to give you an early win.

Each move have a accuracy value (chance of success) and associated with it is usually an approximated risk, and it’s usually linked to damage done and momentum change to the opponent and yourself. Being turn based, when it’s your turn you are able to keep doing moves while you succeed in performing a move. Before it’s your opponents move (this includes asking for a match), you get the chance to block one move that you have against the opponent using it, and counts similar to a failure, but more damaging to your opponent if it blocks.

Wrestlers, are ranked by their Wins/Loss in their networks and by all wrestler users on Facebook, there is a heavier impression on recent battles to the rank and influenced more by a win/loss by someone significantly stronger/weaker than yourself. Those in the top # ranks of a network can challenge the current reigning Champion for the belt.

Training can be done to improve the accuracy, defence against, the damage done, and stamina (damage reduction) of each move. This is possible every 20 hours, with extra wrestlers points you can spent to have another training session, with it getting far more expensive to do it more than once per day (example: 35 Wrestler bucks for the first, 250 for the second…)

There is a lot of the competitive nature in Wrestler that comes with the goal of winning the Network / Country belt that your in, or even going for the famed Facebook Champions Belt.

The Social side of built in Stables giving wrestlers a place to form groups is a real essential part which makes this game great.
Balance is tough in this game, but is pulled well with balancing the moves well, and insuring moves are used more realistically. With luck playing a big part along with a little strategy, this is a very entertaining game, to be played either all day (haha) or casually.

  • Longevity 4/5
  • Visuals 5/5
  • Community 5/5
  • Server Stability 4/5
  • Updates 4/5

Overall : 22/25

Facebook Application Review – Nations

nations1You are in control of a your very own Nation; you decide the fate and major decisions right from it’s beginning, in every aspect of that Nation. You Start by selecting a few options to customise the aspects of which your nation will be known, for example, your Nations Title, and Leaders Title, Political choices. Later on you can give your nation a nation; Motto, Anthem, Flower, Animal and much more.

Some new things like Additional Flags and Titles to be unlocked and I will explain that shortly, and they have good open submission for new titles, and for the names for anything relating to your nation on the discussion boards (Nations).

facebook

Nations ~FB Application – Nations;
My Profile: “My Leader”, Emperor Christopher Bourton

One of the first things you do is choosing your flag, there are a lot of default ones, and a lot of country flags are there already, which can be chosen from the start. Custom Flags, like many niche features are something to be unlocked, so you can upload a flag of your own.

You can also choose how often you get you nations issues, for you to decide to resolve, and even ignore, so might want to get only 2 a week if you play casually, or once a day for those active every day.
You answer theoretical questions about running your nation, at multiple levels of Leadership, from the top leaderships decisions, down to the local governors and it effects multiple stats in your nation, core vales, from multiple Statistical values, of Education to Technology, to Political Freedom. This in turn effects population growth, Military Strength, Average Wealth and Employment Index. Answering these has a positive and/or negative usually on multiple statistics in your nation, and you can even choose to dismiss the issue entirely.
I like this helps for those who log in once a day or those who just on the weekends, to have the flexibility, to not be penalised if they miss an issue. They will also Collect up if you miss them, and you can answer them all at once, but it will recognise if you aren’t logging on very often, and lower the nations issues frequency automatically.

This can be taken serious, or just as a bit of fun, but these do shape the statistics of your country, which help rank you against other Nations.

Along with the Ability to effect your nation with how you run it from answering “issues” you can declare others as ally or enemy, and with many nations, from many different governmental, political, and general way of life, in this game, it gives a great element for the creation of the “Clans/Guilds/Groups/Alliance” to come together to fight the other “Clans/Guilds/Groups/Alliance” with opposing ideals.

There are a few niche features to be “unlocked”, and they require nation points, Points are gained by doing issues and a few other things in the game while playing nations. So it’s good that inviting friends really isn’t a required part of the game, and you will get “points“ gradually over time.

It’s a brilliant idea, and makes you keep coming back each day to take care of the “issues” (questions) to help progress your nation into being even better. Like many of these games it has a score and ranking system to compare against others, and a recent edition to really come into play with the ally/enemy feature with the soon to be implemented War sub-game, where some form of combat will be possible between nations.

There is a very strong role-playing community within nations, and becoming part of an “Alliance” of Nations will really make this game a great experience.

There has been rumors of a “war sub-game”, if it is implemented it will be a really nice addition, but this game has succeed so well on just comment boxes, and discussion boards role-playing, and creating their own events and content, and of course their own Fictional wars role-played out without any help needed by the developers..

I have played this Application for approximately 1 year, and I have to say, the best part of this Application is the role-playing community, it really makes this game great.
CB gives this App;

  • Longevity 5/5
  • Visuals 3/5
  • Community 5/5
  • Server Stability 5/5
  • Updates 3/5

Overall : 21/25

Monetising Your Facebook Application With Google Adsense

google-adsenseNew Developer, or Tired or the poor quality Ads, or just want reliable payments, think you could be doing better monetising with Advertising?

Listen up!

