Lilith

OK, so someday, I hope to have my game finished enough to integrate facebook. But I do believe that Karlos94 has brought some interesting reads to the table. At least interesting as to what they can do for our games. The dawn of social networking has come and gone, and its time we accept that! It is now in full swing and is defining how our clients and future clients interact. Dont believe me? if you have kids, chk their facebook and myspace, want to know what parties and other social events are happening? give it a look, I realize that some of us might be anti social nerds, but our customers aren't always, social gaming is considered cool by the next generation. Karlos94 thanks for the info to help those of us here, who are / are not socially challenged, and the links to at least try and figure it out. BC I know I plan my weekends after looking at facebook, it would be great to have my friends and their friends and their third degree friends spam my game all over the net. WOOTS for free advertising!

I wish all the flash developers would speak up! I think that a lot of people would be interested in learning what its about, what it entails ect ect. Ive toyed with flash a bit, but I get confused with php, so that was a no go. A_B has a valid point, if that section is going to be empty, its not gunna happen, so speak up you guys! I want to see what you can share about flash!

OK, so my hosting provider decided to suck all the time, and ive changed providers. When changing providers, I was able to import the tables, but was not able to name them the same or use the same pass words. What file in the mccodes engine need to be changed to it can connect to the new database?

Yeah, so what about them members who don't code in PHP, don't code at all, or have other skills that may be useful. This is a game development forum, not a coder's forum, and a lot of members tend to forget that. Hell, seems like most game owners forget or don't know how to develop a game, just write some coding down, call it a game, the players will never know. (sarcasm) How you gonna test that? (rhetorical question, dont answer)

I love chrome, it raely crashes on me, so I stick to what works, however, I believe that adding opera to the list of must be compatible with for designers is a good idea, (not 100% for sure) I think that most smart phones use Opera or something very similar .... I like the idea of having people so addicted to my game that they play from their phones.

Gots to agree with Alain here. lots of people are going for heavy image loads on their sites (including me, but im an artist, I cant help it) I think that given your background in coding, this would be an excellent opportunity for you to show us whats possible without gfx programs. Html and CSS for layout should speed up the game and reduce server load over loading tons of images. It will be interesting what you come up with.

Would something like this deter a player from typing in the URL directly? Or will the htaccess file just redirect them to where they want to go?

I think that you will find many people wanting to hire you for your design services. Your work is clean, color is well balanced, proportion of your characters is well done, (and despite it being illustration) I like it when I don't like illustration, but your technical grade gets an A+. I can see a lot of people coming to you for your work. In fair warning as you are new to this forum, there are a lot of "kids" on here that make a lot of promises they can't keep. Be watchful of them in your business dealings, as I would hate to see someone as talented as yourself go away. The Mob theme is quite popular, but Id love to see you go away from "the already been done" and show what originality you have as well.

I have to go with Alain here, except that I have to write all the descriptions into excel, this is absolutely the way to go. Thanks Alain! Sim, if you are interested in writing these descriptions, id be willing to strike up a deal with you via private mail. Consider this position filled by Microsoft.

can you insert from an ecell spreadsheet? I really dont want to take the time to type it all out again .... and theres a considerable amount of data to be typed in. I am interested in this process as well, but planned on making a data entry position in the staff acess just for this purpose, so the data person wouldnt have full acess to staff panell. This seems a whole lot easier than NDAs ect.

I am looking for someone who will be willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement and fax/scan it back to my office along with photo ID. Qualifications: 1. Must be over 18 years of age. (my local NDA laws require this, or a parent or guardian must be willing to co-sign.) 2. Must be able to read an excel spreadsheet 3. Must be able to Copy information accurately and place it in the correct places within the mccodes staff panel. 4. Applicant must have a verified pay-pal account to receive payment. a portion of this job will be creating descriptions for items, so creativity and originality is a must. The chosen applicant will be investing aprox 10 hours to this project. additional work may be available if favorable output is seen. Job pays $100 USD upon satisfactory completion of the project. Deadline will be 5 days after being notified you are the chosen applicant and can begin work. Failure to meet the deadline or complete the job will result in non-payment. IF you are interested, please post here with why you want this job, what skills you have, and why I should hire you. I reserve the right to not choose an applicant from this post.

