Syntax

That pretty much nails it! I'm at work atm(I'm bad, I know) but I will send you a PM in a few hours and we can chat about details

(http://www.deviantart.com/art/Pikachu-176123852) That's the style. Bold lines, bright colors, and shiny/bubbly shading, and chibi-like creature. I'm essentially looking for a single creature-mascot could potentially be part of the logo, or do two separate things. I'm not what I would consider an artist so I need some help with illustrations for the branding but I don't want to limit the artist to just the illustration so I was hoping it could be more of a collaboration for colors and fonts as well.

I <3 ExtraCredits . I used to listen to their videos on my way to and from work everyday. Thanks for the insight, I enjoyed reading

My point was more that despite being a gaming person, the only mobile games I play are ones that can be played for 5 minutes at a time and dropped for a month. Most browser-based games are not like this. Yes mobile gaming is definitely a thing, and a lucrative one at that but you have to consider the types of games we're talking about. Unless you have a solid reason to go mobile, a responsive and touch optimized website should really suffice for anyone who must play your game on mobile. And no, it's not necessarily simpler to open the app because chances are I wouldn't download it to begin with. If that's not what you meant by your comment maybe you should revise or clarify? I just tend to be against bandwagon ideas. Just because you could make your web game work in a mobile environment doesn't mean you should. I think mobile apps have their time and place but I don't think porting everything into the idea "There's an app for that" is stable, and it's proven not to be. There was a 20% decline in app downloads last year alone.

The birds in Meridian are terrifying. Just putting that out there. The first time I entered the desert area on my way there a very large bird came outta nowhere and had some epic attacks and I tried so hard to kill it but my little bow and level 15 HP couldn't take it haha.

As a web developer there's actually a lot you can do for mobile users from a website without having to go to the app level. iPhones do provide a way to bookmark webpages like apps, and there are API's available to help integrate with mobile devices. PHP push to mobile devices Node push to mobile devices Most people who use mobile devices are familiar with navigating the web on them. Optimizing your web or game to work on mobile and touch devices will certainly help but I don't think the mobile app wave was as revolutionary as was hoped. I'm an active gamer and there are very few mobile games I actually play more than once a month. It works well if I'm sitting in a waiting room, or waiting to pick someone up but I don't actively see my phone and other mobile devices as gaming devices. I think games could benefit from supplementing with a mobile device but I don't think transforming your entire game into a mobile-app only platform is necessarily the way to go.

Good point, I rescind my earlier comment. Although I don't think I've ever thought of Humpty Dumpty as an egg who got away.

Only 120 words?? That's a paragraph!! Oh noes that sounds kinda hard lol

Fantastic idea! Best of luck selling it! Did you do the art yourself?

Hey all, I am looking for an artist who is familiar with doing pets and logos to create a logo for one of my projects. Budget is flexible, if you're interested you can respond here or PM me. I'd like to see some examples as I do have an idea of what kind of style I'm looking for but if everything goes well there's the opportunity for more work and I'd love to build a working relationship with some artists here. Feel free to ask questions and I'll give more details if you're interested! I don't bite, I promise!!

I'll have to check it out, I love dystopian worlds. This cracked me up Currently reading Carve the Mark, the new book from the writer of the Divergent series. I just finished Chapter 3 and it's okay so far. It's very foreign feeling and not all the characters have been fully introduced so I'm still kind of waiting for the big hook. I'll update anyone interested when I've finished the book. I imagine it'll be another series.

Post it notes. It sounds silly but I probably wouldn't do well without them. I keep a huge running task list of all the stuff I basically ever want to do organized into categories. Then every morning(or the night before) I make a daily task list of what I want to accomplish the next day on a post it note. So I have a work post-it-note and a home post-it-note for chore/errands/life/everything else. It's cool cause at the end of the year I can see the thousands of things I accomplished and I reward myself if I hit goals. I basically try to cater the organizing to what I'm organizing. I keep the records of my rabbits and their lines and kindles in a journal so it's one place to go to know who is due this week, who is ready to be bred, etc. For my own development projects I use a combination of a repository and scrum board to keep up and organized.

1,000 posts in a month is a pretty fantastic number. Looking forward to a whole lot more posts to be had though!!

Best of luck! I tried doing this years ago when I was still in high school and then in college and I was always too ambitious for my own good.

Yeah I have to second the recommended experience in Systems Administration. I've more or less landed myself in the position where I had to be a Systems admin, with no training or experience so that was fun. I work as the lead Developer/Programmer in a small Web Agency. We build branding, websites, business applications and mobile applications among other things. In addition the my share of the development work I'm also responsible for maintaining the servers, managing our website hosting and networking, basically making all the IT decisions and doing everything no one else wants to or know how to do for the company. I learn a lot, and it's taught me to be a quick learner and more confident decision maker, definitely a lot of responsibility though.

