Welcome to our latest ‘Building a Better Risk’ blog post, where we dive into behind the scenes of RISK: Global Domination. Each blog post focuses on trending topics in the community. In this post, we're providing an update to our Network Overhaul and sharing highlights from our recent developer Q&A, where our team answered some of your most pressing questions and discussed what’s next for the game.
Work on the network overhaul for Risk has been continuing steadily in the background with our brand new packet system optimised and ready for testing. We spent a lot of August working through our Risk app unity architecture, refactoring basic gameplay features one by one and bringing them back online in our refactor branch. It’s slow, careful work but we’re making good progress so far.
If you’d like to read more about the specifics of our Network Overhaul as to why we’re doing it and what we can achieve with it, read
Building a Better RISK: Leading up to 4.0.Let’s dive into the key topics covered, as well as our team's thoughts and our approaches towards it.
We're aware of a reconnection issue that may affect some mobile users after switching out of the app. We’re working to improve game stability on mobile, so mobile players aren’t at a disadvantage compared to PC players.
That’s why our network overhaul is so critical - It gives us the toolset to fix long standing connectivity problems that would be too difficult or too time consuming to address under our current system.
A common request from the community is to increase the player limit. Currently, RISK games are capped at 6 players, but we haven’t ruled out the possibility of expanding to 8, 10 or even 12 players.
The main challenge is adjusting the UI to fit more players on the screen, but we believe this can be solved and are open to exploring this idea in the future.
Right now, we're focused on the overhaul and not adding new game modes. We've received requests for features like combining Zombies with caps, and it's something we'll look into after the 4.0 update. Once we're satisfied with the network overhaul, we'll explore new game modes next year.
We know sandbox modes are popular, but we currently have no plans for one. The challenge is ensuring it can't be exploited for unfair setups in multiplayer. However, a sandbox mode could be fun for tournaments or single-player, so we're open to exploring it in the future if we can make it fair.
Our team has been exploring a spectating feature, but allowing live spectators could lead to concerns about cheating, especially with fog of war or hidden data. Because of that, live spectating is unlikely in Ranked games.
However, match replays - like a sped-up playback of territory changes, are something we’re considering. It would depend on the data involved and how much interest there is. If we do introduce replays, it could offer safe, non-disruptive spectating.
Anonymous lobbies are something we think would be a cool addition, especially for community tournaments and GM games. However, it would likely have to wait until after the networking overhaul. We’d also need to ensure it’s protected from exploitation by collaborators. This feature could benefit streamers too, by reducing the chances of queue sniping.
The team has discussed expanding the stats to include things like wins per map. While we want to keep things consistent with the existing stats, adding per-map stats has been on our radar for a while. We actually started working on it a few years ago, but other priorities took over. One of the challenges is that, based on our analytics, very few players dive into their stats in detail, so it hasn’t been something we’ve pushed to the top of the list.
We know it can be frustrating when players forget to click accept in the lobby, causing a bot to take over the player.
We’re actively working on a ready-up feature to solve this. We’ve explored different approaches in the past and will launch 4.0 with the current system, but improving the ready-up process is definitely on our to-do list for the future.
There’s been a lot of discussion regarding maps, including upcoming maps and adding a search bar. In Update v3.16 (our next update) we will be releasing a brand new map pack. We’ve also been working on some more maps behind the scenes and can’t wait for them to be out.
We’ve been working on redesigning the map selection interface and improving map searchability and discoverability. While this feature will likely come after the networking overhaul, it’s definitely high on our list of priorities.
We’ve seen requests for improving the slider to automatically adjust for the minimum number of troops needed to take a territory. We understand that manually adjusting the blitz slider can slow down gameplay, especially in competitive matches for a 60-second limit.
We’re currently investigating this. If we find any issues we’ll address them promptly. If our testing shows no problems, we’ll share the results with the community. This change would require updates to the dice code so we plan to tackle it along with other issues like capital and high troop count dice.
Stalemating can be frustrating, and we’ve heard many complaints about them.
One idea we’re considering, which some of you’ve suggested, is a setting that limits the number of troops on a territory. We have a prototype for this, with a customisable “max troops” limit to encourage more strategic play. We’re open to releasing this feature in the future
Our team is focused on the Overhaul to reduce and prevent cheating. A key goal is to make multiplayer games server-authoritative, so players can’t manipulate troop counts or alter the game unfairly. These changes will prevent hacks and ensure a fair gameplay experience for everyone.
Find out more about our Dev Q&A here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Risk/comments/1ebfwfn/live_qa_with_smg_studio_developers_of_risk/
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Your feedback is what drives us making Risk: Global Domination the best it can be.
If you have any questions or any particular topic you’d like for us to cover, then let us know in the comments below.
Over and Out
Team RISK @SMG.
