PBM News Blurb - March 21st, 2011

Gad Games
Sean Cleworth over at Gad Games has begun posting to his company's blog, again, firing off a couple of interesting blog postings over the last week or so. Metadata, Map Making, & a Logo features Sean expounding upon some of Ilkor:Dark Rising's world features and new logo motif. Turn-based or Real-time? delves into some of the Gad Games' mastermind's thoughts on how to Ilkor: Dark Rising should approach the issue of text-based browser games.

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Adventures By Mail
Dropping by the Adventures By Mail website, I came across an announcement, of sorts, pertaining to something called Project Libertine, an upcoming 4x Space Exploration Browser being created in the tradition of the Play by Mail games that so many have loved over the years. With numerous blog postings dating back to mid-2010 that chronicle the progress of the game's development, it's evident on the blog's face that this project is making progress towards fruition, and is not a dead project, at all. The first posting in the Project Libertine blog is a good place to start, if you want to catch up on the project from its beginning, last year.

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Spellbinder Games
A recent excursion over to the Spellbinder Games website led me to fire off an e-mail to that company, to see if they are still actively running play by mail games such as A Bledian Diary, Horses For Courses, LT Wars, Kickabout, and Galactic Empire. As of press time, no response has been received from Chris at Spellbinder Games to the e-mail that I sent to him. In fairness, though, I only sent the e-mail, yesterday, so a response may yet be forthcoming.

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Orbo's CTF 2187 Website
My explorations across the vast expanse of the Internet have led me to Orbo's CTF 2187 fan site, a place which features both Frames and Frames-free choices for navigating through the information featured on his site. CTF 2187 was a closed-ended commercial PBM game formerly produced and run by Advanced Gaming Enterprises. If you visit Orbo's site, be sure to drop by his CTF 2187 Players Gallery and his Command Post archives.

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Stupidly Named Internet Football League
Dave, the manager of team New Wave Punks, is looking for managers for other teams to play in the SNIFL, a free to play PBEM based football (soccer) game. The game used ESMS/ESMS+ software originally created by Eli Bendersky and later modified by Darren McKee. Attempts to check out the International Rosters page on that site yielded PHP errors. To apply to be a SNIFL manager, click here.

GrimFinger,

Thanks for the mention in the news blurb today. My name is Hatch and I'm the developer of Project Libertine. I'm not really looking for a lot of publicity since I'm still very early in game development, but it's good to know that someone is reading what I write on occasion. :)

I put a link to your site on the Adventuresbymail.com page in appreciation of your mention and I hope people that go to that site looking for a PBM game can find what they're looking for here.

Thanks,

Hatch

Hey, welcome aboard the site, Hatch!

I appreciate the link. Your blog is actually one of the better PBM-related blogs that I have encountered, to date. It actually has something posted in it, some good blog entries, in fact.

How did you learn about this site, if I can ask?

Hatch,

I just read through your wiki, and wow, I swear I laid out the exact same plans for a similar game in my notebooks. Libertine sounds precisely like the sort of game I've been missing looking for. You should make a post about it in the PBM games forum to start up some discussion.

Thanks Ramblurr. I'm trying to make the kind of game that will appeal to the old grognards like us who played back in the 70's and/or 80's and also try to bring some new folks on board as well. I know my 5 year old son thinks the game is cool, so that's one critic I'm satisfying. ;)

I've shown some of the game to a few younger college age guys I know and they seem to think it's cool concept as well. I'm trying to get to the point that I can have an early alpha type test later this year, where I let people create accounts and run around in ships in a few star systems for a few weeks. I'll keep it all updated on my blog and drop a note here as well.

Hatch
http://projectlibertine.blogspot.com

[quote='Ramblurr' pid='336' dateline='1300754638']
Hatch,

I just read through your wiki, and wow, I swear I laid out the exact same plans for a similar game in my notebooks. Libertine sounds precisely like the sort of game I've been missing looking for. You should make a post about it in the PBM games forum to start up some discussion.
[/quote]

Hatch, I just read your blog, and am also quite interested in this game!

Let me know if at some point you might allow folks like me to playtest!

