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[56K WARN] Game developement in php!

Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 2:00 pm
by Flamie
well I started doing some PHP lately, gotta admit its a great language, very powerful!
But as I realised how awesome it was, being a game developer myself, I decided to take a stab at making a PHP game. So I was browsing thru multiple websites and all I saw were mostly chap text based PHP games that could be done pretty shortly. And I thought to myself that it wasnt good enough, it gave PHP a "bad reputation" if you see what I mean. So I designed a simple concept in my head that has went a LONG way.
There is no easy way to explain it, so I'm just going to post some screenshots of what I have so far. I understand the graphics may not the be the best you've seen, but its a game an artist, a musician and myself are doing in our little free time voluntarly.
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This one is in a PvE battle against 2 rats, note that the background image of the battle is a temporary one that's been drawn to test on while the real background images are being done :)
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and to give you guys an idea of the scale of the project heres the world map (image not printed here due to size):
http://www.laene.nl/Marc/worms/images/maps/WormsMap.PNG

So what I'd like to know is, what do you guys think of fully graphical php games, I personaly think/hope they're the future of the PHP gaming, as they show just how powerful PHP can actually be. Has anyone ever attempted something like that? if so how far did you get and share you experience!
Regards,
Marc

Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 2:31 pm
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
So I was browsing thru multiple websites and all I saw were mostly chap text based PHP games that could be done pretty shortly. And I thought to myself that it wasnt good enough, it gave PHP a "bad reputation" if you see what I mean.
I thoroughly dislike seeing this view but it's unfortunately common... If you wanted to design a PHP text-based game which has enough gameplay to satisfy a loyal player base then you can easily expect it to take months. Some classics have been years in the making. Taking a complete example, the open source game Blacknova Traders is a work that would require a long long time to get through development if you started from scratch. It's one of the early PHP efforts (being re-developed as we speak by Roja) which stand out as a very involving space strat. I remember playing around with sloccount (linux concole app for counting source code lines) and its results for a game like BNT are pretty astounding. Text based games do not require graphics (mostly we don't want them either!) but that does not make them either "chap" or "could be done very shortly". Try creating a balanced player pleasing game of this type and you'll have some challenging fun...:).
So what I'd like to know is, what do you guys think of fully graphical php games, I personaly think/hope they're the future of the PHP gaming, as they show just how powerful PHP can actually be. Has anyone ever attempted something like that? if so how far did you get and share you experience!
Would be interested in seeing a prototype implementation... I can't think of any PHP efforts off hand in the same style.

Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 3:04 pm
by Flamie
Thanks for your input!
First of all I totally agree with you, some text-based PHP games are extremely awesome, and very well thought.
I totally agree with you its not the "text" part of a game that doesnt make it good, but I was referring to some games that dont require any kind of "skill" in the game, like very basic text based game. I'm really sorry if I gave the impression of bashing all text based games, english isnt my native language so I might be misunderstood sometimes :)
But I totally agree with you, games that have well thought gameplay and a certain level of challenge wether they're text or not are really good!
I will be looking at that game you linked me to later tonight as I'm currently a little busy, and I'll surely come back here and let you know what I think of it:)
As for a working prototype, it'd be my pleasure to show the current version of the game to anyone that is intrested, simply add me on my MSN messenger (please_answer_fast@hotmail.com) and I can give you a little preview :).

As for the "code side" implementation of the game, being a C++ game programmer, I designed the code in the same manner (game loop, level loop, and a whole lot of classes such as player class, enemy classes with subclasses, city classes etc etc). I guess the biggest difference would be server/client interaction, as in on the client side, there is no concept of sprites or anything you receive an image, click somewhere, the coordinates are sent back to the server and then on the server side the next image is generated :)
As I said its a little hard to explain, but showing you would make it a lot more clear I think!

Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 3:07 pm
by TheMoose
Would be interesting to see a more interactive version maybe using AJAX? Although that'd be fairly heavy on the frontend, would be an interesting challenge to see how efficient you can make the front and back end to work for a more client friendly GUI.

IMO, graphics don't make the game fun. As long as the graphics flow with the theme of the game, then just about anything will do for me.

Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 3:15 pm
by Flamie
There will be some AJAX implementation but not a lot, the game currently runs very fast and smoothly which I think is pretty good.
Again, I agree graphics dont make the game more fun, its all about gameplay design. But its just an attempt at "something different" you know, it started as me trying to make as few "forms" as possible, I never expected it to turn out fully graphical, but its just the way it turned :lol:

Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 4:14 pm
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
Would be interesting to see a more interactive version maybe using AJAX? Although that'd be fairly heavy on the frontend, would be an interesting challenge to see how efficient you can make the front and back end to work for a more client friendly GUI.
There's a new PHP game project called Protoshell (a text based cyberpunk RPG) that I'm starting working on under the lead of Moocats - looks set to use AJAX at least in principle and a little http streaming (the hyped up COMET idea if you can't bear using anything but hype-speek). Open source project, but only entering the planning stage. AJAX poses a new set of problems, more than the issues it can solve. Accessibility is one, security another, and COMET is not scaleable IMO. What was your AJAX library of choice? It was suggested we use Java, but where's the challenge in that? ;)
Again, I agree graphics dont make the game more fun, its all about gameplay design. But its just an attempt at "something different" you know, it started as me trying to make as few "forms" as possible, I never expected it to turn out fully graphical, but its just the way it turned Laughing
I think its different considering its coded in PHP, and presumably needs no 3rd party plugins (an achilles heel for similar games requiring flash and worse, X3D). If you've pulled it off well, I hope it gets some well deserved kudos and a following.

Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 8:07 pm
by Flamie
there is only 1 thing in flash and that is a background invisible frame that streams the music corresponding to the area.
The reason I choosed flash for that is because its safest when it came to "embeded music" on cross browsers. Using <embed> with firefox requires certain settings of quicktime and I dont think most people actually have it set this way.
But all the rest of the game is 100% php and MySQL.
As for AJAX, I'm gonna be writing a little part of the game in AJAX when it coems to being able to chat with other players, it would look nice (imo) if people have to refresh all the time to see new message.
If you've pulled it off well, I hope it gets some well deserved kudos and a following.
Everyone who's tried it so far was pretty impressed, I really hope it works out pretty well, it would suck pretty bad if I coded so many lines (currently 10k) all for nothing :(
But thanks for the encouragement, it means a lot!

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 10:53 pm
by Flamie
*revival time*
I thought I'd update this topic to say a LOT has been made on the game since I last talked about it, I now have a group of testers testing the game as I finish the developement of the game.
Got a new domain to go with it:
http://www.wormsrenegade.com (the screenshots are all outdated, I should put up some news ones ;p)
But yeah, if you're intrested in trying it out register on the forums (you'll need an account) and let me know either here, or on the game's forums.