volka

Don’t feel like it’s a bad thing that a game is possibly years away at this point! I would encourage you to keep a document outlining your game mechanics and continue to visit it, add onto it, and adapt it. Most people choose to observe and adapt game mechanics with actual players, but a game can be well designed (and arguably even should be) before the first bit of coding starts. If you’re just learning to code, I would suggest that even more - continue designing the game while working on unrelated projects to hone your programming skills. That way, when your game is finally realized you’re less likely to want to abandon the project and decide it needs a recode because of everything you learned while you were stumbling through the project.

Firstly, do not underestimate the skill of writing when building a game! I feel it is a little too undervalued in these kinds of games in general, and to find creative ways to work it in can really make your game shine. Second, having no programming experience is actually a good thing for you. It means that you're more open to instruction, and haven't got any old or bad habits when it comes to older languages or versions of languages. All of the resources previously mentioned are good, but I feel there are a few more available now that make the instruction a little more engaging while still interactive. Udacity is more well-known for its paid courses, but a good number of the courses that are utilized in their paid certifications are also free courses that you can take. The video instruction with the quizzes and provided source are great, and an even better form of interactive learning than codecademy (IMO). You can browse their catalog and narrow it down to free courses, level (basic, intermediate, advanced), and topic. Don't expect to find courses on PHP here, it's more focused on more modern technologies that drive the mobile web - you'll find plenty of courses on Python, Javascript, HTML5, and responsive design with CSS. Their paid courses are also decent, but keep an eye out for scholarships offered by Google or other partners. These are often competitive and you'll have to work for it, but you can learn a lot from the first part of the competitive portion even if you don't make it through. Udemy has a lot of good courses, but most of them are paid. You can find the free ones by going to their website and searching "free" in the bar - you might want to narrow your search terms, however, since they offer courses on practically everything. The biggest caveat here is that you really need to look into the ratings of the courses and their instructors. The courses are created by individuals, so the "quality control" ends up being the users that purchase their content. If you are going to buy a course, don't even pay more than about $10 (they have frequent sales) and often have coupon codes to receive specific courses for free (they offered this one for free last month). Keep in mind that they have a 30-day satisfaction guarantee; If you don't like the course, the instructor, or realize that the price wasn't worth it to you, you're not locked into it. (I know I can sound like a commercial, but rest assured that I am in no way affiliated with these websites. I have studied at both of them - and more - and this is just reflecting my impressions.)

Though the question was broken down a little bit further in the survey, I was kind of surprised to find that people so overwhelmingly prefer realistic species to fantasy ones. Personally, I like unique fictional creatures, I think there's a lot more room for creativity there (and it was a close second in first rank on the survey, but almost nobody ranked it second). I also like to see real animals that most people would think are fictional, like a babirusa or a musk deer.

I apologize that you felt I was being disrespectful; while I was referencing what you said I was in no way talking directly to you. I also did not assume, and in no way meant to imply, that you were doing that. I only expanded on it because you originally had posted (which was in the email I got) that you couldn’t see how a secure system could handle that automatically; I was explaining how it could, for anyone who reads the thread and similarly cannot imagine it on their own. Everyone is always allowed to run their own games in any way they want, of course, but I was simply saying that changing things manually is not advisable (for any information or circumstances, really). Again, not directed at you or implying that you should change, just making a statement since this forum is one of the only major resources available to novice programmers seeking to make a game of this sort. People unfamiliar or just beginning likely do not understand it to the degree that you do, and in those cases it’s even less advisable. Again, sorry if I came across that way, my usage of the word “you” wasn’t meant to be personal, but more along the lines of the way you would use “one” - general and broad, as those statements are ones that apply generally. I usually proofread my posts much more at length for tone to avoid this sort of thing, and lacking that did not catch it. I only ever seek to educate people, not criticize their choices. That is unproductive and undermines a community setting that should be about education. And education, I feel, is about arming people with information to accomplish whatever they might want, not dictating exactly how they should do it. (There are, however, industry “best practice” standards that should definitely be shared that way as they are highly encouraged.)