I started a thread here awhile back about developing a PBweb game in the grand space empire tradition of yore. I still plan to do it, but real life has been keeping me a little too busy. But perhaps I should take inspiration from your ethic of "forcing yourself to write at least a few lines of code each day", even if only to fix a small bug or re-align screen elements.

I have read other threads from those who want to create games but don't know how to program, including some who are building "computer-assisted" games with the power of macros. I guess I need to use my powers for good and build a game already, like you are doing. Bravo, and keep posting to your blog!

Thanks for the kind words, Ixnay. I'm still using the philosophy of doing at least a few lines of code each day. This past Sunday night I was feeling bad from allergies and having a busy day and I sat down in front of the computer and opened up my ToDo list for the game and just sat there and stared at it for a bit. I literally almost fell asleep sitting there. Heh. Finally I just opened up a page at random and started working on the Scoop Gas Giant action. A few hours later I was almost done with it.

There are times I literally only do a few lines of code, but usually once I start coding (breaking) stuff, I get more done than I thought I would.

If you want to learn some good coding skills, I recommend the Head First books. Start with the one on HTML and then go from there. I've been coding for almost 30 years, but I still picked up these books and refer to them often because they have good code examples and show good ways of doing things instead of just code snippets.

Hatch
http://projectlibertine.blogspot.com

What language/framework are you using on the back end? I see you're using SQL for storage and JQuery as a frontend JS lib.

Thanks for getting Darren McKee's name in the ESMS listing. He deserves credit for the ESMS+ branch of ESMS.

Dave

[quote='Ramblurr' pid='368' dateline='1300832395']
What language/framework are you using on the back end? I see you're using SQL for storage and JQuery as a frontend JS lib.
[/quote]

PHP, Javascript with JQuery, and MySQL. No framework. I'm writing everything from scratch other than a few things involving JQuery, although I did use an free login/registration script, which I may end up replacing in the end.

I use Notepad++ with the FTP plugin as my IDE. I'm using Chrome and FF as my browsers. I really dislike IE and may end up putting code in the game to tell people who get to the main page with IE to GTFO. :)

Hatch
http://projectlibertine.blogspot.com

Hey Hatch,

I've also checked out your website and blog. Your game sounds a great idea and wish you every luck with it.

We're (Gad Games) also in the process of developing our own game for the web. A fantasy RPG. It is called Ilkor: Dark Rising and we hope to have a beta release for the public at the end of the year.

I was interested in learning about your chosen technologies. I'm surprised you might not be catering for IE. Personally I am a Chrome user, but you'll be ruling out a fairly large user base. Whether we like it or not, IE has the majority of the market. The fact you are using JQuery should allow you to be far less concerned with browser compatibility. Not so?

For interest sake, we're using a C# MVC implementation. JQuery is our client-side framework aswell, but we're targeting HTML5 and CSS3. This is largely to do with the requirement to make use of the new browser features such as a client-side datastore (great for caching map and player data) and of course the canvas which we're using to render our maps.

It does mean only the new browsers will work with our game, but by this time next year the majority of the browsers out there will support the features we're coding against.

We're using two types of databases. MongoDb for the map and SQL for all other data entities. In-between the SQL DB and our server-side logic we're using Memcache for our caching solution.

We've a number of other 'bits and pieces' but the above is our high level artchitecture...oh and we've gone for a 'long polling' client-side implementation for our async calls.

How are you planning to handle mapping? I would serious suggest you look into HTML5 / Canvas and MongoDb.

Cheers,

Sean.

[quote='Hatch' pid='374' dateline='1300847620']
[quote='Ramblurr' pid='368' dateline='1300832395']
What language/framework are you using on the back end? I see you're using SQL for storage and JQuery as a frontend JS lib.
[/quote]

PHP, Javascript with JQuery, and MySQL. No framework. I'm writing everything from scratch other than a few things involving JQuery, although I did use an free login/registration script, which I may end up replacing in the end.

