Design1online

It really depends on the number of items you plan to have in your game. The more items you have the smaller they should be, especially if you're going to try and list them all on say an inventory page. Larger items not only take up more disk space they consume a whole lot more bandwidth.

Works great but it requires pretty extensive knowledge of Linux or operating systems, they don't setup the environment for you, however there are lots of articles and docs to help you get setup if you don't have much experience. I run 15 servers there and I have virtually no downtime. Only costs me about $130 a month. For my largest game I'm running 2GB RAM / 40GB disk for the database server and 1GB RAM / 20GB disk space for the web server. I generally have very few issues with that setup and I've been running it for 3 years now. If you want a discount on your first month when you sign up I can give you my referral link.

If you're so passionate about this it would be interesting to try a game where you only are breeding to alleviate negative side effects/birth defects/genetic issues and see how well that goes over with people.

We had human avatars on Vis Servo and everyone liked them. We did contests where we would set a theme and then you would dress your avatar up for that theme and then everyone got to vote on the best ones. It was well liked. The biggest downside is that avatars require a LOT of clothing and customizations drawn on a frequent basis so that people get a lot of customization choices otherwise they're pretty boring when they all look alike.

Working on an open source, fully responsive HTML5 MMO game called WTF Adventure which is originally based off of BrowserQuest and Tap Tap Adventure. I've been completely re-doing the HUD and interface and have plans to completely redo the maps and rest of the graphics, as well as adding new functionality. If anyone is interested in trying it out or contributing or even getting their own copy to do whatever you want with you can clone the repo here: https://github.com/design1online/WTF-Adventure

Are you getting an error message? What mail server are you using?

My friend sent me this site that has a lot of good information about laws of good interface design. Super helpful for all sorts of web projects, not just for games. Enjoy! https://lawsofux.com/

Lots of free programming eBooks available for all sorts of different programming languages on http://books.goalkicker.com/.

Here's a few book titles to give you an idea of what they have:

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I've worked with PaulSonny for several months now. He's been writing unit tests for Pet Game Framework. He is always delivers when he says he will and has been really reliable. If I find any issues with something he fixes it promptly. I enjoy working with him and I hope to continue working with him for a long time to come.

Getting closer to full code coverage on Pet Game Framework!

Yeah so code is boring, here's some cute pets that come free with the framework including their layered .PSD files.

PGF is fully responsive so it works on desktops, tablets and mobile phones.

It comes with a comprehensive admin panel so there's no programming required for out of the box game functionality.

It also comes with nifty things like wysiwyg editor, date picker, time picker and color pickers!

You can see the full list of features and more screenshots on my website: http://design1online.com/downloads/pet-game-framework/

There are tools on google chrome which will let you quickly convert your site to different device displays. This is a good way to test it in different screen sizes.

You can also use the network tab to then see how long it will take the image to load under different network conditions. IE you don't want a phone using 3G to have to load a 2MB background image.

Pet games can be written in any language ie CryptoKitties is written using block chain, haha. I think most people use PHP because it's easy to learn and has weak data types and syntax structure like Javascript so there's a lot less ramping up than a strongly typed and highly opinionated and strongly formatted languages. If you're new to programming PHP is also popular with creating websites in general.

However, it's not the most current and trendy language anymore. The latest craze is Javascript and JS frameworks like Angular, React and Vue. You can also use HTML5 and their new canvas. Most people are then running a NodeJS backend.

As far as do you need a framework and which one should you use, that's an entirely personal question. It really depends on what you're trying to make and if a framework is a good fit for that, and why or why not. I would recommend if you think you need a framework that you research all the ones you're interested in and then make a pros and cons list for each one with respect for what you're trying to make. What might work well for one pet game may not work as well for another.

If you are an advanced user when it comes to servers you can get great prices with DigitalOcean's cloud servers.  Server start at only $5 a month and go up in about $5 increments. I have 15 servers for only $120 a month. If you use my referral link you'll get a $10 credit to try it out. https://m.do.co/c/e429deb227cb

I'll do it for $300.

With layers and genetics or is it just a base with a color picker?

Can't you just rollback or upgrade to a stable version of imagick? Do you need help doing that?

Just curious, what image library are you using and what version is it currently at? How will changing servers fix that?

14 hours ago, runeowl said:

@SingSong Thank you for your concern. We know now that the visual glitch is a result of a server-side issue (not a result of bad code). A transfer of servers with a new host that satisfies a few specific requirements (that we've already brought up to at least one of the potential owners!) will fix this image generation / pet demo bug. I don't want you to think that we're keeping secrets, here.

