Yesterday here at Bytewire we had a most interesting debate about something which was seemingly un-important when it began. Let me explain the situation and set the scene quickly, before I dive right into the debate at hand.

Our popular online game, Street Crime, which we have been developing for over 2 years now has a reasonably intuitive, clever design and interface. However as we have expanded on the game and built lots of new features we have found the left hand menu, which importantly is our main menu in the game growing increasingly vertically larger and is now in our opinion a little overwhelming for new players. The left hand menu is divided into subsections and each subsection is collapsable and expandable and the state is held as the user flicks through pages. The left hand menu consists of around 40-50 links to other pages, which is pretty large as things go.

So along comes Friday and we have a new feature to release into Street Crime, yet we are not sure where it belongs, on the one hand we want our players to see it but on the other hand we have got to draw the line at making the left hand menu larger and larger, somewhere right!? Looking at this in more detail made us start to think, how incredibly important menus, navigations and terminology of the items in the menu really, really was to our game and to the players playing it. After about an hour of deliberation we had split our views into two seperate view points or theories if you like.

The Blue Pill or The Spoon Fed Approach

The first of which is the Blue Pill or the Spoon Fed approach which regards users as thickle, lazy and that they require spoon feeding to find what they are looking for. We Adopted the blue pill/red pill matrix scene to our game, arguing that if you opted to take the blue pill, you are thickle and you want everything in front of you in an easy navigation menu with a simple one click depth and you are happy that you know this is where you will find everything and that it will only be a case of scowering through the long menu list to find what your looking for, look hard enough and you will find it. By looking at this approach we identified some pro’s and con’s particularly adapted to the way our online ‘game’ works.

Cons

• Menu items get forgotten about as they are hidden by the player to make the menu small and manageable enough.
• New players feel overwhelmed by a large menu
• Forcibly not allowing a user to explore deeper into the rabbit hole at his or her own leisure.
• Get what you click approach – not always the best approach especially not so for online games.

Pros

• Its quick
• Minimal effort
• You get what you click
• Everything is in the menu somewhere approach

The Red Pill or Depth In Pages Approach

“Take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes”.

Adapted from the matrix we thought up this approach amongst the theory that users are so thickle that if they need to find something that they know exists somewhere on your site, they will sure as hell try to find it. Which importantly for a online game, creates a contact point, especially so for online games with a chat facility – “hey does anyone know where i can find the weapons shop?” etc. It also allows you to think more logically about how your game is put together, ie, some pages relate directly to another so why not link back and forth to each one from that page. The more time a player can spend navigating around without returning to use the left hand menu the greater depth and indulgence you have managed to achieve. What this would also allow us to do is to spend time making our menu as concise as possible. Cutting it down from 50 items to just 10 and cutting out the collapsible and foldable menus. Take the example below for instance.

Current Menu

• Game Forum
• Off-topic Forum
• Crew Forum
• Bug Forum

Making this more concise could mean a link in the menu with “forums” which takes you to an overview page, perhaps with the 10 latest posts accross all forums and then links to the individual forums themselves. You have added another click level, but you’ve also improved the experience and likelyhood of them getting involved. As you have made the forums link more viewable and you’ve added an easy way for people to jump right into a thread from the overview page.

New Menu

• Forums

Another important factor to always remember when using a long list style navigation menu is that if its long, its likely areas are going to be forgotten about or due to the page fold don’t get visited as much as they should. This is the wrong approach especially with a social game. For us currently our forums are situated at the very bottom of our long menu and thus probably dont receive as much clicks and visits as they should do. With a new shortened menu, we can really put more emphasis on the real important aspects of the site in the menu and link the less important pages using a depth approach, clever linking and page relationships.

