CityVille Goods
Now that you've expanded your Franchise empire along with the boundaries of your booming town in CityVille, it's time to get those Goods in line. I don't know about you, but I often find myself maxed out on Goods upon logging into the game. In fact, it's gotten to the point where, at times, I can't even harvest my crops before somehow getting rid of my gobs of Goods. However, there are a few ways to optimize your Goods management so that you don't run into the same problem.
1. The Right Crops for the Right Time
The number one way to control the amount of Goods you produce is planting smart. This isn't FarmVille anymore where the motto normally goes, "The more crops, the better!" Remember to be sure of the yield of each crop and its harvest time before planting. Now, you don't have to break out the calculator or anything (well, unless you're that intent on efficiency), but an idea of how many Goods are waiting for you in a few hours or days is good to keep in mind. For instance, I would strongly recommend against planting a field full of corn when you already have half of your Goods limit in storage.
Jump behind the break for four more tips on how effectively manage your Goods.
CityVille Storage
2. You're Gonna' Need a Bigger Boat
Or in this case, a bigger barn. There are currently only four storage solutions in the game and they're as follows:
-Silo: 250 coins; 100 Storage
-Red Barn: 1,000 coins; 415 Storage
-Sticks: 1,125 coins; 485 Storage
-Cargo Shed: 10 City Cash; 1,000 Storage
While it is mighty tempting to just say, "Forget it," and put up for the Cargo Shed, smart buys and even smarter positioning can help you avoid paying real dollars just to keep your Goods in safe keeping. While Silos are the cheapest solution to Storage, they're not exactly efficient. A much better strategy, although more expensive, would be to line up multiple Barns and Sticks adjacent to one another facing your farmland. In fact, the best way to build in CityVille is in a grid format similar to this, though it's not 100 percent necessary. The bottom line here is that if you place Barns and Sticks intelligently along the borders of your farmland or city, letting Silos fill in any unavoidable blanks, you should be fine when it comes to Storage.
3. Time is Money (and Goods)
Say it with me: Collect from and supply businesses as often as possible. Actually, collecting from Businesses should hold a much higher priority than collecting rent, taxes and free from residential buildings. Here's a scenario: if you only have a few Energy left, yet both your Businesses and Housing are ready to be collected from, which would spend your remaining Energy on? If your answer was cutting down Trees, you're are not even close to getting it. All kidding aside, just collect from the Businesses. This way, you'll get both coins and will be able to supply those Businesses, which costs nothing but Goods--and that's exactly what we want to get rid of.
Franchise Supply
4. Meet Expanding Demand with Expanding Supply
Franchises are a funnel for Goods. Every day, you'll be able to supply a huge portion of your Goods to your Businesses in other cities. And it only gets better with the more places your Businesses pop up. As soon as you're able to, open another Franchise as soon as possible. (Second and third Franchise opportunities open up at Levels 10 and 20.) With two Franchises running Businesses in multiple cities you could easily unload 75 percent of your Goods the moment you log in and click the "Supply" button a few times.
5. All Aboard!
While we've touched on Shipping before, we didn't exactly touch its importance when it comes to Goods management. And the reason why it's at the end of this list is because, frankly, it's a last resort. But don't think it's not equally as important. To put it into perspective, shipping Goods via Train can rid you of up to 700 Goods in an instant. While many of us haven't expanded to a local waterway to give international shipping a go, surely that will provide an even better way of dumping excess Goods elsewhere while making some money in the process. So, when you're at a loss of where to put the rest of those Goods after everything else has been taken care of, send them off on a train and make a few friends happy.
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Game of the Day: Winterbells
winterbells
winterbellsNeed a holiday game that's quick and cute? Winterbells is the game for you.
Winterbells, created by Orisinal, is one of the most beautiful Games of the Day ever. It follows a cute white bunny rabbit who embraces his curiosity of the heavens. Taking to the sky with a giant leap, he bounds from winter bell to winter bell, exploring the endless night. You can almost smell the cool, crisp, fresh winter air. Eventually, the mischievous bunny's ascent is cut short by a mistimed jump, and he glides back down to the earth, caught by the fresh snowfall.
Hint: Jumping on a bird doubles your score!
Click here to Play Winterbells >
winterbellsNeed a holiday game that's quick and cute? Winterbells is the game for you.
