Arson

I guess I should have been more specific. I did say, "If you have the game running", but I guess I meant more along the lines of running successfully. If you get a decent player base (1,500-2,000 players) with at least 10% of them active on a daily basis, and reasonably steady "donations", you should be able to get $1-2k easy. If you just sell it to someone so they can start their own unique game, you might be lucky and get $500. Probably not more than that.

Here we go: [ATTACH=CONFIG]415[/ATTACH]

How do I go about doing that? I've got analytics set up but I've never created a report before.

You guys are awesome :) Thanks for your support! I'll get to hunting down your mods, lol

I am selling some cheap ad spots on BestTextGames.com Currently, the site is getting over 3,000 visits per week (average 494 per day for May so far) from players voting on text based games. Ad Spaces Available -Up to 5 468x60 banner rotation slots at the top of the page for $10/month. -Up to 3 (depending on banner size and space available) static slots on the voting page underneath the voting form for $10/month. This includes two (2) rectangular spots and one 728x90 position beneath those. As an added bonus, I will be making a supporters page to list every ad that has ever been displayed on the site permanently! This is a prime opportunity for you to advertise your game on a thriving top list, and get a free link forever. Don't miss out. Shoot me a PM or post a reply if you are interested!

In my spare time I have been working on a site that I hope will some day become a valuable resource for web game developers such as ourselves. WebGameMods.com is the name of the website. I haven't really set in stone what I am doing with the site just yet, but so far I can give you a few details on what is to come, and offer you a chance to partake. Free Mod Downloads As you can see there are currently only a few free mccodes mods listed on the site. My plan is simple, create a large database of free mod downloads the likes of which no one has seen before. I would like to provide free mods for several engines. Pretty much any game engine that even one person has a free mod for and is willing to have it posted on the site. Can it be done? I'm going to find out. I will be packing together free mods that I find on these forums (creators willing) and others and making them available for download on WebGameMods. Don't worry, each free mod listing on my site will link right back to MakeWebGames, or whichever forum I find them in, along with credits to the creators. Creators can have their names linked to their website/portfolio simply by requesting it. If you have a free mod that you would like to list on my site let me know and I will get it up ASAP. Whats in it for you? A free link, and free publicity. Not to mention that warm fuzzy feeling you'll get knowing you're contributing to something that could help out a lot of web game developers some day :) Tutorials I personally would only have time to write like 1 tutorial a month, if that. So my plan is to do pretty much the same with these as I am doing with the mods. I will eventually set up a Tutorial submission page where writers can submit their own Tutorials to the site. Writers would obviously get a permanent link to their website and full credit for the tutorial in return. WebGameMods could essentially end up being a collaborative effort among this community (and others) of keen web game developers. A resource for us all to better our knowledge, and understanding of web game development and management overall. Game Engines List I am going to be using some SEO techniques to see what kind of traffic I can get from search engines, this will bring lots of new blood to the scene, and help the web game developer community grow to a new high. This creates the need for extensive information about different game engines and a means to get the game owner on their way to buying/downloading an engine. Naturally, I am going to post information about all the free game engines with as much info as I can muster up. Paid engines will either need to purchase a link or have some sort of affiliates system before I will post a link. (Gotta pay the bills somehow!) So if you own a paid engine and would like a link just contact me and we will work something out. I'm sure I won't get any offers until there is actually traffic to the site, lol. It's not much, but feel free to check out the site and let me know what you think! I hope that one day WebGameMods.com will be as useful to all of us as these great forums.

Not trying to be rude or anything, but if you don't know how to use timestamps you probably shouldn't be trying to run a game. Do you know any PHP? Look up the time() function on PHP.net and do some reading, the information is already out there....how to use timestamps as pseudo-crons should be common sense to any programmer.

You could release it as a script like Cronus pointed out, however it looks like a pretty extensive game from the screenshots.. If it were me I'd do one of two things: 1) Put it up and run a game or hire someone else to run the game for a cut of the "donations". That would probably require an investment for advertising, but I'm guessing it wouldn't take long to make back. 2) Sell the script as a whole to someone that wants to run a unique game. If you have the game running and sell it you could very easily get at least $1-2k. Just a thought.

I use MSN regularly to keep in touch with my clients. I appreciate your concern for people getting scammed, but it is quite unfair to tell people that basically someone using MSN is trying to scam them. Some of us just aren't patient enough for non-instantaneous means of communication...Personally I don't have time to come on here and go back and forth refreshing tabs to keep up with conversations while I'm trying to code something for a client. I know you said you are just mad about people posting "add me to msn" in threads, thats one thing...but to tell people they are going to get scammed if they use MSN is a low blow to us legitimate service providers and has nothing to do with the supposed reason for this thread.