Cons

• All menu items and pages within the game are not accessible on a one click basis
• Lazy players may suffer.
• If implemented badly could add an annoying amount of extra clicks and time to perform routine tasks

Pros

• Intuitive
• Its not overwhelming at first and it lets the user dive deeper into the rabbit hole as and when they feel comfortable doing it.
• Its small and it makes sense

Although my opinion clearly sways to towards the Red Pill approach, this is not to say it will work on our site or indeed on your site. However, what you might be interested to know is we are going to run some tests and analysis of both approaches and see which one works better for us and then of course go ahead and implement it. If your interested to see how we get on and or would like to read our findings be sure to follow us on twitter @Bytewire.

Tags: blue pill, importance of menus, long navigation menus, red pill, short navi, short navigation menus
Posted in Bytewire, Design, Street Crime, Websites | No Comments »

Here at Bytewire we have the football fever! A few weeks ago whilst sitting in the summer sun enjoying a few quiet drinks after a kick about, some friends and us got thinking about upping the stakes a little bit this world cup, but we didn’t really know how or what we wanted to do. There were tonnes of people jumping on the dream team world cup site / apps wagon. But as there was no budget or any kind of valuation cap, everyone just picked similar teams of the best players. So we decided it would be more fun to run a predictor with points accumulation for the correct winner of each game and bonus points for correct score. We also introduced a few tie breakers like total goals in the tournament, total red cards, total yellow cards, top goal scorer, top goal scorer goals and top scoring team. As this seemed alot more difficult to end up with the same scores, and also alot more riding on every game. Especially if you and a friend are neck and neck for the prize pot at the semi final stage. Entry to the predictor costs £5.00 only.

The Prizes

• Winner takes 60% of the overall pot.
• Second takes 25% of the pot
• Third takes the remaining 15% of the overall pot.

Check it out here – http://worldcup.bytewire.co.uk

We thought it would just be a bit of fun and something a bit different to alot of other ones out there. All prize money goes into the pot, its literally all for free (well £5.00 but thats it).

One Last Thing

Remember to share, it would be really great if you could share the link to this bit of fun with the provided facebook share links etc on the predictor site. We would much appreciate it.

Tags: fifa, football, nike, predictor, world cup 2010
Posted in Bytewire, Design, Websites | No Comments »

The last 2 years or so have been a huge learning curve for myself and Elliot, we’ve gone from novice programmers to learning and juggling 4-5 different programming languages on a daily basis. Some might say an impossible task, except….its not. We don’t really feel like anything is impossible and we don’t feel like more knowledge can ever really be bad knowledge. It does however throw up a very good question in the life of a programmer and designer. When is taking too much on and learning too much really too much? When does juggling too many different things and trying to do too many different bits and bobs really start to affect the productivity in areas which are really the important ones to your business?

Well heres the view we take, get the work done that you need to get done in your normal daily working hours……then try maybe every other night spending an hour just looking at something new (somedays or weeks as us designers all know this just in reality may not be possible), read a book, learn something and before you know it you’ll be surprised at how much it helped or what that extra bit of knowledge might help you with in the future.

This could be as simple as writing a blog post, following some interesting people on twitter, spending the time just to see what other designers are up to or just setting personal goals together about what potentially could be most useful for you individually to learn for the greater collective of the company. Eg maybe what could help improve an existing project or maybe what we need to learn to unlock greater possibilities in the future. As techies we’ve somewhat got our work cut out, as you could never learn everything in our field of work, nor would it seem like a good idea to even try and attempt it.

Interestingly especially for us as company directors and full time designers / programmers we often have to prioritize our work as a matter of utmost importance. Not only do we have to pull all of the strings with the work load our products produce, but we also take care of all the running of the business. Thus if we spent all our time improving our own personal skills but not metaphorically speaking ‘putting pen to paper’ with any produce, its worthless to us as a company and after a while most likely Bytewire would be no longer.