It sounds like this hit a nerve with a lot of people. Why should talking about what a game realistically costs something that's looked at so negatively? I thought this was supposed to be a place of constructive discussion and help for game developers. If someone told you they wanted to build a game with no skills in programming or art or writing and no money and no time you would ask them if they were going to hire people or do the work themselves and consider what it would cost to hire those people. If they said they couldn't afford to pay a programmer you tell them they need to learn on their own or start saving up the money or maybe they're not ready to make a game yet. It's not being mean, it's being realistic. Like I said, my intention was not to insult anyone, it's hard to read tone from written text. Perhaps we should start a thread on game development costs and mitigations to those costs if asking about affording $10 has inspired such a reaction.

It's the reality of the situation, making games is expensive. I didn't intend to be rude, otherwise I wouldn't have offered to buy them a license. If that's how it came across I apologize. 

Well if you really want a license I will buy you one.

You seriously can't afford $10?

You can't afford $10? Are you sure you're ready to make a game? Sever costs alone are much higher than that....

I use jTour and then I created my own stepped tutorials that I programed into it so you can click on any tutorial and it will automatically walk the user through it. https://codecanyon.net/item/jquery-tour-the-flexible-tour-plugin/1052564?s_rank=1

5 hours ago, Shinka said:

 

Also, 200+ dependencies sounds horrifying and is absolutely not what I'm advocating for here.

It's not uncommon in large software to see things like this, especially if you're using new web frameworks like Angular/React/Vue, etc.

5 hours ago, Shinka said:

 

At least in the Rails community, it's a cardinal sin to roll your own auth—and this is coming from a framework that does half the work of authentication for you via bycrpt and has_secure_password. Devise has thousands of man hours behind it and a large community of developers and users alike who have vetted the system more thoroughly than I could vet something custom. And if a new security vulnerability does come up, it'll be patched before you can even file an issue on GitHub. This is an article that I think explains the trade-offs well, specifically the "The Pros and Cons of Using a Gem like Devise" section.

You're assuming that everyone is writing their game in Rails. There are lots of programming languages out there and this is not a one size fits all situation.

5 hours ago, Shinka said:

Both forum solutions I linked to assume you're using Laravel's standard auth (and thus a Users model), but they also provide convenient ways to change that if you're not.

If you're using a quality package, hooking it up with your existing structure should be a cinch. I should have worded the "event hooks" part of my first post better—I look for packages that are easily extensible and configurable.

I'm not a fan of things like Laravel and Code Igniter, etc. They often have more issues you need to work around than anything else and once you're writing lots of custom overrides or plugins to make it do what suits your own purposes you may have well just written it yourself.

5 hours ago, Shinka said:

Of course, extremely popular packages can still have some kind of vulnerability—but writing your own code doesn't mean it's going to be free of security issues, either. And the same goes for performance concerns, etc.

But a markdown parser? That's going to be two classes and a couple dozen lines of code, if that. There's not much room to introduce security vulnerabilities—though performance could still be a concern if it uses a metric ton of regex. Then I'd pop into the issues, read a couple articles, and if no one's complained, It's probably solid!

Of course nothing is perfect, I'm just pointing out that there's a balance and a trade off for doing it one way versus another. Your perspective is from looking at developing with Rails, but what if you're using Angular or Python or Go or React or HTML5? It's not a one size fits all comparison and not all languages even have events you can hook into.

You also have to take into account that third party software comes with licenses and regulations on how you can use it, not all of them allow you to do whatever you want with them which means re-selling something you've made with them can be tricky.

I'm certainly not advocating against them, I've used third party software in my own games, but doing it with a discerning eye.

In some ways I agree, but in others I disagree. One problem I've found when you work with software that has lots of packages (I currently work with one that has 200+ dependancies from other packages) is constant dependency issues and versioning problems. Also, you end up with a lot of extra functionality you don't want and will never use.

There's also the problem with security and quality and trying to link and/or reuse or re-purpose third party software within other third party packages. Take your forums example, having to modify the forums to use your own users table can be time consuming and if not done correctly can easily open huge security flaws.

It's really easy to pick something that looks pretty but is a resource hog or has really crappy security issues. I have seen the projects in code canyon that  look pretty but have scripts with really horrible XSS and SQL injection prone code. I even know of a popular one that would let people upload any file and could delete your whole database or dump it into a downloadable .zip archive.

There is certainly a benefit in having something that you've made yourself and can optimize and customize to your specific needs without all the bloat. I think there's a delicate balance between the two and you have to weigh the pros and cons of going down the dependency/versioning hell path or the DIY path. Something that's well tested, updated frequently (or completely unit tested and stable) and mature can be a good candidate for a third party package. Honestly, I would never use a third party authentication system unless I did a really thorough deep dive on it. They could easily be capturing and sending login information to their own data mining server farm you wouldn't even know it unless you went code diving or were watching your network monitoring console.