I was - it’s an older thread, you’re the only one who responded recently, and the only response that’s mentions manually setting anything. I did understand that you were talking about in instances where a user has lost access to their original email they signed up with. You apparently edited out the second part, but in case you still don’t see what I was saying (or other people reading this in the future don’t), it’s basically just that you need more points of verification to make that kind of process secure. If you emailed any major company and said you needed access to an account where you no longer had access to the email or your password, you would be very unlikely to be given access to that account by any means. This is why I mentioned things like security questions or telephone verification. Honestly, if someone contacted me saying that they no longer had access to their GoneMushing account because they didn’t have access to the email and forgot their password, there’s zero chance I would give them access. I would have to advise them to register a second account if they didn’t have a secondary email or phone number in our system. Since we are a very small game I might have workarounds IF there was anything of actual monetary value in their account (ie, they purchased the registration codes, had an active subscription, or had credits in their account) but that would still involve emailing the original address to verify and moving ahead only if it either bounced or did not respond within thirty days.

I would not recommend PHP, honestly. It’s becoming more and more archaic as time passes. As a language it is messy, confusing, and barely conforms to its own patterns. While, previously, PHP was the most widely accepted language for new (and especially self-taught) web developers, we’re past that. Resources are far too great for us to still be married to the language. One personal downside is that the security support of PHP is short-lived: both 5.6 and 7.0 will be losing theirs at the end of this year. If you decide to learn PHP, I recommend it not be the first language learned, as it is very loose in structure and will teach you bad habits and poor understanding of concepts (such as objects, which don’t actually exist in PHP, it is not an object-oriented language). JavaScript and HTML5 are IN NO WAY a fad - they are more updated technologies intended to replace the old ones, since JavaScript just got a major syntax update with ES6 (2016, ES7 and ES8 changes were much smaller) and HTML5 brings in some wonderful new interactive and animatic aspects with a better canvas. Nobody is still teaching HTML4 or XHTML in any sort of classroom setting (post-secondary, at least). There’s no reason that these sorts of games shouldn’t be built with an offline-first ideal, and service workers are vastly superior to older styles of AJAX (which is asynchronous JavaScript paired with any other language, hence the x) such as the jquery library. Don’t just google for resources and blog posts, look for free resources on websites that are selling some of their courses to some degree - it is guaranteed to be more recent, and will have some level of quality control that individuals’ blog posts will not. Udacity and Udemy are both highly recommended, but make sure to read reviews of the instructors on Udemy (and don’t buy a course for more than about $10 if you choose to pay for one, they are constantly on sale). Codecademy is a great resource for learning syntax, but do yourself a favor and read some materials about learning to program that are not language-specific. There’s much more to it than syntax. Ultimately, it is a choice, but I always encourage new developers to adopt things that are driving the modern mobile web instead of jumping on technologies that are years outdated. Syntax’s comments on front end are all correct, though I wouldn’t call CSS grid a big thing “right now” so much as a newer aspect of CSS that pairs with Flexbox to make much more responsive designs than either can accomplish on their own.

Changing emails manually is only viable for very small websites and in no way recommended. You can potentially lose users doing it this way, also, as it is very clearly unprofessional and insecure; just because you’re doing it manually does not make it infallible. After all, you won’t always actually KNOW that it’s the original user contacting you, people require the same verifications that computers do. There’s definitely a reason you could never call a company and try to change your email without some further verification, and in this instance password might not even be good enough, as plenty of people save information to their browsers. Actually, considering that, password isn’t always enough unless you know how to name your fields properly to restrict autofill access (meaning none of these methods are appropriately secure). Realistically, changing vital information should employ two-factor authentication of some sort. During registration you can always give options to set security questions, attach a phone number (and verify it to make sure it’s compatible with your verification method), or require a unique code sent to the original email address (which would not help in the case of not being able to access the original email).