Winterbells, created by Orisinal, is one of the most beautiful Games of the Day ever. It follows a cute white bunny rabbit who embraces his curiosity of the heavens. Taking to the sky with a giant leap, he bounds from winter bell to winter bell, exploring the endless night. You can almost smell the cool, crisp, fresh winter air. Eventually, the mischievous bunny's ascent is cut short by a mistimed jump, and he glides back down to the earth, caught by the fresh snowfall.
Hint: Jumping on a bird doubles your score!
Click here to Play Winterbells >
Tron: Legacy on Facebook puts you in the Light Cycle
You've seen the film and you've already beaten the games to a pulp, but now is your chance to become part of Tron just like our good friend Jeff Bridges, except with far less CGI. To help fuel the buzz of its upcoming sequel (as if it needs anymore), Tron: Legacy, Disney has created an interesting Facebook app titled "Get on the Grid" that will launch you into what appears to be one of the major scenes in the movie that releases Dec. 17.
Take a look at how the app works after the break.
Developed by Alfred and Adam Deo of Digital Outlook, the app uses face mapping technology to put your head into the helmet of a Light Cycle. And since this seems to be a scene ripped straight from the movie, it looks like you'll be taking Sam Flynn's place in getting beat down by the digitized version of his father. (Come to think of it, this is an interesting sneak peek at what might go down between the two in the film.)
Tron Legacy App in actin
How it works is simple. All you need to do once inside the app is click on the "Start" button, which will then give you a list of options for how to upload an image of your face. You can rip your Facebook profile picture using Facebook Connect, but make sure it follows the app's guidelines or you'll end up looking like me (see above). You can also upload an image from your computer or take one right then and there with a web cam, which would probably be the best option to make for the coolest video to share. And that's the beauty of it, Tron fans everywhere will be able to say, "Look guys, I just got beat up by Jeff Bridges!" And that's an honor we can only dream of having in the real world. For the time being (and while we were hoping for a full-featured Facebook game), a nifty Facebook app will have to do.
Click here to "Get on the Grid" with Tron on Facebook Now>
Take a look at how the app works after the break.
Developed by Alfred and Adam Deo of Digital Outlook, the app uses face mapping technology to put your head into the helmet of a Light Cycle. And since this seems to be a scene ripped straight from the movie, it looks like you'll be taking Sam Flynn's place in getting beat down by the digitized version of his father. (Come to think of it, this is an interesting sneak peek at what might go down between the two in the film.)
Tron Legacy App in actin
How it works is simple. All you need to do once inside the app is click on the "Start" button, which will then give you a list of options for how to upload an image of your face. You can rip your Facebook profile picture using Facebook Connect, but make sure it follows the app's guidelines or you'll end up looking like me (see above). You can also upload an image from your computer or take one right then and there with a web cam, which would probably be the best option to make for the coolest video to share. And that's the beauty of it, Tron fans everywhere will be able to say, "Look guys, I just got beat up by Jeff Bridges!" And that's an honor we can only dream of having in the real world. For the time being (and while we were hoping for a full-featured Facebook game), a nifty Facebook app will have to do.
Click here to "Get on the Grid" with Tron on Facebook Now>
Zynga designed FarmVille as "a negative experience," says Braid creator
In a recent interview with Gamasutra, developer of hit Xbox Live Arcade game Braid Jonathan Blow claimed that Zynga's creation of FarmVille "is actually about designing something that's a negative experience." He made the statement when asked to return to his infamous stance on damaging design trends in video games. While Blow refrains from telling developers what games to create, he did have strong words for the 54.2 million-strong farming simulator.
"I still wouldn't tell people, 'Don't make that game' exactly, I would say, 'Think about what you're making and be careful when you make it and try not to exploit players,' Blow said to Gamasutra. "But I mean now that we've got FarmVille and stuff like that, I pretty much would say 'don't make that kind of game' because I don't see much value in it."
Not much value in it, eh? Well, how does millions in annual revenue sound for value? Unfortunately, that's not exactly what he meant. "It's about 'How do we make something that looks cute and that projects positivity' -- but it actually makes people worry about it when they're away from the computer and drains attention from their everyday life and brings them back into the game, Blow said.
Look after the break for more of what Blow had to say about games like FarmVille, but be warned: it's not pretty.
FarmVille Gifting Quests
Blow, who is in the midst of developing his second major game titled "The Witness," went on to say that games like FarmVille are designed for players to exploit their friendships into a mechanical means of game progression. We imagine he's referring to the issues with gifting quests (pictured) and possibly even the recent complaints that FarmVille might as well be named "BegVille."