I think that controlling this at a personal level is really difficult, even when you are a director of the company….just like me. I’ll always look at things other people have done and think woah I want to do that as well, but one thing weve learnt over the 2 years we’ve been a company is that produce comes first, refining and development comes after. After all first you must have a base to build from as the saying goes…..”don’t try to walk before you can crawl”. With everything you try to do, especially if you are running your own company you should try and tie learning it into a real product or finished product that could be of use. That way things aren’t simply just a waste of time from a business perspective. As a small business moving in a quickly changing environment its very important to get out there and make sure you identify what is ‘your thing’ and build your base here as quickly as possible. This is not to say you shouldn’t toy around, some of the best things ever made started out as just messing around to see what could come of a random idea. Infact that’s where Bytewire came from

So try something new, spend some time learning something, develop your skills…..but remember if your ever faced with a choice……fix or make something for a REAL project or spend time to learn something new. ALWAYS make sure the product comes first.

Tags: learn to learn, personal development
Posted in Bytewire, Design | No Comments »

After an argument with a friend about the movie Avatar it made me realise that society has become ever more greedy! A machine hoovering and gobbling up all that is offered on a plate and un-politely shouting back “more please…..oh and next time make it better”.

Think back to the days when the human race marvelled at our own achievements for example landing on the moon, space, power of flight, learning the earth was infact round not square and medicinal revolutions. All of these things were celebrated around the world as near on miracles never before being more than a dream.

Think back to the days when movies were black and white or had no visual effects in them what so ever, most people would never have dreamed movies would have progressed to what they are now. This doesn’t make these movies bad movies at all, but they lack revolutionary techniques and abilities that films have available to them in the modern day industry. So lets use this as an example……Star Wars comes out, first movie of its kind and scale, nothing is comparable to it, and its now hailed as a revolutionary masterpiece and probably will be for the rest of time. Now lets compare that to Avatar and in this case my friend whos view was this……

“The 3-D aspect and the ‘world’ are impressive for the first half hour.”

Notice how he admits to the marvel that is Avatars world, but as he has slowly been exposed to similar lesser visual effects through previous movies and although impressed initially soon loses interest. Now put into perspective the Star Wars movies and how they are still viewed as great movies despite being very dated. It almost points to a certain fact which is key to alot of businesses around the world.

“Be the first and be original”

Now think about this, if you were fortunate enough to have been alive the day the first ever landing on our wonderful moon took place, as a world stood still to witness a landmark in human kinds achievements, you would hold this date and memory vividly in your mind. Then think about humans landing a space craft on Mars, this is a massively more significant mission, much more complex, costly and daring than landing on the moon, but do you remember it? The date? Maybe you remember reading something about it? But there was no stand still for sure. And you know why? Its not new news anymore…….you’ve heard alot about space missions and your bored…..until something totally revolutionary or significant comes along you probably won’t be interested again.

After going on a bit of a mazey helter skelter of a ride you’ll hopefully now be seeing my point, which I believe can be pinned to almost any product, any type of service or any entity.

In most cases no matter what it might be, the average person is not bothered about the complexity of how you deliver a product or service, but that you do deliver it.

Its key to remember, only you and other like minded people will be impressed by the complexity, cost and how you implement a product, story or service. Others, generally speaking are more interested that the product does what it says it does, and it does so well.

Which now leads me back to the overall point of this post, in a society where only the very new of the new seem to make people stop and wonder, how does a business, service or entity using non revolutionary techniques get themselves recognised…..i’ll leave you with that thought.

Tags: avatar argument, greed, society, world wonders
Posted in World | No Comments »

For quite a long time now we haven’t made any updates or posts on our blog so today im going to change that.

Today we launched a new toplist site called Gamez Toplist so what better occasion to make a blog post than to record the creation of a new product. It is basic in its functionality but it does a very good job of doing exactly what it needs to do. Gamez Toplist ranks free and paid online mmorpgs, rpgs, and servers amongst various other things voting links are given on sign up and the players of each game can then vote for there site. All games in each category are ranked by votes in, voting is reset monthly and only one vote is allowed per 24 hours.