I use Notepad++ with the FTP plugin as my IDE. I'm using Chrome and FF as my browsers. I really dislike IE and may end up putting code in the game to tell people who get to the main page with IE to GTFO. :)

Hatch
http://projectlibertine.blogspot.com
[/quote]

Indeed, unfortunately IE versions 6-7 have the majority market share by far, and they support only a few, if any, of the CSS3/HTML5 features.

Fortunately, IE 9 has been released and has received very positive reviews, not to mention its CSS3/HTML 5 support+performance is finally on par with modern versions of Chrome and FF.

oh and we've gone for a 'long polling' client-side implementation for our async calls.

Regarding mapping and modern technology, for games set in space I would love to see a nifty application of WebGL to present interactive 3D starmaps. Navigating in 3D is tough however, and a lot of thought would have to be put into the interface and input model to make it easy and not confusing/disorienting. Maybe a sort of fake 3D would work, where the user can freely move in 2D and the 3rd dimension is semi-fixed.

I agree with you comments, though not so sure I agree with you on IE6-7 having majority market share.

According to the stats; IE does have overall market share (56.64% as of Feb 2011). However, that figure is broken down into:

IE6: 12.02%
IE7: 08.35%
IE8: 35.68%
IE9: 00.59%

[source]

You'll see that IE8 has by far the highest user base. The trend over recent years has seen people upgrade their browsers quicker and more frequently than in the past. I don't see this trend slowing down.

So our strategy is based on this. We think that by this time next year, IE9 will have a much larger user base that will continue to climb quickly.

Couple this with the fact our game is only going to be in beta this time next year, we felt it is better to build it on a platform that by the time our game has matured, the bulk of the browser user-base will be compatible.

IE8 gained 35% of the market in about 2 years. IE9 has just hit the streets, so I am expecting it to do similar things, if not quicker.

The other browsers (FF, Chrome etc) already support the HTML5 features we plan on taking advantage of.

[quote='Ramblurr' pid='381' dateline='1300857754']
Indeed, unfortunately IE versions 6-7 have the majority market share by far, and they support only a few, if any, of the CSS3/HTML5 features.

Fortunately, IE 9 has been released and has received very positive reviews, not to mention its CSS3/HTML 5 support+performance is finally on par with modern versions of Chrome and FF.

oh and we've gone for a 'long polling' client-side implementation for our async calls.

Regarding mapping and modern technology, for games set in space I would love to see a nifty application of WebGL to present interactive 3D starmaps. Navigating in 3D is tough however, and a lot of thought would have to be put into the interface and input model to make it easy and not confusing/disorienting. Maybe a sort of fake 3D would work, where the user can freely move in 2D and the 3rd dimension is semi-fixed.
[/quote]

Ah! Well I stand corrected. I definitely think your forward thinking will pay off.

Thanks for posting these technical details! I am investigating options for a development platform, and this info is invaluable...

[quote='Gads' pid='379' dateline='1300857044']

I was interested in learning about your chosen technologies. I'm surprised you might not be catering for IE. Personally I am a Chrome user, but you'll be ruling out a fairly large user base. Whether we like it or not, IE has the majority of the market. The fact you are using JQuery should allow you to be far less concerned with browser compatibility. Not so?

[/quote]

I'm halfway joking about not using IE. I rarely use it myself and I'll probably make a half-hearted attempt to test with at least IE 9 and try to fix any incompatibility issues that come up, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.

Keep in mind that I'm really only developing this game for myself. I could care less if it's a commercial success or not. If I cared about that I would be developing it for Facebook. Don't read this as some type of political statement against commercial games. My feelings about this are only for MY game, which is burning a hole in my soul right now for me to get it out of my head and onto the web server. I think about it constantly, and have trouble getting my brain to shut down about it at night to go to sleep.

Mapping? I'm doing it as a complete brute force hack. For system maps I set up two nested arrays to start at the top left corner and loop through square by square until it reaches the bottom right corner. At each square I check to see if there's something that needs to be displayed in that square and create a new image anchor, or else display an image anchor that shows a black square. The cool thing about star system maps based on squares is that you can easily build them with a grid of html img anchors.