As the independent developer continued, no one was safe. "And there's this kind of new way where people are, like Bryan Reynolds working on FrontierVille and stuff, making it supposedly deeper, but that kind of thing has been very token so far, Blow said. "And in fact, I would argue that the audience of that kind of game doesn't necessarily want a deeper game, or certainly that's not proven; it's very speculative."
His beef, apparently, is with developers like Zynga and not the Facebook platform, claiming that there is plenty of room for creative game ideas on Facebook. Unfortunately in his eyes, the FarmVille style is not the way to go.
"I still wouldn't tell people, 'Don't make that game' exactly, I would say, 'Think about what you're making and be careful when you make it and try not to exploit players,' Blow said to Gamasutra. "But I mean now that we've got FarmVille and stuff like that, I pretty much would say 'don't make that kind of game' because I don't see much value in it."
Not much value in it, eh? Well, how does millions in annual revenue sound for value? Unfortunately, that's not exactly what he meant. "It's about 'How do we make something that looks cute and that projects positivity' -- but it actually makes people worry about it when they're away from the computer and drains attention from their everyday life and brings them back into the game, Blow said.
Look after the break for more of what Blow had to say about games like FarmVille, but be warned: it's not pretty.
FarmVille Gifting Quests
Blow, who is in the midst of developing his second major game titled "The Witness," went on to say that games like FarmVille are designed for players to exploit their friendships into a mechanical means of game progression. We imagine he's referring to the issues with gifting quests (pictured) and possibly even the recent complaints that FarmVille might as well be named "BegVille."
As the independent developer continued, no one was safe. "And there's this kind of new way where people are, like Bryan Reynolds working on FrontierVille and stuff, making it supposedly deeper, but that kind of thing has been very token so far, Blow said. "And in fact, I would argue that the audience of that kind of game doesn't necessarily want a deeper game, or certainly that's not proven; it's very speculative."
His beef, apparently, is with developers like Zynga and not the Facebook platform, claiming that there is plenty of room for creative game ideas on Facebook. Unfortunately in his eyes, the FarmVille style is not the way to go.
FrontierVille Update: General Store, Talior Shop, et al get reduced costs
In an update that surely many a player will appreciate, Zynga has reduced the cost to construct several buildings in FrontierVille. In fact, most of the cost have literally been cut in half. Check it out:
General Store Upgrade
The parts required to upgrade the General Store is now cut down from 10 to 5.
The "Expand the General Store" quest task to collect Building Plans is also cut down from 10 to 5.
Tailor Shop
The parts required to finish the Tailor Ship is now cut down from 5 to 3.
Horseshoe Pit
The parts required to finish the HS Pit is now cut down from 10 to 5.
Snowy Homestead
The neighbor requirement is now reduced to 2 from 10.
We're going to go out on a limb and say that the last change to the Snow Homestead palette change is a typo. As of right now, it already takes 10 Neighbors to buy the "item." Man, if only these changes were around when I was struggling to build my General Store back in the day. Hopefully this trend of fewer requirements sticks as Zynga introduces new buildings to the game.
[Source and Image Credit: FrontierVille Forums]
What are your thoughts on Zynga reducing the building requirements to these items? What other things would you like to see Zynga ease up on a little?
General Store Upgrade
The parts required to upgrade the General Store is now cut down from 10 to 5.
The "Expand the General Store" quest task to collect Building Plans is also cut down from 10 to 5.
Tailor Shop
The parts required to finish the Tailor Ship is now cut down from 5 to 3.
Horseshoe Pit
The parts required to finish the HS Pit is now cut down from 10 to 5.
Snowy Homestead
The neighbor requirement is now reduced to 2 from 10.
We're going to go out on a limb and say that the last change to the Snow Homestead palette change is a typo. As of right now, it already takes 10 Neighbors to buy the "item." Man, if only these changes were around when I was struggling to build my General Store back in the day. Hopefully this trend of fewer requirements sticks as Zynga introduces new buildings to the game.
[Source and Image Credit: FrontierVille Forums]
What are your thoughts on Zynga reducing the building requirements to these items? What other things would you like to see Zynga ease up on a little?
Friday, January 13, 2012
FarmVille New Years Clothing: Tiaras, Top Hats, Party Dresses, and more!
