a_bertrand

Re: NEAB engine FREE edition Well when you set it up correctly it does work. That doesn't mean there is a real storry as it's not the case. But you can start writing your own.

Re: Error!! I believe you have a wrong configuration or didn't created correctly the DB tables. Try to give some more info, like what did you wrote in the config file and what's your actual MySQL setup (DB name, username / password set etc) so that I could check if you wrote something wrong.

Re: MOD Contest Well you can either upload it somewhere and then put the link here or send it to me and I will upload it for you on the engine website.

Re: Charts, graphs or other data display Yes I do using the PHP / GD functions. Plotting lines / text / rectangles for example to draw line graphs or bar graphs.

Re: NEAB Demo Site Reselling your own version is fine, that means, if you buy a copy and then sell the copy and don't use it anymore it's not a problem for me. The problem rise when somebody buy one copy and start resell multiple copies of the engine. I don't need to ask any lawyer (beside I already did it), it's simply fall under copyright simple issues here. And breaking the "upgrade" contract doesn't mean you don't have troubles with copyright issues. Now, for the current problem I had, the person bought a "micro" version, which is a reduced version of the mini. And have a version 1.0 not a 2.0, which is way not the same, so, if you purchase a copy to him (he was selling at 170$ something he bought 50$ from me), you will first loose money, and you will be illegal. BTW Breaking the contract doesn't mean you will not have legal issues with me, it simply means you will not get any free upgrades... and just to let you know, I will also not sell anymore software to this person too.

Re: NEAB Demo Site Maybe you do not read my answer... Anyhow I'm writing it back: miniNEAB is NOT the same as the full game I'm running myself, this is a quick list of features which are not yet in the miniNEAB: - Pets - Player vs player battles - All mini games (mine concessions, grave cleaning game, connecting door, Enigmatus games etc..) - Java 2D / 2.5D engine - Player managed islands - Player home pages - Player blog - Special game client Things which are in the miniNEAB which are NOT in the main game: - Better organized code - Commented code - Code documentation - Modular design (let you create new location types without the need to modify the administration tools) Things which will come in a near future: - Template system which will let you change the look & fell of the game without modifying the code. Now, some of those features can be added easily, some others are more problematic. For example the Java client can be added, BUT giving the possibility for the players to see each others requires to run a special server / software running on your server. This means it will work only for those which run their site on a VPS or a dedicated server. Pets, PvP and some of the mini games should be not a big deal to port to the miniNEAB. As I said, if an owner of the mini version ask for some of the "missing" feature, I'm willing to discuss about adding them, even for free. As and example of this, I added 2 new locations FOR FREE in the mini package, after one of my customer purchased the engine. BTW I'm not selling a "install and run a game" package. It's a RPG ENGINE, which means, you will have to create your story / maps / monsters and this requires a lot of time. So, if you expect to spend the 200$ and be able to accept players tomorrow, maybe you should check for something else. I don't sell my own quests / maps, as it would be a non sense for me to replicate the exact content of my game. Finally, all the upgrades are free, which means, if you buy a miniNEAB you will be able to download all the newer versions of it for free (unless you break the contract like the guy which was wanting to sell my engine as it's own). Now if I still didn't answered one or more questions let me know.

Re: NEAB Demo Site It's not buggy (at least as far as I know), and it's out there. So just try the demo, and check if it meet your requirements. You can also try the NEAB Explorer version, you will see how the code is organized and how the engine works.

Re: NEAB Demo Site Well this bug has been introduced in version 2.0 due to the fact I re-organized completely the directory structure. In version 1.0, it was a flat structure more or less (like it is in my own game), and in version 2.0 every feature is in it's own directory in order to let you search the code, and add new features without the need to modify other pieces. Now on the down side, this introduced bugs, and if nobody complain or report them, I simply cannot spot them. However I'm here to fix anything reported as fast as possible. For the difference between my own game and the game engine: indeed there is a huge difference, also due to the fact some pieces of code cannot be run unless you have a dedicated server, and this is why I do not provide them in the miniNEAB. Also in the real game, nearly every player can create quests, and this is not normally something you guys want, and therefore it's disabled. Anyhow, if some of you are interested in a feature found in my game, I'm willing to discuss it, and maybe add it for free in the engine.

Re: Linux Linux is free, but some "distributions" of linux are not. Distirbutions are nothing else as a packet of software which could contain also special softwares. The installation of a linux distribution should be as easy as a windows installation. Afterward you may need a lot more knowledge to keep your installation hacker free, as you need to update it, block some services etc...

Re: NEAB Demo Site Well, as any software it may contains bugs. Due to the size of the project I cannot test every functions, and therefore I'm waiting a bit on the users to see if something need to be fixed or if there is some wishes. Anyhow if you check our demo game, you will see that your bug has been fixed. Thanks for reporting it.

Re: Why you code? At home: For the fun, it's like a "puzzle" for me, and I enjoy it ONLY if I try new things, for example to push the technology or my knowledge a bit further :-P The income it may generate mainly pay for the cost it generate too, for example the income is used to pay the hosting bill of my own game. At work: Well, it's a work, and a good work. A lot of the times I re-use the knowledge I gained at home for professional uses.

Re: Trouble setting up a new game DB Username, password and database name depends on your host provider. We cannot really fill it for you.

Re: How to Avoid Complicated PHP Forms and Data Processing Few thoughts: - Small code = more readable - Small code = faster code (normally) - More readable = less bugs - Less bugs = more secure Now... On the other side, think about complex forms, where you have 20 fields, having a form -> check / error -> back is not really nice, where having a form saying on the side of the row where the error is, is much nicer, and easier to use for your users. So, some times a small easy fast code need to be traded against good user interfaces. And that's usually the problem, when you want to have a good user interface, you start coding a lot of JavaScript for example, which certainly does make the code easier to read, but can some times provide a completely new user experience. And... up to a certain level, we are all pointing to a better user experience, isn't it? So my 2 cents are: keep it simple if possible, but always balance simplicity and good user interface. Some times the second one is much more important than the first one.