MyAdopts got me started when I was a kid, I think that was the only programming-free way of building a pet-site. There was the Rusnak script(now Mysidia) and there was another popular one that was better coded but didn't have the same features. I know a MyAdopts-like site has been launched since MyAdopts closed but I think a modern solution would be a breath of fresh air.

what is this? So I see a lot of projects fail or go miserably wrong because not enough attention was paid during the planning stages to really nail down a plan of action surrounding the features and functionality of the project. This is a guide to help remedy those problems, and can really be applied anytime during the project however the sooner the better in most cases. This is not strictly a programming/development guide either, you can apply the concepts elsewhere but for the purpose of not being super vague I'm orienting this guide to feature development. Also forgive me if you are not familiar with Pokemon, I use a lot of Pokemon related examples to illustrate the concepts I cover. minimum viable product So it's really tempting when starting a project to sit and brainstorm and daydream for hours about all of the fantastic features your project will have and all the people who love it. I do it too, and while there's nothing wrong with that when you get down to seriously planning a project you intend to see through it's just impossible to start there. Write your ideas down, make a list of all the features of your dream and then toss that document aside for later. Pick one feature. Now when I say one, I don't mean the login/logout or anything that would more or less be considered the framework of your project. What you need to do is identify your minimum viable product. That means you need to figure out how to make your project the smallest it can be, and still be at it's core a fun game. It doesn't sound intuitive but it is important. So you should identify the base feature of your game. What is the ultimate goal? Why are people logging on to play? Is that feature fun or rewarding, without any other embellishments? Not everyone would but I consider Pokemon to essentially be a virtual-pet game, it's just on a different platform. If you think about all the features Pokemon offers in their games it can be mind boggling, but at it's core the main feature and main draw for the game is surprisingly simple and even in their slogan. gotta catch 'em all. Pokemon is a game based on collecting, all the other features are more or less secondary to this main feature. You want to complete your Pokedex, or at least catch your favorites and that's what they rely on to be the main thing that's fun in the game. That's what I mean when I say identify your main feature. It does not need to be unique, and it does not need to be revolutionary, it just needs to be a solid draw. Whether that feature is community based, collectable based, creation based(breeding or building sites), etc. it just needs to be identified what that feature is. If you think you can make a successful game or project revolving around that main feature then fantastic, hit the ground running and save the dreams for later down the road. Most people will not want to stop there however, and that's okay. Once you have that solid main feature you are going to want to select one or two other features that compliment that main feature very well. That does not mean battling and breeding should be those two features. If you're doing a collection based site maybe create multiple ways to collect pets(different types of pokeballs?) or make certain pets only collectable through certain methods(only obtainable if you trade with another player). If your site is heavily community based and your main feature is the forum, a live chat would be a good compliment. These other features should maintain the same goal as your main feature, and should seek to improve that main feature in some way. Be careful whenever you add a new feature that you are making that feature as small as it could be to start with. As you go through this process create a new list of your MVP feature list, and at the end compare it your original dream feature list. If even 50% of those dream features are on your MVP list then you are probably still being too ambitious. I can't stress enough how important it is to really cut out as much as you can and start small. Creating a game or website is a very large and daunting process and it is so much better to get something successfully out there in a few months than it is to spend 3 years on a gargantuan project and still not have a launch date. It's also a lot easier to learn from the mistakes you make the first time around when the project is smaller, and it's more rewarding because you're more likely to cross the finish line. understanding scope In the project brainstorming phase of projects I see a lot of people being extremely vague about features that they want but haven't really thought through. However it's crucial when you're brainstorming features to be very specific about what that feature is and is not. Think of a feature scope as a list of rules to make the feature work or not work as intended. Imagine explaining how to collect Pokemon to someone who knows nothing about the game, but being specific enough that they could