Most of the game is just hacked together. I'm not a professional coder, so I'm pretty sure I'm doing some things badly and will probably have to do a lot of optimization at some point to handle more than a few dozen people playing at the same time. My CSS file is a spectacular mess right now. Heh. My functions PHP file is 2600+ lines of code and growing every day. I really need to split it up to be more manageable.

Honestly though, if I get 100 people playing this game at some point I'll be happy enough with it. Maybe it will have a lot more people, maybe less. I just need to get it finished right now and then I can take a deep breath and think about the future of it.

Hatch
http://projectlibertine.blogspot.com

Will good luck Hatch. I say go for it! It really doesn't matter what the reasons are for wanting to design, write and run a game in my opinion, though 'wanting to do it for yourself' surely has to be one of them. Without that it will fail.

So many people never get around to doing what they actually want to do, so its great to hear from people like yourself. I've been wanting to design a game for a long long time and am just so happy that I've finally taken the leap and got stuck in. We've got so much work to do, my biggest worry is thinking we've taken on too much!! :-)

Cheers,

Sean
[quote='Hatch' pid='397' dateline='1300896327']
[quote='Gads' pid='379' dateline='1300857044']

I was interested in learning about your chosen technologies. I'm surprised you might not be catering for IE. Personally I am a Chrome user, but you'll be ruling out a fairly large user base. Whether we like it or not, IE has the majority of the market. The fact you are using JQuery should allow you to be far less concerned with browser compatibility. Not so?

[/quote]

I'm halfway joking about not using IE. I rarely use it myself and I'll probably make a half-hearted attempt to test with at least IE 9 and try to fix any incompatibility issues that come up, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.

Keep in mind that I'm really only developing this game for myself. I could care less if it's a commercial success or not. If I cared about that I would be developing it for Facebook. Don't read this as some type of political statement against commercial games. My feelings about this are only for MY game, which is burning a hole in my soul right now for me to get it out of my head and onto the web server. I think about it constantly, and have trouble getting my brain to shut down about it at night to go to sleep.

Mapping? I'm doing it as a complete brute force hack. For system maps I set up two nested arrays to start at the top left corner and loop through square by square until it reaches the bottom right corner. At each square I check to see if there's something that needs to be displayed in that square and create a new image anchor, or else display an image anchor that shows a black square. The cool thing about star system maps based on squares is that you can easily build them with a grid of html img anchors.

Most of the game is just hacked together. I'm not a professional coder, so I'm pretty sure I'm doing some things badly and will probably have to do a lot of optimization at some point to handle more than a few dozen people playing at the same time. My CSS file is a spectacular mess right now. Heh. My functions PHP file is 2600+ lines of code and growing every day. I really need to split it up to be more manageable.

Honestly though, if I get 100 people playing this game at some point I'll be happy enough with it. Maybe it will have a lot more people, maybe less. I just need to get it finished right now and then I can take a deep breath and think about the future of it.

Hatch
http://projectlibertine.blogspot.com

[/quote]

[quote='Gads' pid='401' dateline='1300901318']
So many people never get around to doing what they actually want to do, so its great to hear from people like yourself. I've been wanting to design a game for a long long time and am just so happy that I've finally taken the leap and got stuck in. We've got so much work to do, my biggest worry is thinking we've taken on too much!! :-)
[/quote]

That's definitely true. I've been wanting to work on my game for probably over 5 years now but was daunted by the amount of work to do it all by myself including frontend and backend programming. Then almost 4 years ago someone told me about Travian and I played it for about 6 months along with about 40 other people I talked into playing and I started trying to figure out how they did things and realized they don't have a lot of backend stuff going on there.

So I found a login script I liked and got it set up then started from the first page and expanded out from there. It's been very slow, but it's really picked up this year as I got a roadmap laid out and started making ToDo lists for myself. I've got the entire design of the game in my head and most of it out on documents, so I usually just pick something and start coding on it. The design ends up changing some as I go along, but I think its usually for the better since I tend to overcomplicate ideas in my head and simplify/streamline them a bit once I start coding them.

The only thing I don't have completely laid out yet is combat, but I'm hoping to start getting the framework for that going in a few months.

Hatch
http://projectlibertine.blogspot.com