With tonight's FarmVille update, we see the official launch of the New Years celebration in the game. Since most Winter Holiday items have already expired from the store, or are quickly on their way out of the proverbial door, it only makes sense that Zynga would make the most of the remaining year by releasing items allowing us to celebrate its end. Such items are now available in the Clothing section of the FarmVille marketplace, as seven new clothing items have been added to the game.
These items are those that you might remember seeing here in a FarmVille Sneak Peek, as we showed them to you back on the 18th of December (notice that some of those unreleased items are not in this release - are more items coming in the future?). For girl players / avatars, there is a Black Tiara, Silver Tiara, Gold Party Dress, Purple Party Dress, and a Silver Party Dress, all of which cost Farm Cash. Both of the Tiaras are available for 5 Farm Cash each, while the Party Dresses cost 10 Farm Cash each.
Meanwhile, boy players / avatars can be outfitted in either a Black Top Hat or a Silver Top Hat. Remember, boy avatars can unlock a full Tuxedo from within the Party Barn that was released in full last week. These top hats are both premium items, and would add an equally luxurious touch to your avatar's ensemble this New Years season. Both Top Hats can be purchased for 5 Farm Cash each.
All of these items will be available for a short while into the New Year - for the next 13 days, to be exact. Be sure to head into the game sometime before then if you want to make sure your in-game avatar can ring in the new year in style!
These items are those that you might remember seeing here in a FarmVille Sneak Peek, as we showed them to you back on the 18th of December (notice that some of those unreleased items are not in this release - are more items coming in the future?). For girl players / avatars, there is a Black Tiara, Silver Tiara, Gold Party Dress, Purple Party Dress, and a Silver Party Dress, all of which cost Farm Cash. Both of the Tiaras are available for 5 Farm Cash each, while the Party Dresses cost 10 Farm Cash each.
Meanwhile, boy players / avatars can be outfitted in either a Black Top Hat or a Silver Top Hat. Remember, boy avatars can unlock a full Tuxedo from within the Party Barn that was released in full last week. These top hats are both premium items, and would add an equally luxurious touch to your avatar's ensemble this New Years season. Both Top Hats can be purchased for 5 Farm Cash each.
All of these items will be available for a short while into the New Year - for the next 13 days, to be exact. Be sure to head into the game sometime before then if you want to make sure your in-game avatar can ring in the new year in style!
FarmVille New Years Tree: Confetti Tree
Personally, we love the now frequent additions of extremely unique, or otherwise impossible-in-the-real-world trees that have been released in FarmVille over the past few weeks. Keeping with this new in-game theme of sorts is tonight's release of the Confetti Tree, a bright, colorful tree that has been released as part of the New Years theme of limited edition items.
The Confetti Tree costs 5 Farm Cash to add to your farm, and can be harvested once every 2 days. You'll gain just 15 experience points for purchasing the tree, but you'll also make 150 coins each and every time you harvest it (of course, the tree grows colorful clusters of confetti).
As of this writing, the rumors surrounding this tree are that if you add this level 1 Confetti Tree to an Orchard on your farm, you'll have a chance to spawning a level 2 Disco Ball Tree as a Mystery Seedling. We'll be sure to confirm or deny this as more information becomes available, but either way, Disco Ball Trees have begun showing up as Mystery Seedlings, so make sure to collect all that you see your friends posts on your news feed!
The Confetti Tree will be available in the game for the next 21 days, and for those that are still on a holiday kick, it can be decorated with Lights and Snow once you purchase it. The tree is masterable, with the first star of mastery being available after 75 harvests.
The Confetti Tree costs 5 Farm Cash to add to your farm, and can be harvested once every 2 days. You'll gain just 15 experience points for purchasing the tree, but you'll also make 150 coins each and every time you harvest it (of course, the tree grows colorful clusters of confetti).
As of this writing, the rumors surrounding this tree are that if you add this level 1 Confetti Tree to an Orchard on your farm, you'll have a chance to spawning a level 2 Disco Ball Tree as a Mystery Seedling. We'll be sure to confirm or deny this as more information becomes available, but either way, Disco Ball Trees have begun showing up as Mystery Seedlings, so make sure to collect all that you see your friends posts on your news feed!
The Confetti Tree will be available in the game for the next 21 days, and for those that are still on a holiday kick, it can be decorated with Lights and Snow once you purchase it. The tree is masterable, with the first star of mastery being available after 75 harvests.
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