Access Turbulenz with Facebook
This week the Turbulenz game site Beta was updated with new features and enhancements. Here’s a rundown of what we added, and what’s coming next.
Facebook Connect
You can now register for, or connect an existing account, with Facebook. This is great news as you can now create an account in seconds using the data you’ve already filled in with Facebook. Death to filling in boring forms!
Secondly, you can instantly find your existing Facebook friends on Turbulenz — no searching, no typing in usernames or email addresses. Being connected to Facebook will also allow us to do even more fun stuff in the future like telling your friends you’re starting a multiplayer game so they can join you instantly in 1-click. We’ll be adding connections to other social networking sites so you can find and follow all your favourite people in the future.
Badges in the Live Feed
Last month we released Badges; virtual rewards for completing in-game actions (and soon actions on the website). Now whenever you earn a badge we post an update to the Live Feed telling all your friends and players of that game what you just earned. Other users can comment on your activity, ask how you achieved the badge and what your strategies for earning it were, or just boast about how they got it first. We’re providing a really interactive and fun way of earning and sharing your virtual achievements. We’ll allow you to post even more of your activity to the Live Feed in future releases such as your virtual in-game location and in-game photos.
Settings
Settings are slightly less glamorous, but equally as important. This release we’ve introduced a simple tabbed settings panel that allows you edit your public profile or account settings from anywhere within the site or within a game without quitting what you’re doing or going to another page. We’ve focused on simplicity and accessibility to get you in and out as quickly as possible so you can get back to playing games. We’ll be adding more options to this panel over time such as the option to manage global game settings so that every game you play is instantly set up to your default preferences.
Usability Enhancements
Every release we aim to polish all aspects of the site and fix as many bugs as possible, but this release we aimed to squash almost everything we’d logged so far — and we did it! Hopefully you won’t even notice, and the site will feel snappy and polished.
Space Ark Updated
Development on Space Ark is nearly complete and we’re extra proud of this update as it now supports badges and leaderboards. Please try to not set too many high scores or we’ll have to spend the next month beating them, and that would mean no cool features next month.
What is Worm?
You might have noticed a game called Worm on Turbulenz. We use this as our testing application for badges and leaderboards, so that’s not going to be getting any updates. However feel free to give it a try if you want to get some easy badges, we accidentally made it addictive.
If you have any feedback on site we’d love to hear it (fill in the feedback form on the first page after you sign in, or email us). And if you’re not in the beta then don’t forget to register your interest on Turbulenz as we’ll be sending out some more invitations very soon.