recreate the game. A vague statement will produce a vague or incorrect result. Bad Statement: "You throw a pokeball at the pokemon to catch it." Bad Result: A game where every time the pokeball is thrown, the pokemon is caught. Better Statement: "You throw a pokeball at the pokemon to catch it. The higher the level of the pokemon, the lower the chance to catch it." Better Result: A game where the level of the pokemon determines whether or not throwing a pokeball results in a successful catch. The idea is to then become more and more specific, so if you were to explain this to someone they would understand that if they knock the pokemon out then they can't catch it, or different pokeball types work better or worse for different pokemon, or that status effects also effect the success rate of a pokeball. Define all the rules of your feature, and then try to imagine someone attempting to cheat. Pokeballs don't work when you throw them at a pokemon owned by another trainer. If you can define all the rules of your features, that will go a long way to help whoever will have to program the functionality, but also keep communication clear about how something is expected to work and whether or not a change fits within the current scope or not. If you are changing or adding to the scope during project development, that's something called scope creep. It is not good, not fun, and usually leads to both angry project managers and angry developers. Once development starts, you shouldn't mess with the scope except where development needs clarification. Additionally, if you have changes you want to make then run it by the developer first to make sure they are comfortable with changing the scope or to find out what kind of impact that change will have on cost and deadlines. Finally, make sure the feature scope with all the rules fleshed out still fits the goal of the feature. If the rules of pokeball throwing made it extremely difficult to catch any pokemon, maybe there's a rule that shouldn't be there because it shouldn't become difficult to play the game. Stating the goal of the features(be more specific than 'be fun') can also help a developer or even yourself 6 months from when you wrote the scope have a clear understanding of where you intend to go with it and what you were thinking when you developed the scope. feature value Did you know features have value? There are ways to calculate hard and monetary values for features, but that could be a guide all by itself so I'm not going to get into that. But when you are generating feature ideas to add to a project or to an already launched game you should always be considering the value that features bring to the site. If it's a small feature but it's going to take a lot of programming work and your users could more or less live without then it may not be worth it to bring that feature in. A mantra of mine with browser based games is that your features for the most part need to be harder to consume than create. That means if it takes you 10 hours to create a quest line that will occupy users for 10 minutes, that would be a bad consume to create ratio. You want to flip that ratio as much as you can so that your users remain entertained by your content and features, giving you time to develop new ones without people getting bored or frustrated. Many people turn to random generation to get the ratio in their favor and if you're clever enough that can be a fantastic way to generate fresh content but there are other ways as well. If you can make small changes to a feature to make it last longer without becoming frustrating for the users, you'll find yourself with a lot more room to develop and come up with ideas. For example if the questline you created required users wait until nighttime to do a certain task, or require that they do some investigation to figure out the answer to a lore riddle then you can expand that questline time from 10 minutes to potentially 12 hours without overburdening your users with meaningless and boring tasks. If a feature you create can do any of the following, it's bringing in value. Monetization Bring in new users Keep users occupied for longer than it took to create Generates excitement or community organization If a feature does any of the following, you're actually losing value. Drives away current users Conflicts with the general mission Causes other features to become useless or undesirable On rare occasions it's okay to create a feature that hits a point on that second list as long as it's being made up for in a clear way on the first list. Also, do not feel bad about removing or heavily modifying a feature you realize is having a negative impact on your site or does not fit your goals. conclusion If you can make your project small, focussed and have a fantastic understanding of your features you'll be a lot better off when you hit the development level and more likely to avoid some common pitfalls. Especially if you're working on your first browser game site I highly recommend making it as small as possible so you'll see more progress, be less likely to give up and you'll learn a lot along the way to make your next project even better. If anyone has any recommendations, comments or feedback please share. I'd love to expand and update where necessary so it's truly helpful to people.