Thats what Ive done, but this thread isnt about my game, I was aiming more at how to theme your item types while creating content for a game, and there is some great information so far. All to often (an im guilty on my first game) Developers jump in without a plan of what they are going to make for a game. Items get overlooked till near last, when they should be considered right after defining what kind of game you are going to build (IMO). Items play to big a part in the game not to be developed at early stage. Any other tips or useful information on keeping the number of items/ item types adequate without going overkill?

So, even with the current gaming trend of collecting every possible remote item you can, "collectibles" is on the frowned upon list? Or would it's use be just collectible, like i have a rare item and you don't. Item Types I thought of are: Armor ( can be grouped by the location you equip it to if you have that option): items that help defense in battle Weapons (can be broken into categories if your game has lots of weapons or merits it): Items that help offensively in battle tools: Items needed for quests, completing certain tasks, ect. Food: items that increase energy, health, vitality ect. Medical: Things that heal health, hit points, life, whatever. Collectibles: Things to show off to your friends. Edit: the game I work on is actually set in a completely fictional world, with little resemblance of earth, and its not technologically advanced as all items actually have to be created by the players via gathering items and gaining the skills to craft them into something usable, even food has to be cooked. Medieval was only a general reference to get people thinking in a comfortable setting. I like the idea that if you are setting your game in an actual time period that researching it as discussed by Aderik is a good idea.

Thanks guys, Ive learned a lot through you and the places you lead me to in Google!

I was just trying to be helpful by providing what I have experienced in this area, I didn't mean to make it sound like DJK was the only option, just the only one I have direct knowings of.

well, I would sugest going to w3schools and learning about SQl and Php so you can review the files and figure out what makes a persona n admin as well as learn how to edit the SQL Database to make yourself an admin.

I was hoping more for opinions and why such item types are useful, kinda boost up the content and theme writing part of this thread rather than looking for ideas. I do hope Dave that with my given and demonstrated art skills, as well as my biggest beef on MWG being "borrowed" artwork for games, that your stealing game art was a general information statement for all viewers. Besides, Oblivion's graphics kinda sucked their saving grace was content, and COD and MWII defiantly lend themselves toward a military type game, I married the military, im not taking into my fantasy world lmao, so I wont be using their gfx. ;)

While developing a game, I have found Items to be the largest pain in e letter word! I want to stick with a themed feel to the game, and some things fit, others just dont belong there. Say if I was to make a medieval game, I sure wouldn't include an AK or an AR15. Then there are item types ... is there a standard list of item types that apply no matter the theme?

I don't mean to be an ass Paul, but if you spoke in terms I could understand, I might consider your way of doing this. Otherwise, I don't even know what you are talking about, and that lends your "you should do it this way argument" no weight.

I had DJK do my site, he completed the task, secured additional files (not just the ones original to mccodes) and if any bugs were caused by the security, he fixed them as we found them. (mostly display of html due to my bad coding skills, and his being sick while securing my site). He did this for well within your budget. You should hit him up, Ive not had a single breach of security sense.

This thread is for assisting / deciding if there will be some sort of assistance to noobies. However, if 90% of the noobies want to argue and post on everything but contribute verry little, I can see why the mods are hesitant to put some effort into helping them out. To be a good Noobie: 1. want to learn, and show it. You can show this by intelligently asking questions that are related directly to the mechanics of the topic. 2. make some kind of progress. 3. refrain from making useless posts and comments. 4. GOOGLE THINGS! Try and learn something on your own, if you are still stuck, then ask, but explain what you have already found out .... you will be so much further ahead. 5. Show some respect. There are a lot of people here who know their business! (And a lot who don't) Dont expect to be able to tell them apart right off. 6. Don't claim things that are untrue. When a person is new to the community, they have no idea what skills the others have, so don't try and measure your abilities as good or bad until you know where you sit on the abilities scales, this usualy takes 6 months to a year. (and no, there is no thread where you can just look it up.)

the more you tell me, the more confused I get .... header('Location: index.php'); whats that do? just send them to that file ... how and when? ill also look up meta refresh to see if it does that ... cus from what I understand of all this is that I set the session, if I have a meta refresh, after a set time, the page refreshes automatically and it sends the user to loggedin.php (or whatever file I put there) ... that about the gist of it?

They are beautiful ... especial considering that you only used spheres with texture, I mean, no high detail modeling, no displacement maps, no bump maps .... yet more reasons to to be excited about sharing intell on a program.

Depends on what you want, size, when you want them, and what you want put in the donator icons. Can you describe what you want better?

I am still green with envy over your render times! But look out ... Im getting Modo soon :P