Advice and Opinions on Creating a Game and/or Engine

[Nemesiidae]

Like many, many others; I wish to create a game, and/or perhaps a CMS/Engine/Library. I know HTML5 and CSS3, and have already looked at some basic PHP and Javascript code, as well as the basics of MySQL. I want to create this game or perhaps engine, not only to have a game, but to also use it as a learning tool, and add to it as I go along.

I’m finding the best way to learn is to have a project. Giving you a reason to study certain areas of code, as well as to use and experiment what you learn from tutorials straight away. I also find that if I study the code, I can figure out how and why certain areas work -- which to me is greatly important. To me, there’s no use simply editing in a couple of lines of code if you don’t understand how it works or how you might have to troubleshoot it in the future.

Anyway, enough of my rambling; I want to know your opinions and advice on a couple of matters (And everything ready):

1. Which engine do you think is the best to study? MCCodes, while inspirational, apparently doesn't have the strongest code?

2. Is it wise to reveal which web hosting service you use? Say if I want advertise 2 Free Hosting (The Web Hosting I plan to use) on my site -- because I like their free service, does it give much information to script kiddies & hackers?

3. Is it worth having two MySQL databases? One for the game itself, and another for the accounts -- as an easier and quicker way to save the user data; or are there better ways of saving their data (And upgrading the game) without slowing down your website?

4. Is there a hacker preventative guide for new game engines/libraries? Or a list of ways to deal with/or avoid well-known hacking and cheating issues?

5. As I’m still very new to what I consider the more complex side of web design & development, is it detrimental or even beneficial to split the game into a sub-domain? For example, say I want the site to be: “mywebsite.com/index.php”, yet rather than simply adding on to the directory like: “mywebsite.com/game/index.php” for the game, I instead make it: “game.mywebsite.com/index.php”

6. When creating a game, where do you look to for inspiration on the more technical aspects, such as the mathematics behind combat mechanics, as well as the math behind things such as training/exp and even stock markets? Do you play other games and pull out a grid book/math book to try and ‘reverse engineer’ the mechanics, or do you use already created systems?

7. What advice could you give to someone who wants to create their own game and/or engine from scratch?

Any help would be appreciated, this is something I’ve wanted to make for quite a long time, and I believe this website well help motivate me to get something out and online. (As long as these forums are still active of course xD)

Cheers! :D

[Uridium]

Few Factors for all your questions...

TIME = Do you have enough of this to put into running/creating a game

PREPERATION = Most games on here are fly on the wall games which means, they install they run and hope for the best.. What can you offer that no-one else offers ?

THINK-TANK = Most decent games have a damn good brain behind them that's why they are successful. if your game is based on Medieval then you need to be 1000% accurate at what your building everything in your game has to be associated with what the theme is about and everything within that theme needs to be accurate. Items Weapons and storyline..

(Pure Fail) a medieval game that has mention of a baseball bat will and could be the games biggest let down and if your users don't feel that your not being serious then you will lose...

(Pure Genius) however a Medieval game where your Re-search regards this past has been added calculated and well thought out will be a success BUT remember NEVER fall into the pit what I mean by this is if a player has an AXE that can do 30 damage then don't have a knife that can inflict 50 Damage cos that isn't how it is..

[Nemesiidae]

On a personal note, I definitely have time to create and run the game. The idea is not only to use it as a learning tool, but to create a game that I would personally want to play. Something familiar, yet something I've wanted to see done in a TBMORPG.

Understandable -- I guess most of that would come down to the kind of audience you're after. Some games can pull off the half-Medieval/half-Sci-Fi style. Do many players look for background story and lore in these kind of games, or do those kind of things get over-looked by many? In all fairness, I haven't played a great deal of TBMORPGs -- it's hard to find what I want. So the ones I've played really only have a paragraph of backstory and the rest is just random or made up by users.