I too often use Unread Content or something similar, although I definitely wouldn't mind a 'hot topic' or 'new featured' type of thing to highlight content from some boards over others.

Yes, I've used a couple of the latest versions due to timing of the projects(5.2 - 5.4). We use a dozen or so various CMS' and similar softwares for our clients but Statamic is one we use frequently for smaller sites, and it's based on Laravel and the creator was a speaker at a recent Laracon. As for JavaScript frameworks the one I know the best is probably Angular. And yes, I'm actually slowly moving my companies' deploy process to be repository based(they didn't use repositories at ALL when I took over last year T.T). So now we use bitbucket and one by one when I get the time to do so I've been moving the old projects into there. Congratulations, that's really exciting! Hopefully it doesn't get too hot in the summer where you're at. I've heard some miserable stories of being 8-9 months pregnant in awful heat haha.

Thanks! Usually agency work slows down in the summer so if anything I'll probably be more available then. Quite familiar with Laravel, and actually using Phaser on a current project. I also know Bootstrap and while I've never done a project in Vue, I've used other javascript frameworks. Any developer really worth their salt knows how to pick up new stuff though so I don't usually sweat it if I don't know a specific framework going into a project. Congrats on the baby!! You're first or another addition?

I was actually REALLY impressed by this game. I'd been following it for a few years, and received it as a gift for my birthday(it came out right around the same time) so I popped it into my PS4 and it's fantastic. I tend to be slow to complete open world games, and while there is a lot to do it doesn't feel too overwhelming. I'd say it's a little more story focussed then some of the open world's I've played (Like Fallout 4 for example) but the sheer size of some of the beasts, the contrast between the different areas you explore and the level of detail the writers put into the npc's you talk to all really impressed me. I don't think I'm even half way through it yet but it's a really beautiful game. I do recommend trying it. I kind of feel like if you were to take elements of the Last of Us, FarCry 4 and Fallout 4 and mix them together with some pretty epic robotic enemies that's essentially this game.

Oh thanks!!

a little about me: I'm mostly known online and in gaming communities as Syn or Syntax. I've been a developer and building games and things since I was about 13, so it's been about 11 years. I went to college for Computer Science, and I've been working in Marketing and Web Development industry at a professional non-freelancer level for just under 5 years. I'm currently the Lead Developer at my company, and as stressful as my job can be sometimes I love it. My free time is mostly spend perusing the internet, taking care of my micro-farm and pets, and any kind of game playing. I love picking up side projects, every project is a chance to learn and expand my knowledge and there's just something about gaming projects that I get really passionate about. If you would like any examples of my work please reach out to me. I'd like to cater my portfolio or samples to what you're looking for since I've done a wide range of things. I can also provide my LinkedIn profile as a resume on request. a little about what i do: Specifically my expertise is in web applications. I am very familiar with working responsively, and with API's. Due to the nature of Web Agencies, I've touched pretty much every web stack out there at least once, but I heavily prefer LAMP(PHP) and MEAN(Node.js) and Ruby stacks. I do not usually shy away from new technologies either. New Development - I'm happy to go from planning stages to launch on projects. Research and planning is probably one of my favorite stages of development because that's where a lot of the problem solving comes in, but seeing a project through to completion is so incredibly rewarding. Maintenance/Continued Development - Another benefit of working in Web Agencies is the experience you get with projects you work with that you didn't build. Picking up where someone left off isn't always the ideal situation, but is often necessary and is something I'm able and willing to do. I may require some discovery work before agreeing to anything however. Peeking behind the curtain to see the state of the code in the project is usually extremely helpful when I'm trying to determine quotes, feasibility or just making honest recommendations. Consulting - Consulting is useful for project ideas or examining current assets. It's often helpful to get quotes about features and the level of complexity of a project before dedicating a lot of resources to it. I'm also happy to evaluate current projects for security concerns, value, general quality or potential needs. Retainer - If you're working on a tight budget, or don't need a developer often but want someone you can call if something goes wrong or to make occasional updates then we can talk about retainers. It's basically a prepaid block of time that can be one-time or recurring. Then as you need bug fixes, updates, the retainer basically guarantees I'll be available for that number of hours for you when needed. Template Coding - I don't do these as often but front end work(HTML/CSS/JavaScript) is another area I enjoy working in. I can take Sketch/Photoshop files and create a responsive set of PHP or HTML templates for a website or for sale. Managed Hosting - Basically a monthly or yearly cost and I will take care of the hosting responsibilities, server management, networking and domain/SSL management and installation. a little about the cost: My rate is heavily dependent on the technology I'm working with and starts at $15/hour. I try to work within budgets whenever possible and the rate I provide is negotiable but I will also be realistic with you about what you're asking for. My process usually includes a discovery point where I interview you or ask you a ton of questions about your project, goals, priorities, etc. and then I'll provide an hourly estimate along with my rate and the total cost. I do build contingency time into my estimates and only bill for what I actually spend time doing, so the majority of my projects cost less than my estimates but that contingency time is non-negotiable because I don't bill more than what I estimate for projects. a little bit more: As a general rule of thumb I do not take partial ownership as payment for projects I work on. Of course there are always exceptions but chances are I'm not going to be interested in that kind of arrangement unless the project is already live and generating money(even if it's not profitable). My available hours vary slightly depending on how busy I am at work, but for the most part I have a decent amount of time to work on other projects every week that are mostly in the evening and weekends. My job is very flexible though, so if something emergency-level happens I am almost always available to handle it. If you have any questions, feel free to message me. I don't bite!

Currently have a game in development, and my choice for server side code is PHP + Laravel. I've been a web dev for many years and I prefer this setup partially because it's the most comfortable for me, but also because I've found it to be a nice balance of fast development with not a lot of bugs. I like Ruby on Rails but it can get too automagickal for me. It can be nice, but it's not a lot of fun when things start going wrong, plus I've found it to be much more painful to deal with Ruby that's 5+ years old vs. PHP.

Thanks all, it's good to see some familiar faces among the new ones. Love the look of the forum, very clean! @PaulSonny I see you have a programmer tag, what's your language of choice?