a_bertrand

Whatever increase player interactions: - Collectible cards - Hide and seek - Treasure hunting - Fishing - Jeopardy - Board games between players - In game e-zine (written by the players) - Dice games like Yahtzee (between players) Etc etc etc...

Check out this: http://makewebgames.io/board205/35105-tabs-or-no-is-there-a-speed-difference And you clearly see that it does NO DIFFERENCE, so now stop saying stupid things even before testing. And don't tell me that the second version without tabs nor returns look cooler or easier to read or I will need to spank a few bottoms.

Why not use the mod: http://makewebgames.io/board901/35073-entire-game-logs

Just to show what kind of difference there is between 2 scripts, one with tabs the other without, beside that the code is EXACTLY the same. Actually I went so far that I removed all the returns as well. Code 1: <?php // Some comment echo "This is a test"; /*********************************************************** Some multi line comment. ***********************************************************/ for($i=0;$i < 10000;$i++) { // this block will do something $a=sin($i/100.0); $b=rand(0,1000); $c=$a*$b; $d=$a^0xFFFFFF; $a=doNothing($a); } //Now let's create a function function doNothing($a) { // Let's add one to a $a=$a+1; // Now let's multiply it by itself $a=$a*$a; // Square root... we have again $a+1 $a=sqrt($a); // Let's remove 1... and we have $a $a=$a-1; // Do the same inside an if... if(true) { // Oooo yeah! $a=$a*$a; // Why not? $a=sqrt($a); } return $a; } ?>   Code 2: <?php echo "This is a test";for($i=0;$i < 10000;$i++){$a=sin($i/100.0);$b=rand(0,1000);$c=$a*$b;$d=$a^0xFFFFFF;$a=doNothing($a);} function doNothing($a){$a=$a+1;$a=$a*$a;$a=sqrt($a);$a=$a-1;if(true){$a=$a*$a;$a=sqrt($a);}return $a;}?>   Now to test it without bias, I made a little bash script which call this 1000 times: #!/bin/sh for i in {0..1000} do php -q tabs.php > /dev/null done   And guess the results? BOTH took 36 sec to run: real 0m36.025s real 0m35.905s ... Times varies a bit if I run the script multiple time as the server is not used purely for that... Now for the size: tabs.php: 737 bytes notabs.php: 235 bytes Sure you do save quiet a bit of space... but is the space all that important on your server? Beside that honestly I saw no real difference, and therefore I cannot support people which do not indent correctly their script. I said CORRECTLY that means not just add random tabs just to look better, but to really make your code easier to read. BTW tabs in the PHP page are not sent to the browser, unless you put then inside some echo or outside the PHP tags, therefore you will certainly not add network load either. To note that all those test have been done on a linux machine without PHP accelerators.

Too square and the color scheme need to be rethought in my opinion.

Free time is my problem... I have nearly none ;( And I try to help others as much as I can... so it's a pleasure to see that some people appreciate it.

Danny: a code without indent is barely readable and shows amateur styles normally. The number of byte your source is have little to no effect on the performances, that's why for example functions should be commented at least if not reach the 30% or 50% of your overall code. Yes I know this is not the McCode standard but this is how it should be. Why I say it have little effect? Because PHP is in the worse case a 2 pass interpreted language which means on the first pass the code is transformed into a more compact / checked form which can be either represented as "byte code" or "expression tree" depending who develop the parser and who describe it ;) The second pass the byte code or expression tree is run (so a for loop or any other thing will run actually with this second form not the original source). This intermediate state can be stored either in ram or on disk and that's what all php accelerator do at least. The first pass removes all those space, comments and much more. So once this pass is done your comments or indent will have no effect. Yet how much effect it has on the first pass? Again little to nothing, you may try by yourself and I doubt you will see any effect.

Diesl: don't worry for me ;) And yes 100$ per hour in Switzerland is really cheap. Outsourcing here is about 1500$ per day.

