Can Someone Please Lend A Hand? Php need direction

[zemon1 0]

Hello, im jeff H and im making a game called BigBusiness and i know what i want to do, i just need someone with game making experince. Im learning php, MySQL, HTML, and JavaScript. As i said i know what i want, i just have no direction. i hope to make a buch of online multiplayer games, and i think if someone helps me out and kinda walks me through this one then ill have a good idea what i need to do, what to start doing and all that. I have a website, that shows how far ive gotten.heres the link. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ paste that in the Adress bar.< im sure you knew that lol If i could just have some direction and help it would be awesome. heres what i posted about the game on another topic.BELOW IS ITMY knowlegeOk, i know absolutly very little, i know some javascript,and im reading up on JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, and if i need to i will be reading about HTML. I havent the slightest idea in "bleep" (dont know if swearing is against the rules...) of being able to script this without more reading, i dont know what script languages i need to know, i dont know about data bases. Can i make a website using javaScript?What i want to makeI know what i want to make. I want to make a game like the one at https://tycoononline.nu/ and like http://www.honouredsociety.org/, and games like that, its going to be about makeing a business.DetailsAt the beging you get said amount of cash, you choose a profession, law, farming, oil, crime, stuff of the nature. When you make a bussiness, or crime family you have shares or something else for the crime, but you cant automaticlly make a bussiness, you need to get investors and stuff like that, you never get to see your skills, but you get skills when you star. The game will be a real time game like in 5 min intervals. if you own a bussiness then you need employes, a warehouse, and other things. so you have your investors and you click on create bussiness, this brings a page with all avalible bussinesses. say woodcutters,paper maker, oil rig, refiner. or you can make a shop where you sell these things the game will be in 50 day periods. there will be rank systems much like in tycoononline, and stuff like that.Upon registration an email will be sent to your email account, you will get the username and password of your choice. and other regulation things of that nature, also a forum, and id liek to itegrate a chat at the bottom of the page like AIM. also the users would have a mmessage system, like in most games.Members will get charts, unlimited game play, no loading screens, and more things. Membership will cost like 5-10 dollars a round (round is 50 days). but im thinking about making just like regular, no restarting, and charging 5 bucks a month for mem. mem would let you get dif types of businesses. Non-members will be only alowed to log on 4 times per day, for 30 min ea time. NM wont get charts or anything to help them decide if its a good investment besides raw numbers and stuff.AstahostWhat comes with the Xisto. My book says you need PHP software, Apache software, and MySQL software, does that come with the Xisto services. What does 30 credits get you, i need like lamans terms defintion, im still trying to get ahold of all this. Once what im trying to learn is put into terms i understand, i learn it as fast as i can read it. in 1 day of reading my JavaScript book i can do alsorts of things.About MeIm 15 and would like to try my hand at programming an internet game. im pretty good with computers and im a pretty quick learner. so please email me at reconwannabeslilbro@yahoo.com or post here with your help. Also if anyone would like to help me make the game im cool with that. I really donmt know much of anything, like what i nee to do and stuff like that, please help me out.any suggetions would be great, also if you would play a game like this, please tell me your opinion and thing of tha nature.Also i hiope to sometime make it so you can buy money and get money, that would cost 10$ a month (that feature) and would come with members. Like say you pay 1 dollar and you get 250 bb <game currency and you can get your account money out, like say you have 250bb that would be like 50-75 centsThank you,Zemon1

[zemon1 0]

come on now people, i know you can do better than this...

[develCuy 0]

Hey, nice project :PThis is my suggestion for your project:1. Training: a. PHP and MySQL learning i. FORMS ii. Sessions iii. Database Management: INSERT UPDATE DELETE b. Javascript learning i. Move objects ii. Create Objects iii. AJAX(mootools) c. CSS2. Development a. PURE PHP+HTML Questions&Answers game like: Dungeon and Dragons b. PHP+MYSQL+HTML Questions&Answers, ADD: storing data c. PHP+MYSQL+HTML+CSS Questions&Answers, ADD: user is able to choose game layout d. PHP+MYSQL+HTML+CSS+AJAX: you are ready to build your game <_<Rome wasn't build in 1 day, You have to do thinks step by step.Have a good coding!

[Arbitrary 0]

Okay, I'll go through what you want one by one.

 

What comes with the Xisto. My book says you need PHP software, Apache software, and MySQL software, does that come with the Xisto services. What does 30 credits get you, i need like lamans terms defintion, im still trying to get ahold of all this. Once what im trying to learn is put into terms i understand, i learn it as fast as i can read it. in 1 day of reading my JavaScript book i can do alsorts of things.

 

Yes, Xisto has PHP, MySQL and Apache. Those are pretty much the basics for the type of site that you're trying to make. Well, the best way to learn is to try new things. Just have a goal in mind, do some research, implement what you've learned from your research, and you'll have learned a lot.