I really don’t like to engage as a rule, but let’s be real - how on earth do you think you weren’t being rude when you made two posts asking if they really couldn’t afford $10? Would you not feel this was rude if someone did it to you? If the second post was an accident, why didn’t you edit it to change the way that seemed? Offering to pay for it was not generous so much as you pushing your own choices on another person. Also, that is not reality. That is your reality. The amount of resources available to these developers is exponentially more than when we were first starting trying to do this. Just because you have spent money on building games doesn’t mean they have to. It is not unrealistic for one developer to produce their entire game, it is just unusual. You are perpetuating this fallacious way of thinking that building PBBGs (or web apps in general) needs to be expensive, when, especially in 2017+, it does not. Again, these are not businesses, they are passion projects. Please don’t encourage people to limit themselves or their creativity by falsely telling them that they need large budgets.

I was trying to post them more on the general discussion/off-topic boards except where very clearly prohibited. The post on Furry Paws was in the other games board, I did spend some amount of time there bumping it for attention. I was trying to pay attention to all of the posts that I personally made so that I could respond to any questions or concerns. The posts on the games themselves were made about a month before the survey closed - I had intended to give it about an additional month since there were a few more responses trickling in, but I had already assigned an auto-close date that I forgot about. Initially, the survey was only posted on the two forums aimed at developers of these games (like this one). I posted it on games after I started modeling the incomplete data; while I was already seeing a very interesting picture, it was maybe a third of the size of the final set, and I wanted to see if I could broaden the sample. That is correct, ranking is always (in the context of this survey) referring to how they ordered it and usually limited to the top 5. Also, thank you for this question, it had not occurred to me that these charts were slightly confusing to individuals who hadn't taken the survey themselves! It will allow me to make the results more useful to people who didn't, which is definitely important to me! Also, I really appreciate the offer for help, but she should take that hour and work on your project or just do something for herself! ;) I actually have an inordinate amount of free time these days, part of why I undertook the project in the first place, and I understand just how valuable everyone's time is!

I'm really glad that this has benefited you! My personal goal in conducting the survey was to identify the topics that the most potential developers had the least information on to bolster community education, but I definitely hoped that the data would prove useful to others (and not just satisfy the data nerd in me). The data was collected mostly from posting on sim and pet sites within the community, as well as the (now defunct) Virtual Pet List and on Game Fruit. I was not too aggressive in publicizing it, though I did post on some of the more major sim games that I already had accounts for and a few smaller sites trying to get a more diverse set of results. The survey was released at the end of last year (confusing, I know, given the name, but when I started working on it in the spring I hadn't realized yet how large of a project it would be). It was open for about six months in total; I hope to have the rest of it processed within the next month or two, it just turned out to be a very large data set with a good number of essay answers that need editing & summarizing. I'll definitely be posting here when it is all completed. The "ranks" have more to do with the style of the question than anything else. Instead of asking people to pick one single thing, I asked them to rank all of the options to see a better picture. For example, this chart that shows how people responded to which game tasks they find themselves focusing on most: Players clearly favor breeding as their first choice, training second, competing third, and exploring fourth. To not muddy the data too much, only the top five off of everyone's list was ranked, and the overall bars show essentially how many players put each individual feature in their top 5. Hopefully, that answers all of your questions! Let me know if you have any more, I'm happy to answer them.

I appreciate that you offered to donate a license, but this is incredibly rude. There is absolutely no reason you should be mocking other developers for their choice to use only free and/or open source packages. These are not professional developers, most of these games are passion projects (as you well know), and your assumption is also very incorrect - there is no reason that a small developer working on a passion project needs to pay more than $10 for hosting, or to purchase any of their libraries if the open source options will do (and 99% of times they do, just with less bells and whistles). Also, shame on you. I’m fully aware that you’ve been in the community for a long time (as I was well aware of your games and work 15 years ago), but this is really not how you should behave. You should be making yourself a community leader and seeking to educate the people who are probably younger and clearly less experienced, not mocking them if they make different design, architecture, or licensing choices than you have. This kind of behavior really just works to invalidate any actual advice you might have to give.