Chicka: as other pointed out I do have quiet a few things around you may look: - http://www.nowhere-else.org - http://www.nodalideas.com - http://www.nebularider.com - http://www.wsirc.com - http://www.zapengine.com Now honestly trust me or not, I just said how much I charge, and oddly enough I do get that amount when (if) I do out sourcing work. Yet you will not see much of my work in the McCode community as I don't like much those kind of games even if next version of MC should have a piece of mine there (very small actually). For the price, 20$ per hour is extremely low for EU and US standards. Think that a 3D designer request 200-300$ per hour normally for example. 1 Sec of animation is usually 600$ etc. You guys should check a bit of the price of people which do that job for living and are a bit older than 20 or even less ;) Also I would say you start a company when you start to have customers, you don't start a company looking for people which may work for you yet without real projects and with that I mean projects which pay not just "I want to make a web game" kind.

I don't work for less than 70$ an hour and usually I require 100$ an hour. Yes I do have customers at that price ;)

Not really.

Seems odd to me honestly that so many hosting fails to handle WBB. I had even issues myself. So no I would not say WCF is a good framework. For example it doesn't even work with PHP accelerators, how good is it?

Fonts are ugly... And all gray is annoying.

Here is my suggestion http://engine.nowhere-else.org

Basically everything. As soon as you do something you will use the CPU. So to keep the CPU low you need to use optimizations from code, to php accelerators and even cache. Normally you need a mix of different techniques to really optimize something. Keep in mind that optimizations means harder to code / understand the code.

Doesn't look a gun for me... and the texture is... not good.

You may test it by yourself: http://base.nowhere-else.org/temp/speedtest/Default.aspx http://base.nowhere-else.org/temp/speedtest/speedtest.php My results: ASP.NET on Mono (linux): 3.8295770 PHP: 4.037904 The codes: <?php header("Expires: now"); ?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>PHP Speed test</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server" method="POST"> <div> <?PHP function microtime_float() { list($usec, $sec) = explode(" ", microtime()); return ((float)$usec + (float)$sec); } if($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") { $start=$_POST["START"]; $time_start=$_POST["MICRO"]; $pass=$_POST["COUNTER"]+1; $time_end = microtime_float(); $time = $time_end - $time_start; echo "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=COUNTER VALUE=".$pass." ID=COUNTER>"; echo "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=START VALUE=".$start." ID=START>"; echo "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=MICRO VALUE=".$time_start." ID=START>"; echo "Start time: ".strftime("%H:%M:%S",$start)." "; echo "Pass: ".$pass." / 50 "; echo "Ellapsed time: ".$time." sec "; echo "<SELECT STYLE='width:200px' SIZE='10'>"; for($i=0;$i < 1000;$i++) { echo "<OPTION>".sin($i/10.0+$pass)."\n"; } echo "</SELECT>"; } else { echo "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=COUNTER VALUE=0 ID=COUNTER>"; echo "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=START VALUE=".time()." ID=START>"; echo "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=MICRO VALUE=".microtime_float()." ID=START>"; } ?> </div> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> var count = parseInt(document.getElementById('COUNTER').value); if (count < 50) document.forms[0].submit(); </script> </body> </html>   ASPx: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="speedTest.Default" EnableEventValidation="false" EnableViewState="false" EnableSessionState="False" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>ASP.NET Speed test</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server" EnableViewState="false"> <div> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdCounter" runat="server" Value="0" EnableViewState="False" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="startTime" runat="server" Value="0" EnableViewState="False" /> <asp:Label ID="lblStartTime" runat="server" EnableViewState="False" /> <asp:Label ID="lblEllapsed" runat="server" EnableViewState="False" /> <asp:Label ID="lblStatus" runat="server" Text="Pass 0 / 50" EnableViewState="False"/> <asp:ListBox ID="lstData" runat="server" Width="200px" Rows="10" EnableViewState="False"> </asp:ListBox> </div> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> var count = parseInt(document.getElementById('hdCounter').value); if (count < 50) document.forms[0].submit(); </script> </body> </html>   The C# part: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; namespace speedTest { public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { base.OnInit(e); this.EnableViewState = false; } protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Response.Expires = -1; if (Page.IsPostBack) { int pass = int.Parse(Request["hdCounter"]); DateTime start = DateTime.FromBinary(long.Parse(Request["startTime"])); startTime.Value = Request["startTime"]; hdCounter.Value = (pass + 1).ToString(); lblStatus.Text = "Pass " + hdCounter.Value + " / 50"; lblStartTime.Text = "Start: " + start.ToString("G"); lblEllapsed.Text = "Ellapsed: " + (DateTime.Now - start).ToString(); for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) { double a = Math.Sin(i / 10.0 + pass); lstData.Items.Add(a.ToString()); } } else { lblStartTime.Text = "Start: "+DateTime.Now.ToString("G"); startTime.Value = DateTime.Now.ToBinary().ToString(); } } } }   To note that ASP.NET on mono is certainly not the fastest. I ran both on the same machine to avoid any kind of machine / os comparison. I avoided as much as possible all the ASP.NET goodies like viewstate as well as eventstate (viewstate is like a browser side session, where eventstate checks that nobody touched your stuff in the meantime) to be as fair as possible as those would have slowed down of course. I used however the ASP controls and not the HTML controls which may have been a bit faster. Also I didn't wrote the code in ASP like in PHP which would have been possible but you would then loose all the nice code behind trick. So what does that say? ASP.NET is certainly not slower than PHP, even running on linux. As info, on my windows server (which is smaller than my linux server) I get 1.84 sec for the same operation.