Don't know if you're still on the market for a coder; However, I can do this for you, and much more for cheap. I shot you a PM with my MSN messenger information, feel free to add me and get in touch anytime you need anything!

I am the original creator of that mod and have since made it available for free. It isn't AJAX powered. http://www.webgamemods.com/free-mods/mccodes/fancy-crimes-page/ But I know that isn't what modernmafia is looking for. @modernmafia, I see where you're going with the crimes/tasks. I shot you a PM (before reading this thread) so add me to MSN and we will talk more.

I couldn't agree more :) We should be one big happy family :D Hopefully some day WebGameMods will be a massive directory of free and paid modifications for engines of all types. As well as several tutorials for the rookie, and the experienced web game developers/owners alike.

In most cases this would be where your "better judgement" should kick in.. Throwing together a basic CSS template is easy-peasy. The fact that he painted a picture (literally) for you should have made the task easier...whether he gave you exact measurements or not..the fact that he didn't would make it even easier, because then you just decide the sizes and can determine what looks best. Clients aren't always going to give you everything you need to complete your work, otherwise they wouldn't be hiring you to do it for them! Most of the time they aren't even 100% sure of what they want, but if they tell you they want something who are you to argue with them? It's THEIR website! All you can ever do is the best you can and hope that the client is satisfied...

Why thank you! It's a work in progress, I hope one day it proves useful to you :)

Ohhh alrighty then, well done with this mod :) I hope you won't mind, but I went ahead and added your mod to my new modding website for free download. Credit has been given where it is due of course, as well as a link to this original thread. You can see the listing here: WebGameMods.com Shoot me a PM if you'd like your name (in the mod description) to be linked to your website or portfolio.

??????????

I highly doubt anyone in their right mind would think that a picture in paint is a viable design. It looks more like a blueprint to me. Anyone with basic knowledge of CSS could make a layout using that as a reference. Haven't you used paint as a means to convey a layout idea? I use a whiteboard, it doesn't mean I think I can convert my dry-erase ink into code.

I was 16 when I started coding, so of course there are exceptions. Heck, I started learning PHP by backwards engineering MCCodes. The difference was I actually enjoyed it, instead of just seeing it as a means to easy money...

I guess so, but after learning what I have from this thread, using INT(11) for something like item quantity seems silly, let alone using it for things like unread mail/events/announcements. You probably wouldn't open up more than a couple hundred bytes, but in the long run that could turn into MB's if you have enough rows in the table...ie..if you ever plan on your game becoming successful. Personally, I'll plan for success.

I see no reason to change table names or field names.

I think the way to go for ezRPG would be the package deal. I unfortunately at the moment I don't have the time to undertake such a project on my own. I could however see it being successful as a collaborative effort. However in that case people would just create and sell their own mods on their own, which is fine too. In either case I am actually working on a site that will help further this cause, for any engine. I think the problem is that not enough people want to risk their time on a completely free engine. My thoughts on it are if a person is serious about making a good game, and they are using a free engine, then they are probably planning on spending some serious cash on the development, if not cash, time.

For someone with an already established MCCodes game I think optimizing field types would be a good idea, at the very least in the `users` table. While a few bits here and there might not be significant when you have a huge hard drive, you still have to think, the more memory it is taking up, the more milliseconds it is going to take to call or alter that data. When there are tens of thousands or even just thousands of rows in the database these sorts of small tweaks can really make all the difference. I'm not sure about being better off starting from scratch or using a different engine, that really just comes down to what you want in your game. Optimizing MCCodes field types isn't going to take you longer than coding your own engine from scratch >_>, it will just be a tedious and boring process.

You really don't need the begintime field. If you want to be able to display the beginning time, simply do: $begintime = ($endtime - (13*60)*60); or since you've already done the math and gotten the seconds for yourself: $begintime = $endtime - 46800; Then you have one less field taking up space in the database (which can be significant if there are several rows).

Another thing I have gathered from this is that one could go through the default MCCodes database and eliminate a significant amount of overhead simply by changing the field types to properly suit the data they hold. ie. All the INT(11)'s that are holding numbers that could be held by TINYINT and MEDIUMINT.

So basically, you can set them whatever number (within the limits of the field type), but by default each field type is going to reserve(?) it's own predefined amount of memory (INT 4bytes, MEDIUMINT 3bytes etc) (which is why they have the limits on how many numbers can be used). From what I'm gathering one could compare a table row to a sort of partition, each row upon insertion in the database will automatically reserve the amount of memory equal to the memory set by it's respective field types. So rows in a table with say, `id` INT(11), `level` TINYINT(2), `money` INT(11), as the fields, will automatically take up 10 bytes each; However the data in these fields will determine how much of those 10bytes is actually used.