This is not secure - the second method is far more secure than this just because you give the user the option to reclaim their account. To be secure, the email should be sent to their original address, where they are asked to confirm that they want to change their email address to the new address, and it should be only after the user responds from the original address that it is updated and put through the verification process itself. The time limit of response adds very little to the security (but doesn't hurt). With what you have described, provided that I had that information and I was inside someone else's account, I would be able to easily take control since the verification for the process is coming to my (the attacker's) email address.

I think it's generally referred to as a guided tutorial, self-guided tutorial, or user-guided tutorial. You might have more relevant search results with a specific string like "guided tutorial" design; this should remove things that are tutorials themselves to a large degree. You'll get mostly pages of different design patterns for this sort of thing, and then you can probably look for instructions in PHP to complete those tasks once you've identified them. (I found this, which might be relevant to you if you're open to using outside libraries or working with Javascript.) This actually doesn't need to be so database intensive. You don't have to make a table of the events, and I wouldn't suggest you do. It doesn't have any relational information, so it's really not necessary that it be the database - not everything needs to be. I can only see this being useful if you are going to crowd-source the steps or allow other people to submit things that would have to be potentially flagged for inclusion/exclusion. You can simply have a flag on the user table that indicates their status on the tutorial. This can be easily stored in their session so that it can be checked without having to query your database, and I would suggest that the identifier of each step be something that is easily understood in your code (human readable) and not just numbers. Write a function that initiates the appropriate step by this keyword and updates the user table and their session when completed.

I have been running and developing on GoneMushing myself for the last three years in the absence of its owner, and have been heavily involved in its development for the entire five years it's been around. The game itself is a remake of one that I created on my own in the early 2000's (probably 2003-2005). Overall, I have been involved in the creation of pet games and PBBGs for about the last 15 years.

Here is the relevant information as reported in the already-released section of the SimCensus: How bad do you feel when a virtual pet dies? Do you prefer a system where pets don't die? Do you prefer a system where your pets don't retire? Personally, I think it depends entirely on the game design. I think when or how a pet should be removed from gameplay is just as important as if a pet should be removed from gameplay - and also very dependent upon the style of the game you are designing. An image-heavy breeding-centric game, for instance, would probably choose to at least have some visible version of an animal remain on the site, if not allowing them to perpetually remain active. (This is not something that will inherently make a negative impact on your database. I actively discourage people from bending their game design to perceived limitations of the technology - spending a little time on it can help you troubleshoot, and your database design, queries and caching processes end up having more impact than the choice to maintain the presence of information. There is always a solution without compromising your game design.) A more genetics-focused breeding game would certainly want to keep at least some record of a pet's lineage, but a well-designed genetics system should do that on its own without the individual pet records. In these kinds of games, the limited span of time that a pet can be active definitely puts a premium on its genetic quality. I think the one place where I have differences with it is instances where you are selling the pets for actual real world currency. After a certain price level, it seems like a poor business tactic to eliminate the animal from the game without the player's input. At this point, if you would seek to remove the pets from gameplay you should incentivize the process so that players will do so voluntarily on their own.

