a_bertrand

Well... I started a long long time ago... I was about 12 (now I'm 37)... It was on a mighty Sharp MZ-700 Took 3-5 min to load Basic... and I played I don't know how many hours with BASIC on it, creating stupid "programs". Then I got around 14-15Y a first PC, with floppy (no HD) and a monochrome screen. Again playing with BASIC. When I got a couple of years after an HD I started with Borland C (Turbo C). Then when I got the first windows (3.0) it was already an huge improvement, and later on switched to VB. At this point I learned also Excel Macros, and later started to develop web application in C and VB. I moved a couple of years in Italy where I used Java, PL / SQL, and Python, moved back to Switzerland and started to use PHP, IDL, and other oddies and finally since a couple of years I'm working not exclusively but nearly with C# (client, server, web, and even phone devel). For the game development, I always played a bit with some stuff, but never released anything until I played a game (KoL) and though "I'm sure something better can be created" and then started to work on my NEaB game. This was like nearly 6 years ago now.

Hi guys, as some of you knows, I'm working on a new game myself since May of this year. The game name is NebulaRider and will be more or less a game like EvE online but in 2D, run within your browser and mostly free (premium membership will exists). To develop it I choose to use Silverlight which is not that common for game development so far even if I started to see some great development going with it. What Silverlight is in 2 words? Basically a flash replacement written by Microsoft. Yet instead of having some crappy language (ActionScript for flash), Microsoft decided to use their own .NET technology which allows you to code in VB.NET, C# or any other .NET language (yes even IronPython). So you have true OO languages, and great tools to develop an not some baby toy editor. On the other side, Silvelright is not as widly installed as flash, but for me it is not really an issue. If people accept to download clients to play a game, why shouldn't they install Silverlight? So since May I develop this game (with initially some help from some friend which didn't worked that well) and it is slowly growing and getting more and more features. My wish is to have it ready to be played (but of course never really finished) by the end of the year. The current home page is mainly a place holder and will be replaced with a better one before the beta phase, and the current live game is certainly not the final version, more a tech demo than anything else. So far I'm happy by how it is going, even if I faced some difficulties, like how do I store the game state, how do I avoid (at least partially) cheating, how do I make the players see each others and interact (chat), etc... so if you are interested in some areas please tell me what, and I will try on my side to keep you informed about how it is going.

Well, video editing should normally be done on a uncompressed stream, which means a lot of disk usage. Also, when you publish, the PC will need to compress the video which requires both a fast disk and a good CPU. For all that laptops are not very good and a desktop machine will be both cheaper and more adequate to the job. If you really need a laptop then go for a fast CPU and a fast and big hard drive... But then, 400£ is a bit small on budget. So you will need some compromise... either you will have a cheap laptop which will do the job (but slowly) and can't work on big video, or you will need to go for a desktop and even maybe build it yourself to pay like 1/2 of the price of pre-made PC.

Send over the image and I will add the shadows.

Honestly I don't find those much nicer and never had myself any problem with an url with parameters. Stick with the old query string and work on something more important that's my opinion.

Not as far as I'm aware.

Indeed Alexa ranks are completely biased. The problem is that it counts visitors of web site which use their toolbar. Now how many true users you know which use their toolbar? I know nobody. So what happen? If you install their toolbar and visit your site, your rank will jump, as easy as that.

- Home page request a plugin which is not even recognized by Firefox... don't even want to know what it is but it doesn't give a good first impression - Register go to an IP and have a different look - Register ask to login again... annoying - In game layout is way too large and scrolling horizontally is something you should avoid. - Beside that it seems yet another McCode game... where you mix many gender without having a clean / good / clear story line (Mafia? Alien?) - Overall not the kind of game I would play. Anyhow for those which want to try, I created a demo account: username: demo password: demo

If you develop a game which runs heavily on the browser side for example with Flash, Java or Silverlight, you risk to have some smart pants which use the well known "Cheat Engine". Cheat engine is a small but yet powerful little application which let you scan the memory of a running program. So let's say at some point you have 1000 gold, then a bit later 900, you can scan first for 1000, then change the value and ask for a rescan, and Cheat Engine will then show all the addresses which match your searches. So far it wouldn't be an issue, but Cheat engine allows to change values on the fly, that means somebody could then (once he/she found the correct address) change the value and put more or less whatever he/she want. If your game runs via PHP and doesn't do much on the browser side, then you don't risk anything. On the other side, if you use a flash, javascript, or any other client side soft, then you risk that your variables will be touched. If you double check later on if a given action is possible, then it is again not an issue, but sometimes it is nearly impossible to do so. So how could you prevent such situation? Well, I developed a small Silverlight application which use a self defined class called "CheckedDouble". This class contains not only the double value which is what interest us, but as well an "hidden" second value which will contain a copy of the value... with a little twist. This allows to store the same value but doesn't show it to tools like "Cheat Engine". Also this class offers a little tool which allows to check if somebody cheated or not. The smartest way to use this info is to contact the server back and flag this user as cheater and don't show the info directly to the user, such that you can delete his/her account without showing how you did it. Full sources can be found here: http://base.nowhere-else.org/temp/AntiCheatTest.zip

Well, you can introduce a story in a lot of different ways, like discussions with somebody which give you tasks etc...

Never saw any other products (at the fraction of the cost) which are that good with the wysiwyg...