Re: Mini Coding Contests Question: do you want a super easy contest as next one, or something which requires a bit of thinking?

Re: About Javascript I think I should clarify a few issues here: - Javascript cannot be encripted, it can only be obfuscated. Encrypted means you have like a password to be able to read it. Obfuscated means you transform your readable code with something hard to understand. You can check out my example code here (PHP obfuscator): http://mypage.bluewin.ch/garg/mysoft.html - Javascript is much harder to write / debug than any other languages beside if you use firefox and some tools like firebug. Still the bigger issue is that there is slight differences between the DOM model in IE, Firefox, Opera and the others. So you will have to test your code against at least IE and firefox. - Firefox / Mozilla have by default the Javascript ENABLED. As does IE. Only a few users out there disable it, as now most of the web pages requires it. Anyhow it's fairly simple to test if your player disabled Javascript, and in this case display some sort of alert saying he should enable it. - Javascript code can be embeded ANYWHERE in the web page. Not only in the head section. - Javascript is mainly running on the browser, but there is some special web servers which understand it also as server part. Why? Because Javascript is just a language, nothing else. So anybody could use it where he want, also in something which has nothing to do with the web. - Javascript is not related to Java. They are 2 different languages. - As anything you can use it well and bad. But using it a lot doesn't mean it will be bad. For example I use it really a lot in my own game, as I have most of the web pages running ONLY if you have Javascript. Even the 2D map can be run using Javascript, the inventory is generated by Javascript etc... The only problem is that as Javascript is much harder to master than PHP only a few games or even web pages out there use it for something more than just a few checks. - The biggest problem with Javascript is that it's yet another language to learn, and if you sum up the need to know PHP or VB.NET or C# or what ever, with HTML, CSS and yet Javascript you understand that it starts to be hard to master them all.

Re: miniNEAB engine 2.0 True, it must be stated that NOT EVERY single feature found in our game is also available in the game engine. However we are open to discussion, and if you need some feature we may port it for you for free or for a fee.

miniNEAB Engine 2.1 release: - Fixed a map editor bug. - Fixed a location_manager bug. - Fixed a dialog editor bug. - Added a tailor location. - Added a bank. - Added a museum. I still need to update the feature table... Of course this update is a free update for all the mini engine owners.

Re: Mini Coding Contests And the winners are: Seanybob for the diamond shaped text Deception for the link parser Congratz to both! So my solution for the diamond shaped text: change the width value with a even number and your diamond will change. As you can see you can avoid double loops ;-)   <PRE> <?php $width=12; for($i=0;$i < ($width/2);$i++) echo str_repeat(" ",($width/2)-$i).str_repeat("*",$i*2)."*\n"; for($i=($width/2)-2;$i >= 0;$i--) echo str_repeat(" ",($width/2)-$i).str_repeat("*",$i*2)."*\n"; ?> </PRE>   and why not try to do all with one loop? Well that would be my solution then:   <PRE> <?php $width=12; $half=array(); for($i=0;$i < ($width/2);$i++) $half[]=str_repeat(" ",($width/2)-$i).str_repeat("*",$i*2)."*\n"; echo implode("",$half); array_pop($half); echo implode("",array_reverse($half)); ?> </PRE>   This second code is a bit longer but maybe executed a bit faster as we don't have to iterate in a second loop. The iteration is done with native PHP functions and therefore could be a bit faster. BTW if you want to remove the <PRE></PRE> tag you could use the &nbps; tag in order to add spaces.

Re: Good Hosts? I'm working with lunarpages.com So far they are the most serious one I found, that also mean, if you start to eat too much resources on shared hosting they will want to stop you. This is a serious problem for game owners, but at the same time insure good quality hosting for the shared hosts. Right now I'm renting an annual dedicated server, and I'm really happy by their support and the quality of their network.

Re: Mini Coding Contests BTW I just made myself the second assignment, and without cheating and counting the <?PHP and ?> I have 6 lines of code (so no multiple code on a single line like "echo '1';echo '2'" that would be 2 lines not 1) Now who will discover how I did it? Hint: that's how my code look like: 1 <?PHP 2 for(...) 3 ....; 4 for(...) 5 ....; 6 ?> And I'm not using center nor dots!

Re: Mini Coding Contests echo and print are not exactly the same... nearly but not exactly... echo is slightly faster. I will not say what you did as it is one option as nobody see the problem directly, but using space is possible... I will give the answer next week in case. And yes center would be one of the trick but now you spoiled the fun :-P So nobody will be allowed to use center anymore :-P  

Re: Mini Coding Contests Got the first result. It works BUT do not fully qualify as there is a . and not a space before the stars... now I will accept both, but the one which come with space will be voted better than the one with a . or other... I will let you find out how to display it correctly :-P BTW there is at least 3 or 4 solutions to do it.

Re: Mini Coding Contests for the 2nd assignment, GD is not allowed, you have to do it via ECHO :-P And my mistake, it need to be 9 or 11 width... Actually it doesn't really matter as what is important is to see if you can code it, and if yes if you discover some shortcuts. I will give you a few solutions at the end... you will see, some are way easier than what we all think at the beginning :-P

Re: Mini Coding Contests BTW at the end I will show you my solutions. Maybe it will not be the best one but at least it may help those which didn't managed to make it.

Mini Coding Contests 2nd assignement: (an easy easy one) Build the following figure with PHP and loops (no HTML / or huge echo block allowed) * *** ***** *** * The shape need to be 10 height / 10 width Same rules as before for the deadline and the submission