I don't think it's ever too early to open a game to people, as long as there's something there. You should definitely be careful about the numbers that you are allowing, and the prices that you are charging for accounts; you might even consider having a small group number planned (like the 10-20 that was mentioned) and have people apply to be testers so that you know they want to be actively involved in your game development (with ideas and testing) instead of looking to play your game, these are definitely two different attitudes. Generally, when people are asked to purchase an account, they expect something to actually be there to play when they log in - not just chat rooms or message boards. I can think of a number of games that I've shelled out $5 for an account and found essentially nothing when I logged in - the thing about that is that those users will probably never return. It's important to understand that just because the sim community convention is to call it "Alpha", it's literally an early access game. Players are very wary of Alpha games - and with good reason. I always feel like this sums it up: And that is what you should try to avoid. It's never too early, just make sure that what you have isn't underwhelming, and that the people you invite to join are aware of what point in development your game is. Community development is very important, but I would say user input is even more valuable. I have implemented many features that were suggested by users - ones that were good, useful, and I probably wouldn't have thought of myself. That said, a community where you are not terribly visible might lose faith in you - frequent updates, even small ones, make sure that your users know that you're still there and still working on it. If you aren't capable of this, I would suggest that you keep it in private development until it's more polished or you are. So many games are abandoned (or sold and then abandoned) that players are quick to lose faith and move onto another game; you rarely get them back after that, and if you do it will be much later in development. I would suggest that if you are planning on letting other people into your Alpha, look into version management, like git, if you aren't already familiar (I suggest bitbucket). You shouldn't let players into your development environment, and you shouldn't be developing in your production environment. You should have another instance at some other web address (like a subdomain, dev.yourgame.com) where you're working. Version management with git allows you to develop cleanly, rollback if you make a mistake, work with a team more easily, and develop multiple features at once without having to release anything until the feature is complete. There shouldn't be anything on a live site with players that you ask them not to interact with because it's broken - that's on you. Things like that should be either not present or disabled on a live site while you're developing.

I was trying to compile these results before the end of August, but it proved to be a much larger job than I anticipated and my other projects demanded a little more attention! Not to worry, though - this is still in process, and you can see the results as they are processed at the same url where the survey was. The full document of text answers will be released (and linked on the results page) as soon as the entire survey is finished, as I cannot guarantee that all specific information has been removed until I am finished. I will post here again when it is fully completed!

I was wondering if other game owners or managers monitor their game's demographics (if even only age or country; gender is a statistic that largely lacks value since the community is so heavily female, and a lack of selecting a gender is far more prominent than males. It has been this way for a very long time and I don't anticipate that changing). This is something that I have consistently done with GoneMushing, and when I was looking over the info today I definitely found a change. Looking at all of the users that have registered within the last 5 years as a whole, 14% are 15-19 years old, 46% are 20-24, 26% are 25-29, 9% are 30-39, and 3% are 40+. This is actually very consistent with the responses I have received in the SimCensus overall. However, after opening up the mailing list again at the beginning of the month, the new registrations tell a different story. Out of the newly registered accounts, 56% are 15-19, 28% are 20-24, 9% are 25-29, and 5% are 30-39. That's a massive shift, and it begs a few questions: firstly, is the shift in the age of people registering related to the season? Do you find that younger players are less involved or interested in your game when school is in session? In this case, would you expect that the existing accounts are so heavily older players because more of them were purchased (as we can assume that the 15-19 demographic has less buying power), and more than 90% of these new accounts were free codes? Secondly, since this is inconsistent with both the population of the game and with the survey results, which set is a more accurate or appropriate representation? Are we lacking the attention of the younger portion of the community, is this just a temporary surge? Overwhelmingly, people responded in the SimCensus that they started playing these kinds of games when they were 15 or younger - does that still seem to be the case? I was slightly doubtful before reviewing this most recent registration information, but I'm still not sure what it says as a whole.