Google Adsense, believe it or not is used by a huge portion of Application Developers on Facebook for many reasons, even though technically Google Adsense, isn’t designed for Social Sites like Facebook, and thus won’t always approve. Applications on Facebook is a complex juggle to manage to make profitable, using Adverts is just one of them. “Virtual Currency” is a popular choice to go in addition, but thats a topic for another Article.

Simple reasons why FB Developers usually pick Google over the rest is:

  • Huge Database of Quality Ads
  • Ease and Speed of Content driven Ads
  • Reliability
  • Well known Payment system

The Details
I’m not going to try hide if from you, Google TOS doesn’t like you using IFrames to display Ads, but there is simply put no other way.
It shouldn’t put you off, when I personally as well as many other Developers big and small, have used Google Adsense for as much as 1 year+ without concerns.
Facebook though is Partnered with Google Adsense, so I’d like to think they appreciate the extra revenue, just as much as we do, so heres the warning.

Warning:

You run the risk of having the account suspended potentially, since Gooogle Adsense TOS does not permit the use of IFrames to display their ads. so you take my advice at your own risk. Don’t over do it with Ads on your Canvas page, I recommend one, at most 2 per page, and the pages which you put the ads on within the frames, ensure their is a lot of content, and not just keywords there.
Setup

Google does require you to have a website you own, that it will find acceptable to put Google ads on, that it is Google bots can view it. It also has to adheres to their policies so only having a Facebook Application won’t work for getting you in the door.

You need to have something more than a Facebook App like your company or personal website to point Google at registration, then you are free to use the ads anywhere you want, including your Facebook Application.
If you don’t, write up some basic HTML/PHP based website with a few pages, and it should be enough to keep Google happy, or even start a Blog, WordPress templates, are very easy to setup.

After that, It’s not hard, just a bit more than your standard IFrame code, but allows for far more targeting, and has the ability to show a higher quality of ads. Which if you use the right key words, can provide you with not only quality looking ads, but high paying ones.

They do both Ads in Image/video and Text Based. You can even choose to display only one or the other, it defaults to display both. Saying that, most ads which are done which are images are done on the bigger ad sizes, so you won’t get many if any if you rely on small ad boxes. So as most, will want those image based Ads, you’ll want to use the bigger boxes in each of the categories, which are.

Headers – 728×90 and 468×60

Towers – 120×600 and 160×600

Rectangles – 300×250 and 336×280

When setting up each of your Ads, make sure to make them “Targeted-able” for Advertisers, this has seen to increase profits for Ads.

How to do it in Simple

You start by Creating a simple htm page, on your server, and has relevant content on it, and the Adverts you want to display, all should display and be related to your Application itself.
You then create a second page to view that page through “Frames”, and will look almost identical to the 1st page.
Then you need to insert a final piece of Code into your Application to allow you to see these Page(s) via Facebook, through the use of “iFrames”, but without it effecting what Ads are shown.
This only works for Canvas Pages inside an Application, you can’t place it anywhere else to display Ads.

Real Example

*header.htm* – The Actual Ads page with the key words, and targeted references, and of course the google code itself.
Google / Adbrite code – Example shown is used in my App

Code Example Below for (header.htm).

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body style="background: #000000; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;">

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-*****************";
/* FB-Header Ad - 728x90 */
google_ad_slot = "*************";
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

</div>

<br />
<br />

<p>

<b>keywords</b>
<i>keywords</i>
Content - Atleast a Paragraph
<b>keywords</b>
<i>keywords</i>

</p>

<h1>keywords</h1>
<h2>keywords</h2>
<h3>keywords</h3>
<h4>keywords</h4>
<h5>keywords</h5>
<b>keywords</b>
</body>
</html>

Real Example

* header-frame * – Ads Preparation page has a frame displaying the Actual Ads Page ( I put keywords here too )

Google / Adbrite frame – Example shown is used in my App

Code Example Below (for header-frame.htm).

<html>
<head></head>
<frameset border="0" frameborder="0" framespacing="0" rows="100%,*">
<frame src="header.htm" noresize scrolling="no">
</frameset>

<br />
<br />

<p>

<b>keywords</b>
<i>keywords</i>
Content - Atleast a Paragraph
<b>keywords</b>
<i>keywords</i>

</p>

<h1>keywords</h1>
<h2>keywords</h2>
<h3>keywords</h3>
<h4>keywords</h4>
<h5>keywords</h5>
<b>keywords</b> 

</html>

Real Example

*Facebook App Canvas Page – Include php file or similar* – Insert this code as FB:Iframe code on the Canvas Page.

Battlelords FB App – Example is in the header

<fb:iframe src=*server address* /includes/header-frame.htm
id="games-header" name="games-header"
marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"
height="90" width="728" />

Explained…

The Code Colored in Red needs to be changed to something specific to your Adverts, the ones done in orange are default settings, but I advise you tweak them a little to your liking. I hope my code is self-explanatory enough, afterall this is a Tip for Developers of Applications only,  if you are unsure or stuck on about anything feel free to contact me.

As always Keep track of my Latests Blogs at http://chris.bourton.us/blog/

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