A bunch of new stuff has arrived on BTG. Please note that as with any new content, there is a chance there are bugs. If you find any bugs let me know asap so I can fix them right away.

Ok, here is what's new on BTG :

- You can now create tournaments and set the maximum number of towers a player can use. So, if you set it to 10 towers, once a player has reached 10 towers on the screen it will give them a warning message if they try and place any more. It also shows how many towers you've currently placed (ie. 7/10). Keep in mind, this set the max number of towers allowed on the screen at any time. So if you hit the max of 10, then sell 3 towers, you can then build 3 more towers.

- You can now speed up regular game play up to a maximum of 5 times. Use the < and > keys to do so (or just use the slider bar with your mouse). You need to spend Member points to be able to go up to 5x, otherwise 2x is the max. More on this later.

- There is now a BTG Store. You'll find a link to this in the red menu at the top of the screen. In the store you can purchase special things and features around the site. To purchase things in the store you'll need "Member Points". To get Member Points you need to purchase them with real money (oh noes!). Check out the stuff you can get in the store. I will continue to add new stuff to it.

All the games on the site will always be free, but I do need to make some money from the site to pay the bills the site creates. So, for those of you generous people out there that want to support the site, purchase some Member Points. All money earned will go towards the site in one way or another.

Note : Any of you really nice people have donated your money before I implemented the store will be receiving the Member Points you should have earned PLUS an additional 50%. Thankyou! (will be awarded tomorrow... it's been a long day)

- Volcano towers have been super optimized. They "should" lag a lot less when you have tons of the screen.

- Volcano towers will get nerfed tomorrow a bit (too busy to do it right now). I will slow down the rate at with lava grows inside it for all levels.

- I have been working hard on a new realtime multiplayer game. Progress is coming along nicely. I'll keep you posted. In the next bit I'll be looking forward to havign some people beta test it.

More to come soon!

Nice Work !!

Yep, that was a bit too much - the store.

The game was so nice, you had to ruin it. The earnings from the ads weren't enough? So let see how much money we can make from this... Well, good luck - I no longer intend to spend time on this site.

It is really sad when a good idea goes down the drain, because of greed - I'm really sorry to see it here.

To all players - now the real contest begins, enjoy :) The title is "How much money you are willing to spend"

@cheaty
You're one to talk, being at level 41 you obviously don't need any of the offered "enhancements". I on the other hand have full-time job and can't spend hours playing on this site, so I think it's a nice idea to be able just buy points to get me where I'd like to be.
And concerning the ads, I don't think that the five bucks generated from those are enough to even cover the electric bill for the server.
I wanna say "thanks" again to Sparticus for taking the effort and I sincerely hope that he'll be able to make some money on this.

@cheaty - that is really over the top reaction. The fact of it is - servers cost money to run - I always knew something like this would have to happen - and I have to admire how long the site has been running without regular income. I don't see how you can call this greedy.

If your upset that your grinding for EXP is now worth nothing - then oh well.

Oh, come on - am I the only one who thinks this "enhancement" ruins the game?

@sengoku > I got a full time job 2 months ago, and unfortunately now I don't have enough time to play either... but this doesn't mean that I am going to spend my money on this

@both > Please don't explain facts to me - I run several sites and know about the costs of shared hosting, VPS and dedicated servers. Yes, they cost money, of course. And I can assure you that only AdSense pays the bills for the hosting. Easily. Talking about facts - my favorite project is a web site in single, not English language, where as you may or may not know the ads pay a lot less than English sites. This site uses a huge VPS account and the monthly bill for it is covered by 2-3 days of AdSense ads.

As all this being said - I truly appreciate the work of Spartacus and wish him lots of joy from this game. Every dollar earned from this site is well deserved in my opinion.

I know this is hard to believe, but the google ads make me on average 40 cents a day. Some days it makes nothing, some days it makes a buck. It only pays me something for clicks.... and people don't click on ads.

When I first made the site I actually had "Mochi Ads" in the game (when the game was played, a 30 second commercial was played each and every time at the beginning). That would have made me a small amount of money too... but I found it ruined the game to see ads like that so i took it out. I could change one line of code right now to put them back in... but i won't.

I won't bore you with the details, but the site loses money each and every month. Sure, 40 cents a day can add up... but the cost of running a somewhat busy site gets expensive. The $12 a month the site makes doesn't help much at all.

People actually asked me to add in the Donation feature because they wished to donate. So I did it. There were a total of 8 very generous people that donated.

This is a hobby of mine. I didn't make the site to become rich. That won't happen. I made it because I enjoy to make games and I enjoy people enjoying the games.

I have a wife and a young daughter. My wife works 1 or 2 days a week. We aren't rich. My goal is for the site to make just enough money to pay for itself... not fun for me to go to the wife and say "Server/bandwidth bills are due".

It doesn't matter if no one buys anything, I will always keep the site running. I have spent many years working on the site (I did all the website, the game(s), the database and server stuff....everything). I didn't realize getting paid a few bucks for my efforts would make you mad.

So, anyways, I apologize if you feel the store "ruined" the site. No one said you had to buy anything.


Edit : @cheaty You can make enought money from 2-3 days of adsense to pay your server bills?? How busy is this site of yours? How many clicks do you get a day?

Check this link out... here is a screenshot of my earning from adsense for the past 7 days... $3.36 (which is actually higher than normal)

http://www.beatthegeek.com/adsense.gif

Please accept my apologies. Honestly, I didn't expect the AdSense revenue to be so close to 0.

My web site is about cooking and daily we get ~20K unique visitors and roughly ~120K page loads. The number of clicks is high, but because the price for non-English ads is very low, the earnings from Google are not impressive. I have close relationships with people developing similar (cooking) sites in English and their eCPM is 4-8 times higher than mine... That's absolutely normal.

My guess is that according to Google your site doesn't have a lot of what they call "content" (text), but I am not an expert on this - my sites are just a hobby. Probably you can increase the revenue by finding direct advertisers.

Ya, I'm not totally sure how the eCPM works or is calculated. I'll take whatever google is willing to give me. lol

Congratz on your cooking site. 20k unique visitors a day is awesome! It's no wonder your google ads are making you money.

Great idea :)

immediatly bought some points, but apparently it takes a while for paypal to catch up or something, still 0 member points according to the top right thingie.
Just have to be patient then :)

Phae, it still says zero? As soon as the transaction went through I double checked to make sure everything worked and it appeared to.

I can see the Member Points in your account. You don't see them?

It should be almost instant.

Hmmm, nope. Still zero. Let me check my bank account if everything went ok.

Oh crap. My bad! You did have the Member Points credited to your account, but it wasn't displaying it properly at the top of the screen.

It should be all fixed now. My apologies.

Like I mentioned, it should be instant. If you aren't credited your Member Points immediately let me know.

Thanks

Okay, weird stuff.
I paid through paypal, which is directly connected to my bank-account.
You can see the transactions, AND the member points.
On my bank account, i do not see the withdrawal, AND i do not see the member points.

Maybe it just takes some time for paypal/bank to finish the transaction or something, ill check back later.
Right now i have to get these kids to bed ;-)

I posted just before you Phae... lol.

I just wanted to point that out so you don't miss my reply.