Check it out here – http://www.gameztoplist.com

Tags: game voting, games toplist, mmorpg, toplist
Posted in Gamez Toplist, Websites | No Comments »

Is your Xp logging you straight out as soon as you click to login. Do you click your name and see your background flash up and then it says logging out straight away and takes you straight back to the main screen?
Then this article will help you through fixing it and why it happened in the first place, which is probably the bigger question youll be asking yourself.
Despite windows xp being particuarly vulnerable to its own self this problem is not caused by an error by windows, it is however caused by an infection which kindly deletes your userinit.exe file for you.

This to the average computer user probably means nothing, but basically this file contains windows system settings for each user on your machine. Deleting basically means it will no longer work hence the problem you are now facing.

One thing that worries us all when we hit a problem is ‘will I be able to get my files off my computer if i gave to wipe it’. Simple answer in this case is Yes.

A few days ago my girlfriends dad got a problem with his computer and came to us for help. Having never actually come accross this problem before i set about doing some research.

Okay onto the solutions

1. Okay firstly you can do the following but you’ll need a spare computer or a mate. Remove your hard drive from your machine insert it into the spare machine  or friends machine whatever you choose to do then boot up your friends computer making sure that your hard drive is the secondary drive. Now you’ll be able to navigate to my computer and select the good hard drive, ie the one thats on your mates computer or your spare computer from there youll need to do this click into WINDOWS Folder then – > System32

Then what youll need to do is simply hunt down the userinit.exe file from your good installation of windows copy it and paste it into your bad copy of windows on your other drive which can be achieved by very simply right click and copying and then right click paste into the bad installation.

Now if you put the hard drive back into your computer and boot it up. You will be able to log into your user again like normal and will have access to all of your files. If this works for you please skip to the last section titled Cleaning and keeping the computer safe.

You now need to locate on your bad hard drive the file called wsaupdater.exe which is also will be found if its present in the system32 folder on your bad installation hard drive ie the one with the original problem. Locate it and delete it.

2. The next solution is something rather more challenging for the average computer user however is also a very good solution and will enable you to do the above but without having to use another computer or a mates.
   • SpyBot Search and Destroy – Excellent piece of malware detection software also FREE
   • Spybot Search and Destroy

Boot using your winxp cd.
Enter recovery console.
at the command prompt go to

C:/windows/system32

next type:
Dir *.exe

If you find, it, type

copy userinit.exe wsaupdater.exe

Exit and reboot normally. You should now be able to logon.

Run regedit

Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\

In the right pane, you should see

C:\WINDOWS\System32\wsaupdater.exe,

Change it so that it reads:

C:\WINDOWS\System32\userinit.exe

That should solve the problem, if the malware was the one that caused the issue.

3. The last solution we will talk about and by far the most permanent of solutions to the problem is to simply delete your windows partitition and install a fresh un-tainted copy of windows xp.
Youll probably find that if you have nothing particuarly that needs saving on the computer that this is really the best solution, so long as you remember to be more careful with what you download next time round tut tut!

Cleaning and looking after your computer

I would personally recommend and suggest taking a look at some of the below links if you need to clean your computer of virus’s and malware.

Malware

Spybot search and destroy – Great little program to delete unwanted spyware and trojans.

Super anti spy ware – Is another good program for the removal of malware and trojans.

Viruses

AVG free edition – Still highly recommended above others.

Tags: Windows XP, xp bugs, xp login
Posted in Technology, Windows XP | 2 Comments »

Today, 18th December 2008, we release our Bytewire Ltd website. Bytewire Ltd specialise in website design, online gaming, computer and laptop repairs and home networking. For a full list of services Bytewire Ltd offer please see the services page. The aim of the site is to begin building our web presence whilst also advertising the services and expertise that we offer.

Tags: Bytewire, online gaming, website design, website development
Posted in Bytewire | No Comments »

Over the last week or so we have been watching over street crime and noticed a huge overload of bullets in the system.

This is mainly due to a small drop in players and the city bullet factories producing far too many bullets per day for the amount of players that they serve. The consequence of which has meant that players have managed to get there hands on large amounts of bullets relatively easily.