GoneMushing

I've been running a mostly admin-abandoned game for the last two years, having brought it back up after about 6 months of the site being too slow to play or not up at all. This was the sort of game being owned, created, and coded by a single person, but I have been involved since the beginning (it's somewhat of a spiritual successor to a game I made 14 years ago of the same name). I am fortunate that I have always had access to the entire backend of the site, being responsible for maintaining the server (but not primary development until it was abandoned), and was given access to the financials to make sure that the server bills continue to be paid. The admin has said that she is working on a complete revamp of the game from scratch, and she is certainly making sure that the domain is secured, but I find the most valuable part of the current version is the players. Very similar to what you were describing, all of the revamp/recode is happening completely out of the view of players or other staff - as far as players are concerned, I feel that this makes those updates seem very distant if not nonexistent. Free Stuff is definitely my most powerful tool. I hand out credits and upgrade time very, very freely. This is no way hurts the revenue of the game - in fact, it will increase sales almost every time. Getting in the Trenches is helpful; I spend a lot of time actually talking to users about their issues and concerns about the game, or sometimes just spending time in the chatroom. I try to express that players are the most important part of the game to me, and I want them to feel like that's true. Updating More Frequently seems a little counter-intuitive since most people are inclined to release a bunch of updates in a huge batch, but I find players are more trusting of a game if you're releasing these in small chunks. It can be as small as adding some items, but it makes it feel like there's something going on. For a lot of games "recode" or "revamp" seems to be code for "closing" or "no longer supported". I've seen a number of games that have managed to have decent playerbases while having almost no gameplay to speak of for years, I would have to assume that this is due to good community building. I have definitely discovered that players can be extremely patient as long as you're still communicating with them. I feel like the biggest threat to a user's trust with any kind of website is downtime due to lack of payment, seeing as it is 100% avoidable, and especially if your users have helped to fund your development in any way.

GoneMushing is an online game where you can raise sled dogs and compete against other players to become the best musher of all time! Train your dogs to their fullest potential, arrange them into teams, and race them in real time for experience and prizes. Mix and match breeds to develop the best combination of statistics, or to create your own new breed of sled dog! Play your way, and develop your own secret strategy to become the ultimate dog driver! Join today to experience our realistic gameplay, and to become a part of our active and friendly community from all over the world. GoneMushing has been open since August 2012, and is still undergoing active development with a small but loyal group of players! The mailing list is currently open, sending out free activation codes at a random time every day. View full game

@digital - I would never sell access to these results, this is for everyone. They will be 100% free and open for everyone to view in the form of charts, summarized responses to longer questions, and then eventually all of the essay answers in full as soon as I can make sure that they are properly edited to maintain privacy and remove names of specific games where need be.

IP is not being recorded at all in a way that anyone can see it. There is no minimum of answers; there have been many more than 18 responses, it just doesn't add to that number if the respondent doesn't go through to complete the entire thing. It is partly aimed at developers, yes, to provide more resources for them, and especially for new and independent developers. I understand what you're saying, but there is no specific personal information being collected, definitely not the kind of information that coincides with security answers. I do feel you have skewed those questions just a bit... I never once asked who was contacted or any identifying information, I simply asked if a lawyer, paralegal, or law student was consulted, and which one of those types it was, if so. I have no desire to collect personal information; the majority of those questions are just so that new developers starting out can get a realistic idea of what goes into a game, both in the beginning and in the long run. In the introduction, this is stated: and I do stand behind it! At the same time, anyone is invited to look through all of the questions in the survey without answering a single one. The last thing I want to do is to make anyone feel uncomfortable; I understand you don't know me, but I have been a member of this general community for a very long time, it's definitely the interests of the community I am trying to have in mind.

I started this at the end of last year - you might’ve seen it linked somewhere earlier this year - but hadn’t checked the responses until last week. I discovered there were definitely enough answers to be a somewhat useful data set, but when I was compiling the different parts it became clear that I was missing representation from certain parts of the community. While the data showed a very diverse group of people, it was clear that it wasn't a complete picture. I’m branching out now to try to get some more answers, to give a more well-rounded picture that includes games and players of all types. The goal is, as before, to collect some information that helps us to develop resources as a community to benefit to entire community. If you could take just a moment to fill out a few questions, even one answer makes a difference. All responses are anonymous, you can answer as many or as few as you like, or even save your responses to finish at a later date. There has already been enough information provided to begin collecting resources to be shared. The numerical data has already largely been processed and applied to charts, this additional data will just result in the updating of the numbers. I am excited to release this information for both players and developers to see, and am planning to do so in August with the added responses I receive. If you are interested in seeing the current data or contributing some of your experience to the project, please contact me at [email protected]. http://www.simcensus.info