Vyoma

@SP Tch. Tch. I had resisted putting anything here for quite long - as long as I had been to Xisto. I now feel that the lazyness was worth it cause you put all that I wanted to say here in clear terms - I could not have done it better. Ofcourse, I will give the credit shamelessly to myself 'cause I did call you here and recomend this forum. I would second what you are saying. Managers and other higher tier personel in a company get more than - way more than - what a programmer gets in the same industry in India. I cannot say for other industry and I cannot say if it is fair when compared to other countries. I think to blame any particular industry for paying less when compared to same in another country is a bit absurd because they would definetly be different, and these things would be different in different countries. Else, if all the features were economically flat, I doubt there would be any trade between two countries. I am not saying that would be fair or this would be - I am just saying that we are pointing fingers in a wrong direction if we think in that terms. But yes, manager and higer tier do get paid way more (off the scale) when compared to programmers. I mean, you should look at even the entry level package given to a student out of a techinal college and a B-School. The graduate of a B-School gets a bloated one in India - I am not sure of other countries - but I am not sure if I am biased in saying that I value the technical knowledge that actually creates something more than another set of skill that basically deals with manipulating other people. @Others Sorry about inviting him over here. He is a bit of rambler sometimes (like me) but quite as much talented as me. Not better than me ofcourse.

A side note... I am a bit of an artist - but I hardly find time to do anything much these days. Do you have anything particular in mind with the 'artist base' here that you would want to venture out? I would be glad to help.

Hmmm. On the other hand if you are using that other mod - the inline ad - then I do not see it being a problem. But ensure that you do not display more than 3 ad unit + 1 ad link unit + 1 referral button in one page. Even by mistake, more should not appear - for example it might appear in long threads of your forum. If you ensure that they do not surpass the allowed quantity, then you can go ahead and not worry about violating any Google Adsense TOS.

There are quite a few reasons I am making this post here. One reason - being outrightly honest - is that I would be doing it for the hosting days I get from Xisto. Jokes aside, I think we have had quite a few threads that seek to know more about making a game. Here are few of the threads which I have lurked in: Help me create text based turn based game How can I start on Game Programming Newbie seeking make games These and other similar threads have been the drive for me to put this post here on making of game. Now that I have put the motive for this post down, here are points that I would briefly discuss on. Motive for game creation Various categories where work is involved for creation of game Few different options for venture Motive for game creationWhat could be the motive for a person, or a group of people to create a game? I see that this motive comes in two flavours. One, they are passionate about games, and would love to create one more. Another motive is for the financial gains - trust me, the gaming industry is a heavy paying industry if you strike the jackpot like the movie industry. Out of these two motives there might me other, but I cannot think of any. Most of the time it is usually the mixture of these to motives that drives one or a group to create a game. I have seen a trend here at Xisto that many are actaully driven by the passion for games and not for the financial gains. I am though not surprised, because at one time I myself was in the same shoes. I remember marveling at the 256 coloured side scroller games published by SEGA, ID and Apogee software companies. All I did during those days on my PC was chrun our one game after another that not more than a handful of my friends would play - it is another thing that I was quite skillful in C/C++ and also using Allegro graphics library that it helped me through my graduation - but the main motive for me to learn technology was just the passion for games. I am passionate about games even to this date, but I think with age a bit of the other motive too has come into picture. Now, why would we need to discuss the motives in a write-up on creation of games? I think that they are important perspective one needs to be aware of during the making of games. If it is just ones liking for games that is the reason for creating it, one need not worry about anything else. One need not worry about acceptability, marketability and such things. But if there is even a bit of financial motive, then that would form an important parameter. It would decide on the technology used, the content created, and the way the game is published. The technology would need to be considered because if the target market does not have the technology, then they would not buy the game. If the culture of the target market is offended or finds the content of the game irksome, then not many copies of the game would be sold. Thus, before starting out on creation of any game, one should set ones motives pretty clear. Various categories where work is involved for creation of game There would be many things that one or a group of venturers would ignore in their excitement on starting out to create a game. As many of us have seen, we have a lot of threads asking what technology they need to learn to create a game. They put other things on their blindside, thinking that technology alone can create the game. Then there are others, that have just a very basic idea about the game, and ask on how they can do that. They overlook the fact that, the details that they are missing to mention itself become the characteristics of the game if they ever get to complete it. So, what are the categories of work that one would need to concentrate on to create a game. I will not be detailing all the intricate categories, but broadly, I can say that there is technology and then there is content. How one actually puts it down (creation of design or proposal documents and such things) would go into a project management write up. Technology is just the tool and it is not the game itself - one should remeber that. More than half of the game lies in the content, and technology only drives it. But the tool or the driving engine should never be faulty. Thus, depending on the motive, one has to choose the technology platform on which the game would be developed. For target of PC computers, C/C++ or Java engines would suffice. For a web based browser game, PHP/JSP/AJAX or any of the other phletora of technology could be used. Of there would be other firmware and such things. One should also look into the other targets of PS2 and XBox. Once you decided on the target, choosing of technology becomes easier. Then, one should start building the engine depending on the type of game that one requires. Or one may even go and buy some game engine off the shelf, and only focus on content. The second, but the most important part of a game is its content. Gone are the days when the nifty programatics of a computer served as an entertainer - the blocky pixeled games were very primitive then. Now, people look for content in a game. Most of us Blizzard fans know of the mythical story woven for the Diablo series. The story of the Warcraft series, from the same series is much more intricate. The content is the key that makes or breaks the games of today. If one create a compelling enough content, more than one games can be spawned out of it. Now, again, the motive also plays a key role in the game. If one does it for passion alone, then the content would be only important if one is creating an adventure game or something on similar lines. But content does play an important role if one looks for some financial returns. The world on which the game is built needs to be more consistant and intricate (though not necessarily). Few options for ventures OK. This is a bit hard for me, because I myself am not established in the industry. But I can say that again there are few approaches. Have a proposal, get funding from a company - well that is about it. I know there are some who have tried it and succeeded and many who failed. I am not the best source to describe how one would approach it. Now, if you have the financial motive on a lower tone, and if you are starting out alone, you could use this approach. First of all, have a basic plan of the game or the world that you want to create and put it out on the internet. There should be people who could be interested in it, and you could start out as a open source groups. Lastly...One thing that I realize while writing this post is that I was safe by putting the word 'almost' in the title. There is quite a lot about making of the game, and may be we can discuss it more here. But I think, this write up does help in putting things in perspective for those who start out to create a game. Reading through my post for the second time, I belive I am a bit biased towards the content part of the work, but that I belive is the case because of the experience I have had trying to create a compelling one over the past few years. As I said earlier, I think we could discuss some more on the points I have indicated here, and some other things that I might have missed, so that, when some one comes knocking at the Xisto forums, we can lead them straight to this thread.