I was thinking of coming up with a system where you have a mixture of Weapon Type, Quality and Material (And maybe Condition) to change the weapons damage ratings, as well as a slightly complex weight/speed system where you have either a chance to strike twice in a hit -- or possibly have it so every rounded/full number will decide whether you get an extra hit. Still trying to work out the math for it, and a decent combat system to suite it. :)

Cheers for the reply! :D

[KyleMassacre]

I agree with illusions here. and if you wanted to create your own engine I would browse around the current ones and maybe see how their stuff works. and as for the different engines to use there are a few and its ultimately up to you. I personally have only used MC and NWE and as with everything in life they all have their pros and cons.

MC- They have a lot of semi ready to go modules here are the forums you may just have to dig in a clean a lot of them up but they are pretty much plug and play. I have seen quite a bit security issues on the engine but what is 100% secure anyways? Sarah Palins Yahoo account got hacked and leaked with all here government contacts lol. V3 I hear is from what I hear is in the works and I'm kind of excited about that, so lets see what that has to offer.

NWE- Right now I've been working on that and I'd have to say I really dig it. Sure it may be a little bit away from install and play but give it some time and I'm pretty sure something will come up soon. I know a couple of us have been racking our brains on coming up with stuff. Its pretty customizable in almost all aspects of the engine and 99% of it you don't even have to touch the code to tweak it to your liking. Its modular so when a dev releases something to the market you will see it and Its a one click install, it gets ftp'd to your site and sqls get loaded at the same time. There is a lot more to note but I don't feel like getting into it all haha.

EzRPG- I haven't used it but its being developed on right now as well.

GL- Dayo as a matter of fact just announced V1 for this engine and its supposed to be a complete re-write of the orignals so I hope that works out as well.

GRPG-Just got sold to someone, its no longer Publius so I don't know what's to come of that. There really isn't much talk about it.

So in a nutshell just browse around and get some ideas for your own or maybe you will find one that you like and just use that and good luck with your prospects.

[Nemesiidae]

V3 sounds interesting, but I could imagine it would be a long while before they release anything? Seems like Redux is still their headpiece? :)

NWE is sounding quite interesting, both are roughly the same price as well. If you had to take a pick between them, which one do you prefer? :D

The other ones look like they're free -- so I may give them a download just to check out how they've done things. Is there anything in-particular that makes an engine good -- besides its code and performance. Like usability, a good interface or just the way it handles plugins/modules? :)

[a_bertrand]

V3 has been announced like more than 4 years ago if I remember right. We still don't see anything. Don't wait on a vaporware.

For what makes a good engine: all depends what YOU want to do with it. For example any of the engines Kyle gave you will not work for a 3D world ;) Beside purely scopes issues, an engine should be flexible enough that if you add a piece you don't need to modify another one to make it work. McCodes up to now have all this issue, ezRPG, and NWE do not. A good engine should offer some security mechanism. It should offer you a base infrastructure to build your game. And ideally should be simple to work with.

[Nemesiidae]

That's a good point -- sounds like the community for it is slowly transferring over to better engines anyway. xD

Not right out of the box anyway, hahaha! One thing I've seen though, is that these engines seem to be very genre focused, or made specifically for one main style of game mechanic in mind. One thing that has confused me is how templates work with these engines, I guess that's what I get for studying ye olde MCCodes V1. xD

If I may ask, roughly how long did it take to plan and develop the NW Engine? :)

[a_bertrand]

NWE is not oriented toward any genre. You can do medieval but as well mafia games. None of the text are fixed (and can all be modified via the admin panel), as well as all the content can be edited directly via the admin panel. Even the player stats can be changed to reflect your game better. This is for me the difference between an engine and a pre-made game: either you have something which runs directly out of the box but produce one single game (like McCodes), or you have more freedom for your game maybe at the cost to invest more time to customize the experience (like NWE).

NWE development started in December 2011, and the first release of the engine was in March 2012. It took therefore 4 Months (nearly full time) to get a good basic engine. Since then tons of modules and improvement have been made (my SVN registered 464 commits with a total of 3956 file changed).

