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New game

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:07 am
by clanger165
hi, apologies if this is the wrong forum.

Im just begining to desgin an online webbased game, kind of similar to risk but more advanced.

Do you have any tips on how to begin the design process,

so far, ive put how the game will work on paper, i was thinking of doing the database first.

what do you advise? I new to PHP and have mysql.




Thanks in advance.

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:41 am
by s.dot
This is how I do it.. not sure if many developers do it the same way.

I get my HTML & CSS done... or as close to done as I can without programming.
Then I do the PHP, and database when the PHP calls for it.

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 6:38 am
by clanger165
ok, is this the preferred way then?

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 10:18 am
by Sh1fty
i do it that way too. tried working the other way, i didn't like it.

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 12:38 pm
by Ollie Saunders
hi, apologies if this is the wrong forum.
I'd say this should be in theory and design.

Here's how I work:
  • Comprehensive project specification. This should be high level, don't go into detail but cover all the functionality you are going to deliever.
  • Interface designs (brief sketches) of every screen in the application.
  • Write Database structure
  • Test database structure. Does SQL accept the code? Do foreign key cascades/restricts/set-null etc. work?
  • Create an prototype page using HTML/CSS (one of the ones you have done an interface design of)
  • Start writing PHP, this includes HTML, add any CSS as and when you need it

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 12:53 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Yes I do templates last. If you do the templates first you end up hacking away at things to make them work with the template you designed. Getting a suitable data model set up to build a template around seems much more sensible. I spend a lot of time optimzing things at the backend before I ever get started on the template.

That said, I'll usually know roughly where I'm headed with my page layout.