 

Can i make a website using javaScript?

Well, of course. But for what you seem to want to be making, I don't think so. It's far far better to use PHP in this case, especially since Xisto does support it and all.

 

The game will be a real time game like in 5 min intervals.

Realtime? Okay, AJAX, AJAX, AJAX. That's all I can so. Here are some relatively good tutorials for Ajax-learning: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/ajax_intro.asp and http://www.tizag.com/ajaxTutorial/ and http://www.xul.fr/en-xml-ajax.html . You could, I guess, just skip most of the "explanation" fluff in the beginning that marks every single tutorial.

 

Upon registration an email will be sent to your email account, you will get the username and password of your choice. and other regulation things of that nature, also a forum, and id liek to itegrate a chat at the bottom of the page like AIM. also the users would have a mmessage system, like in most games.

Okay, first things first, email. That's pretty easy nowadays, just used the ubiquitous PHPMailer (http://phpmailer.worxware.com/). They have examples on their site on how to use it, and their class basically takes care of all mail-related worries.

 

Next, the forum. It'd be rather pointless to go and make your own forum (why reinvent the wheel?) as you have lots of other things to work on anyways. phpBB (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) is heard of everywhere, but I've heard that the forum garners many security risks. (I'm not sure how the newest version's going though) There's a lot more out there; just Google. Then, of course, you should also think about the type of forum you want; do you want replies to be flat or threaded? Do you want themes? Image attachments? So on and so forth.

 

Then, the chat system. I'd also suggest that you find some previously implemented chat system, especially something that seems established. Implementing it yourself, is, once again, a not-so-great use of time (unless you think you could somehow learn something while doing it. But you'll learn plenty just by working out the AJAX you'll have to use to make the game work in real-time.) You could probably Google for the chat system; some recommendations: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, http://hot-things.net/, https://www.pcpin.com/, http://www.phpfreechat.net/, and http://www.x7chat.com/

 

Finally, the message system. That you'll be able to implement fine once you learn enough PHP and learn a bit more about databases. The same goes for the user login/registration system. Though I might warn you to read up about security--this article (http://www.securiteam.com/securityreviews/5DP0N1P76E.html) might help identify what you'd want to fight against. PHP's addslashes works nicely for this purpose. Read up on Javascript injections too (nexodyne.com/showthread.php?t=14736).

 

Members will get charts, unlimited game play, no loading screens, and more things. Membership will cost like 5-10 dollars a round (round is 50 days). but im thinking about making just like regular, no restarting, and charging 5 bucks a month for mem. mem would let you get dif types of businesses.

 

Non-members will be only alowed to log on 4 times per day, for 30 min ea time. NM wont get charts or anything to help them decide if its a good investment besides raw numbers and stuff.

 

You know, you'd probably want to make it free for unlimited access at first. It won't be the easiest thing in the world to actually get people to come, and not many will want to pay five to ten dollars for some game they've never tried before. At least suck them in and make them addicted before charging the money. They might not get into the game with all the restrictions you've placed on non-members, and they probably won't even feel that there's something good to get out of it.

 

Oh, wait. Now you'd need something really secure to handle credit-card style payments. Umm...I'd seriously say don't touch this yourself until you're really experienced with PHP. You don't want a bunch of security holes that you'll have to patch up later. Google for more info.

 

iii. Database Management: INSERT UPDATE DELETE

Ack. SQL statements are the bane of my existence, I swear.

 

You might want to pick up some sort of PHP framework for this site of yours. It would be very very helpful to keep things organized as you start so that you won't find yourself with spaghetti code like I did at first. Try CakePHP (cakephp.org), it makes a lot of this database trouble waaaay easier. I'd still suggest you learn about SQL statements and not just entirely depend on CakePHP, but it'll be very helpful once you're ready to make something complicated.

 

CakePHP takes advantage of the Model-Controller-View. Basically there's a Model that accesses the database, a controller that has most of the business logic, and a view that displays the data. It also has a really nice security component called sanitize. Sanitize can check for alphanumeric characters only, prepare it for sql statements with PHP's addslashes and so on.

 

CakePHP also has a great scaffolder; it gives you functions such as add, view, delete and edit for every single database. You can always read more about it if you Google "cakephp scaffolding". Then there's also Cake's bake.php. Bake basically generates the PHP code behind the add, view, delete and edit functions and lets you edit them for more functionality. That's a good part of a project done.

 

Before I found Cake, my PHP code was a mess (of course, that was also the first time I'd coded a major project). With Cake's forced structure, it was a lot neater. If you do get around to using CakePHP and need help, you can always ask me. Though there's always the IRC channel and Google Groups, both of which are very helpful.

 

Anyways, good luck in your endeavors. :-D

Edited July 7, 2007 by Arbitrary (see edit history)

[zemon1 0]

Thanks to all who have posted above, just trying to get it back out there