Open GL is simply an API for 3D. It doesn't define with which language nor it does all. You have the 3D? Well maybe at least partially, but what about mouse, sound, network, file system and whatever else? Open GL doesn't do that.

Kieran-R: Web game development are certainly not best served by PHP. It works, but by no mean is the best solution for all kind of web devel. PHP is great for small things, couple of quick page. But as soon as you start with something a bit more complex I would not pick anymore PHP. bluegman991: VB.NET and C# are 2 different language which use the .NET library. I personally find C# much better. Any of the .NET compiled language can then run on any Mono supported platform (Mac, Linux and more). With it you can develop GUI, web application, soap services, browser rich clients (Silverlight), phone applications and more. For 3D games, either you take the hard road: C++ which is the one which should let you do all, or C# via XNA for example. 2D / 3D games which run on multiple platform? Sorry but all of those will disappoint you. Multi platform development is an issue because not all runs the same way. Honestly for downlodable games if you do it for windows you will have most of the market anyhow if you really want to support multiple os, then... you need to rely on some library or make your own abstraction library. Something like http://www.libsdl.org/. Or yet better use Unity 3D and develop with C# within an engine which runs on all possible platform: http://unity3d.com/ And no it is not like Javascript with different functions for different browsers.

Not very interesting... Sorry.

Visual Basic is mainly dead and replaced by VB.NET which is not 100% the same. Visual C++ is not a language. C++ is and Visual Studio allows to code with it. ASP.NET is again not a language but a framework / library which can be used by any .NET supported language. Honestly use either C# or VB.NET UML Is not a language but a standard for diagrams and development documentation. XML is not really a programming language but a data markup. Ruby on Rails is again not a language. Ruby is (nearly Python) and Rails is a framework for web development. So now that I clarified a bit ;) You should choose between what you want to do, and how you want to do it. As I said multiple times I would personally choose between the Java environment and the C# / .NET one. Both offer nearly the same kind of features, beside C# / .NET offers a better / smarter support for web applications and Java offers a bit better portability over multiple platforms.

/me is waiting for a copy...

For those which want to develop with .NET (platform of choice for Windows and not a bad choice either for server side development on linux), you can download and install yourself: SharpDevelop: http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Download/ It is a free and open source project which runs on Windows (not tested on linux), and offers most of the Visual Studio features and yet even some more. So if you don't have a payed version of Visual Studio, it may be a good solution. All solution types (beside installers) are supported and you have even an included profiler. The editor is nearly as good as the one of Visual Studio, and overall it is smaller and faster than Visual Studio itself. So certainly something to check out if you want to start some serious development but you don't want to fork the money for Visual Studio.

Email verifications tend to simply not work due to spam filters. You should think what is the goal of such tool: - Block bots? Can be done by creating a JS which generate the login button on the fly and bots will be blocked. No need of catcha even. - Gather emails? Then don't do it like that, offer some bonus for people which enter a valid and confirmed email. Like 100$ of game cache in bonus.

Cent OS is a server distribution (it is actually red hat enterprise) and therefore don't use latest version but instead use trusted version. Security fixes are applied by red hat even if PHP doesn't. A server distribution do have between 5 and 10 years of life time and this is EXTREMELY useful as you don't want to upgrade your servers every 6 months with the risk to have compatibility issues. Also, there isn't so much more features in the new versions of PHP, sure a couple are quiet useful, but overall you can survive with older trusty versions. BTW Cent OS 5.5 is the latest version.