Ok made the little game as standalone thing. The XAP (the Silverlight application which is basically a ZIP) is 28Kb... so you see it is also very small. The whole zip (which contains photoshop created balls instead of the art I made for my game) is 161Kb: http://base.nowhere-else.org/temp/SlideBlocks.zip Feel free to dig inside, and if you have questions just drop them here, I will then try to answer them. The code is complete (for this mini game) and does all what you could expect from such game beside gaining back time from destroyed blocks. However it is not that hard to implement, so if you want do it ;-)

Flash is a lot more common so far, and also more supported on linux or others, but simply it's horrible to program with. The language (Action Script) is a Javascript like and... is as bad as Javascript. I mean JS is good for little things but certainly not to create something complex. Plus the development tools (editor / debugger) inside Flash are really poor. Finally Flash is not free. Java is a good language, and offers a good library of tools. However to develop applications like I would like you must develop something called an applet. Sadly applet development offers little stability (crash a lot), plus Java comes in so many version that people hardly have the right version you would need. Java is also not very good with 2D / vectorial and such stuff. Even resizing the applet within the browser window is not something that trivial and doesn't work all the time. Silverlight is a Microsoft development based on C# and is a subset of their latest GUI API => WPF (using on vista and 7 but can be used on xp too). C# is a true OO (like Java and unlike action script), you can get all the tools to develop your application for free, tons of documentation, and great support for vectorial, 2D and animations. Yet the main drawbacks are fewer people use it and on linux is doesn't work that well currently. For me, Linux is anyhow a little market which would make nearly no difference, and running on Mac and Windows offers 90 or more market share... which should be enough. You get also all the tools you would need included in Visual Studio, from a great code editor, a perfect debugger, and having call backs to the server (for example for the multi user) is really a piece of cake. BTW Who would be interested to get the source of this mini game? If some of you are interested, I could extract them and make just a little project for it such that you can see how it works.

If your "programing" is HTML / CSS, first of all, I may not fully agree on the term programming. However yes Dreamweaver is quiet helpful, as it allows to edit a website and produce high quality HTML / CSS and yet work most of the time in WYSIWYG mode. So yet it helps to understand HTML / CSS and learn new tricks.

Well, I tested Silverlight a couple of years ago (just when Microsoft was releasing version 2), then I stopped using it. Now I started again at the beginning of the year something like in April or so from then on till now. Silverlight is not really hard to master, if you know C# and understand the XAML concept.

Thanks, it shows a bit of what will be the full game at the end ;) or at least the quality I'm pointing at.

They don't come back because as we told you, your game doesn't explain anything, no story, nothing. And yet, it is very similar to any other McCode game (even if a lot of work shows that you have something a bit different). So if you want to keep players you really need to shine once you log in.

As part of the game I'm working on, I developed a mini game which is certainly nothing new as concept (you will find a lot of those on internet) however think that it will be used inside the game while you will do some harvesting of resource (that's the reason why the time allowed is very short). Also later on, you will be able to use skill points to increase this timer. http://base.nowhere-else.org/temp/mini1 Art and code is all self made. To test it, you need Silverlight 3 or more. If you wonder why the thing is so big (to load), well simply it's the whole game where I show only this part... Time to code and create the art: 1 day.

it's a 2D space action trader RPG. Not PHP, not JS, not HTML, no Flash nor Java yet it runs inside your browser and is like a standalone game...

Profession and unique for 70$ ? Sorry can't be... you should either decrease your wish (and accept amateur or non unique) or increase your budget.

You are never a good coder. Or this is my own opinion. I started with BASIC like 25 years ago (now I'm 37), and I still learn every days (or nearly). Of course I don't develop with BASIC anymore and my softs are a tiny bit more complex than 25 years ago... Also, as I'm currently developing a new game (which I started in May), and it is not the first game of mine, I can tell you that all takes time. Specially if you are alone or nearly. Doing art, story, engine, balancing and then later on admin and marketing is not a small job :rolleyes:

Well, you should first ask yourself why you want to have one... As beside there is tons of such games (and nearly all are not good at all), owning a game is not a piece of cake. So you should first start with the ideas: - What will offer your game that isn't there already? - What's the story you will provide (no story? then stop as it will not be fun) - What are you skills? No skills? Then learn before expecting to create a game. - What's you budget? Even if you code the engine yourself, the hosting will cost you, so you MUST have a budget. Once you have set those questions, you can then decide if one of the pre-existing engine (McCode is not a good choice) will fit your needs, if not then you must code the game yourself. Overall, if you decide to still do something, think that without having to learn how to code or the technology itself, you must invest like 1 year before you really have your game. Sure you can install a script and then change some templates, but that will not work as you will hardly attract more than a coupe of hundred users, and this will not allow your game to survive very long. Finally, if your game is online, be prepared to face all sorts of attacks, kids love to try to "exploit" / "hack" game web sites, so you must be pretty sure about your code otherwise it will be ruined in less time you took to read this. Now if you are still convinced that you have something unique in mind, then go forward, those were just warning about all the pit holes on the road in front ;)

Or drop down lists...

The design is clean and good, but very few games in the list, and empty forums. Also your voting site doesn't offer much security against bots and finally the page contests points to an error page... There is also a problem about your review: you don't give a link to the game site... why so? However I wish you good luck with this project!

Thanks for the ideas: - A notepad would involve little to nothing to. - A browser (if we use the pre-made component) is also really not difficult. - A calculator is oddly enough quiet complex as you must implement some sort of "stack" due to the precedence of operators and such. - Games are lot more work and could take weeks.