Yes, installing of XAMPP would be definetly easier. I am not sure though if it is production worthy. I am not sure - so people, correct me if I am wrong - but I thought I read it some where that XAMPP was intended for testing environment only and they recommend us not to use if for actual live server that would be accessed by the public.

With Google Adsense, the problem comes according to their TOS when one puts Adsense ads in Login pages, Thank you Pages, and obviously pages that are locked by some kind of user validation for reasaons that Google is not able to see where their ads are being placed. In view of that, placing the google adsense code in the overall template file may cause violation of TOS because, sometimes the phpBB forum engine may serve pages that are only login pages or such cases. I am not sure, but I this I belive can be checked up by using PHP - just have the adsense code with in a if clause where it checks that the served pages are not 'Login' or such similar pages. In any case, I would send a mail to Google elaborating on the issue, and most of the time they help with proper reply. They may send at first a general automated mail, but if you again reply to that, elaborating on your doubts, they usually get back to you in person - that is some one from the Google Team responds to you. And with that you would get a satisfactory and reliable idea of what can and cannot be done. Also, I would have a read on their optimization tips specific to the forums: Making AdSense fit your forum site Ofcourse, you could read their full set of Optimization Tips.

I had just kept away from that place for unknown reasons, and for unknown reasons I joined up there with the same name. I do not even know what I am supposed to do there. Feels a bit overwhelming.Oddly, I am curious about their business model. This cannot all be for free because I see that a lot of content is built into it.

Ah! That is where I think I am stuck. I do not know. I do not think I can actually give something to users in that kind. I can give information on quite many things, and I think that is what I am doing with WiseTome.com. I have another project rolled up under my sleeve that I hope to create good content in terms of forums. I do use Google Sitemaps. They show if my websites have problems that prevent spiders from crawling my site properly. Another nifty part of the Sitemaps is that it gives the set of keywords that the spider bots associates my site with - I think this is similar to the ones that are picked up by the Adsense bot, and I can actaully see if what I want comes into that set or not.

I know the article I am going to link here is a little out of context, but I wanted to show this to the community we have here. I am a usual haunt at the 'A List Apart' website, and I found this article. http://alistapart.com/article/magazinelayout It deals with automatic resizing functions when there are a set of images. All the images would be auto resized and it would be presented in a nifty magazine like layout. I have not used the scripts, but I found it quite intriguing.

Yes, it does make one feel better. I understand what you are saying. There is this drive in the place where I work to go abroad and work, and get loads of money back - so I know what you mean. Ha ha. I guess you are right when you look at it that way pyost.

Ha ha. That way I should be more happy when I get the money. Because I live in India and it is supposed to get converted to Indian Rupees, and from the conversion rates that I know of, it is much greater that what it is for US Dollars to Ausie.But it actually does not matter - one is after all getting the same value.