[SRB]

Like many, many others; I wish to create a game, and/or perhaps a CMS/Engine/Library. I know HTML5 and CSS3, and have already looked at some basic PHP and Javascript code, as well as the basics of MySQL. I want to create this game or perhaps engine, not only to have a game, but to also use it as a learning tool, and add to it as I go along.

I’m finding the best way to learn is to have a project. Giving you a reason to study certain areas of code, as well as to use and experiment what you learn from tutorials straight away. I also find that if I study the code, I can figure out how and why certain areas work -- which to me is greatly important. To me, there’s no use simply editing in a couple of lines of code if you don’t understand how it works or how you might have to troubleshoot it in the future.

Anyway, enough of my rambling; I want to know your opinions and advice on a couple of matters (And everything ready):

1. Which engine do you think is the best to study? MCCodes, while inspirational, apparently doesn't have the strongest code?

2. Is it wise to reveal which web hosting service you use? Say if I want advertise 2 Free Hosting (The Web Hosting I plan to use) on my site -- because I like their free service, does it give much information to script kiddies & hackers?

3. Is it worth having two MySQL databases? One for the game itself, and another for the accounts -- as an easier and quicker way to save the user data; or are there better ways of saving their data (And upgrading the game) without slowing down your website?

4. Is there a hacker preventative guide for new game engines/libraries? Or a list of ways to deal with/or avoid well-known hacking and cheating issues?

5. As I’m still very new to what I consider the more complex side of web design & development, is it detrimental or even beneficial to split the game into a sub-domain? For example, say I want the site to be: “mywebsite.com/index.php”, yet rather than simply adding on to the directory like: “mywebsite.com/game/index.php” for the game, I instead make it: “game.mywebsite.com/index.php”

6. When creating a game, where do you look to for inspiration on the more technical aspects, such as the mathematics behind combat mechanics, as well as the math behind things such as training/exp and even stock markets? Do you play other games and pull out a grid book/math book to try and ‘reverse engineer’ the mechanics, or do you use already created systems?

7. What advice could you give to someone who wants to create their own game and/or engine from scratch?

Any help would be appreciated, this is something I’ve wanted to make for quite a long time, and I believe this website well help motivate me to get something out and online. (As long as these forums are still active of course xD)

Cheers! :D

To answer your questions:

 

1. None. You would be better off finding a well coded CMS or just well made script in general and learning from that. I'd suggest finding something with OOP and templating systems, since once you get to grips with an engine, your own engine is sure to follow the same paths and then, you may as well just use the engine you learned from.

 

2. Not really, but it depends. I am unsure on free hosts, but I know when you look at places like HostGator, their VPS support is pretty poor because they're primarily a shared host provider, so their skill set lies mainly in shared, whereas KnownHost provide only VPS and Dedi, so they are more clued up. That said, I've always questioned how quick a free host will update software, since it's free and nobody is funding their servers directly. Then add to the fact that if the free host also runs a paid hosting company as a parent company, then that would take priority. Personally, I would keep it off -- it doesn't benefit you much and players would see that as an ad -- and players don't really like ads.

 

3. No, not necessary and since your first question implied you're still learning, it may work out complicated to link them both properly and you could end up with data clashes etc.

 

With my engine, for example, I have an accounts table that holds nothing but: id, name, email, validated -- low row count, fast to load, index keys and links to everything from that small data set -- should be enough.

 

4. Create secure code to start, but as an extra precaution, you could have something like PHP IDS running in a prepend file and have it store to the database when "threat level" exceeds xx amount.

 

5. Either is fine and even if you make game.domain.com -- domain.com/game/ is still accessible, so either way is fine and I see no benefit to either. URL looks slightly better with sub domain, but I doubt a search engine result would even be affected by that.

 

6. Programmers, by nature, are normally quite good with math - something to do with the parts of your brain used for the 2. That said, the maths will always require you to run tests. Whenever I am testing something with mathematical calculations, I always throw it in a loop and make it run a few thousand times and log results, all with different calculations, to check the calculations across multiple numeric values.

 

7. Don't rush. Take your time, think of a storyline and build around that. Buy your domain last, since from start to end, the game model normally changes and makes your first choice rather redundant.