onion2k wrote:
The list of things you mention there are not game specific. They feature on every website I've written in PHP. As I said before, PHP games are just websites with a specific theme like any other.
Character generation. Inventory storage. A*Star best path search algorithm. Combat sequences. Game balance issues.
These things are not done in any ecommerce app, any application, and certainly not a website with a theme.
You are seriously insulting and underestimating a growing field that I've spent 3 years enjoying, and you have no experience to draw from when making your claim. Ron Harwood, the original creator is giving a presentation at an upcoming php conference on php gaming. If it was so common and so simple, why give a presentation on it?
I seriously suggest you look into any of the dozen games that are out there before (yet again) trivializing php games as "a website theme". Its nothing of the sort.
onion2k wrote:
If you get down to the raw code you'll find 99% of sites are all the same:
1. Log in stuff.
2. Content management stuff.
3. Admin stuff.
4. Data manipulation stuff.
To a degree, I will agree that there are core items that are the same - thats the very point I made in my last post. *YOU* said "There's practically no commonality between the way various games work", which was completely inaccurate, and now you've reversed course and said 99% have commonality. Make up your mind.
In truth, 99% is hardly accurate. Over 1/3rd of the BNT codebase is game-specific code, dealing with issues that a normal website would never touch. How to traverse a space in the best path possible. How to handle planetary combat. How to handle player-to-player combat and interactions. These are not common functions. They are true game programming issues, common to most games - in any programming language.
onion2k wrote:Whether it's an ecommerce app or an RPG the principles are exactly the same.
Show me one ecommerce app using an A*star algorithm.
Seriously, your first post was ignorant of the php gaming scene, and this post is just flippant. *LOOK* at the code before commenting further about how 'trivial' it is. 40,000 lines of code is not a website theme.
Thats why there is a
Book on PHP game programming. Its not just a website theme. Its complex, its unique, and it has specific challenges that you have to address.
The original poster wanted to know how to progam php games. You had no experience doing so, and your advice was "work on something else first". I've got three years experience with the field, there are books written on the topic, there are presentations being given at conferences, and there are whole communities built around improving the games. Lets focus on helping the original poster instead of belittling the very genre he is interested in - a genre that is growing, interesting, uncommon, and challenging.