So as of just now, the city bullet factories will produce only 500 bullets an hour. For the same amount of lead and cash as before. We hope by doing this it will provide more competition for bullets and thus more enjoyment for you guys.

We have also lowered the amount that personal bullet factories make to reflect the following:

Small : 100 bullets
Medium : 150 bullets
Large : 200 bullets
Huge : 300 bullets

Hourly, providing you have 100,000 cash and 100kg of lead and that you have turned your factories production on at the inventory page.

We have also fixed some bugs in kill which had been leading to some minor problems with crew leaders and crews not dropping. This has now been rectified.

Stay tuned to find out more about new moderators, editors and helpdesk members shortly.

Play Street Crime Gangster Game now >

Street Crime Staff

Tags: bullet factory production, game balancing, kill system, Street Crime
Posted in Street Crime, Websites | 2 Comments »

Having recently converted to Mac as you may have read in a previous blog “Moving from PC to Mac” we decided that it was also time to look for a new Text Editor to use for programming.

The first code I ever wrote I used a basic Text Editor which has no tools to assist you, a great way to learn how to code if your a beginner, since then I used Macromedia Dreamweaver but have never been fully satisfied with the way it works. Macromedia, being such a big company, can often mean less effort is added to the product to make them as good as they can be.

So in search for a new Text Editor which can be used on Mac’s I came across Coda, made by Panic. I have been using the software for a week now and I am impressed.

Features:

- Excellent layout with side menu to show list of files
- Ability to manage sites – including screenshot of the homepage of each site
- Built in terminal so you can use SSH instantly
- Supports subversion so you can update easily
- Allows split screen so you can view more than one file at a time – horizontal or vertical

The software is $99 but you do have a trial period to test it out and see if you like it. The staff at Panic appear to be interested in ideas to improve the software further so if you have any suggestions its worth dropping them an email.

Tags: coda, mac software, text editor
Posted in Mac, Technology | No Comments »

Adding google adsense to a facebook application has been a rather taboo subject for the last few years that you have been able to develop applications fully. It is now however becoming easier. Although still a taboo subject as to whether google will allow its ads to be displayed using an iframe and wether displaying google ads in this manor violates googles terms of service. Using these sort of ads on your application may run you the risk of having your adsense account closed or suspended at any time, but so far so good for those that i know.

My eCPM with Google varies from $ 0.50 – 0.75 (eCPM). That is reliable, since it’s been like that over a 6 month period.

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, and it adheres to their policies so only having a Facebook App 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 App.
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.

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.

I recommend at most 2 ads per page.

Now to the ‘how to do it’ part:

Step 1:

Your first step is to create a page called ‘google_code.htm’ – This is going to be the actual ads page, you will need to add some keywords, targeted references and at the very least a paragraphs worth of content and of course your google ad box code itself.
An example of this can be seen below.

[sourcecode language='html']

keywords
keywords
Content – Atleast a Paragraph
keywords
keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords
[/sourcecode]

Step 2: The middle page

The next step is to create another page called ‘google_frame.htm’ this page has a frame which displays the google_code.htm actual ads page. (I think its a good idea to put some more keywords here too).

[sourcecode='html']

keywords
keywords
Content – Atleast a Paragraph
keywords
keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords

keywords
[/sourcecode]

Now for the final step

Okay now on your canvas page or on any page that you use for your facebook application you can now simply include the code below.

[sourcecode='html']

id=”games-header” name=”games-header”
marginwidth=”10″ marginheight=”10″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″
height=”105″ width=”740″ />
[/sourcecode]

Now you should have your very own targeted google ads in your facebook application. It may also be good to make some pages that google can crawl from your google_code.htm etc pages.
Make links to some other pages which will contain some content this will help the relevance of your ads.

Tags: adsense, facebook, facebook applications, google adsense
Posted in Design | 1 Comment »