To be honest I do not actually remember when I started using Adsense. It was about the time when I started creating webpages, creating my webpresense - during which time, Adsense I think came into market, or atleast I think I came to know of. Now that you asked, I went and checked the earning history and my oldest earning dates back to the month of September 2004. I earned about 0.17$. Soon, I did put it up at various places (as I said in some earlier post) like blogs and such, and until May 2006, I had earned around 19.5$. In one particular month I had got as much as 8$ and in another one, as low as 0.04$. But this was all when I did not actually concentrate on Adsense revenue. I think of my Adsense earnings - my true start - somewhere around June 2006. This was the time when I focused on the Adsense I placed at my websites: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, http://www.blogcharm.com/splat/, and k.mahesh.bhat.googlepages.com. The other two sites are nominal, and I do not get much traffic. But for WiseTome, I am getting traffic, and that alone has made around 2 dollars per month for me, for the past three months. And do not worry about that 1$ per month. I would just worry about optimizing the ads - that is placing it at decent places and then forget about it altogether. Just go on putting content where your passion lies - that way, as you get more content and traffic, there will be a proportionate increase in revenue - or so I think. Anyway, could you show me your site where you have put up the Adsense ads?

I am sending it to you as a PM because I do not want to make it public yet, until I have a sizeable amount of work into it.

Nice sums through Adsense. Yeah right. Well, considering the effort I am putting into it, I am making quite good amounts. (About 2 dollars per month). I just have to get myself to sit down and put in more content there. I think, that should gradually scale up the earnings.

Oh man! That is real good. Initially I thought you had picked up the picture from somewhere and used it to create the signature/banner. That too is good, but I visited the Deviant Art page and I was taken aback. That is a real nice piece of work you have got there.On a side note, I have been building a realm, where I do some illustrations for it. Works like these would nicely fit in there. But sadly, I am not as good as you.

Well, I will not be updating that forum anymore. But I am working on a successor. And I hope that would do better.The next one, I hope, I would be able to include more illustrations.

I would have given Photoshop or Illustrator a try if they were not so costly products. I have now shifted to using Gimp, and I pretty much like it. Now, though, this forum banner is not new anymore, and is of not much use because I have shut down the forum few weeks back.

I am real frustrated now. I do not know what I can do because, this is what they gave me as a reply to my quesiton: That does not make sense at all to me. I just do not have an internet connection at home, then how am I supposed to even connect to the internet 'temporarily'. The sad thing is that they did not even mention the 'minimum' requirement on the packaging of Half Life 1: Anthology. They could have atleast done that. I do not know what to do with the four hundred something bucks yet worthless piece of plastic and paper. Oh yes. I am real frustrated now. But I still cannot get myself to get the pirated version.

I am not sure how I can get those inbound links either.For people to actually put inbound links to my website, they must first visit it. Now, if the search results are already showing my website in some 'nth' page, how do I even get visitors. Now, I belive there should be considerable number of visitors for few of them to be webmasters who would bookmark the page and to put those links somewhere. Hence, the big players will always remain on the top, and the small websites - even in the case where it has better and quality content, would remain in some obscure corner and it would never be discovered.

Ow! The support gave a reply that was something way off!My installation disk did have the steam.dll missing as I said earlier, and I got it by googling it, and then when I tried to play the game, it definetly told that I need to be connected to the internet to play the game.Hey Jeigh, do tell me if you remember how you got to play the game without internet connection.Anyway, I have also asked at their support forum.

Quite a bit unrelated - but I cannot help not quoting few lines from Hotel California: Anyway, yes, it is quite a beast, one that keeps morphing from one form to another - atleast the SEO is, and now it seems to be in the phase of PR. I think though, it can be tamed - we just need to do a bit of study on it - a persistant study.

Just a slight deviation from the discussion but I thought, this news is a worth it.http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ was not available for sign up for quite some time. I happened to go to the site for some reason, and I found that it was awailable for sign up. I signed up and I found it quite similar to ZohoWriter. Anyway, those of you who did not yet get an account there, can get it now.

I got the steam.dll from some googled page, and placed it in the directory. Then it worked, atleast it did not say that it could not load steam.dll. I did not realize that one needs internet connection to play the game. I do not have an internet connection at home - so that means I would not be able to play the game that I bought legally!

You could use the space provided at Xisto, but that would be about as much it would do. You would need to learn a bit of Web Designing to actually construct a website.Ofcourse, you could ask questions here and it would be answered most of the time if the question is elaborated properly.

I have reinstalled it a couple of times, so that can be ticked out of the question. Now that you said, I did search the Google for it, and there seems to be a steam.dll file for download. I am going to try it, but I am crossing my fingers.Should not Steam atleast give the basic DLLs like steam.dll when they are giving it in a package that someone would buy and install it the first time?Anyway, I am yet looking out.