Boltgreywing

@Nate: Wait a minute wasn't the games directory already in the same location already? So let me get this straight. All the time and energy I spent putting these updates in for the blog, not to mention getting it setup mean diddly? So that means I have start this all over again?

Say does anyone know where the gameclubs moved too? I can't find them anywhere now. They are no longer under the games section.

@Zrcalo: I am using Webaim pro which tells me which colors to use and which not to use. If it doesn't say pass on all 4 fields then I don't use it, because it becomes impossible to see. http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ So I then take the time to develop a list of colors that will work and go from there. It might not be the greatest but I notice that blues and greens tend to be the norm.

When a user initially creates an account on Duelingpets they will start off with the default color applied to the site itself. However if they don't like the color they can then change color using the Add Avatar and Edit Browser button. When they do so they will come up to a screen that looks like this: In the bottom of the screen there is a colorscheme drop down box that by default holds the default color as you can see just now. Instead we are going to change the colorscheme by using the drop down arrow and selecting High-Contrast. For the purposes of this demo we will just be using High-Contrast color. However in later builds there might be even more options. The users themselves could potentially create a color choice of their own and select the color they wish and it would change to that. Now that we got High-contrast all we need to do is click the update userinfo button and our new colorscheme will be applied. After we click the update button our new interface will now look like this: Now you can see we are now looking at the high-contrast view of the page of the user profile. However this change doesn't just only affect the user profile but other pages as well. Stats: The entire site gets converted to the new colorscheme only viewable by the current user who changed it. The other users keep the default color they start off with. So users can have whatever colorscheme they wish to without being restricted to the color of the site. If on the other hand a colorscheme winds up getting deleted at some point they will then revert to the default colorscheme if that were to happen. Now this next screen will show only the current user the information of how he designed his pallete as well as the ability to edit and delete said pattern. The code itself to change colors is all in hexadecimal from 0-f which proceeded by a # symbol. This number symbol is important along with the number of digits that need to be in place for this system to work. When a user destroy a color pallete that he is currently using he defaults back down to the default color like so: When the user clicks okay their screen then looks like this: As you can see they have been returned to the default color. On top of that every user who used this color was also returned back to the default at the same time. This is a safety precaution to prevent the website from crashing should a user's colorscheme get deleted while still providing for colorblind to access the site itself. This code is still in development and their is still many bugs for me to fix. This only works if the colorscheme is deleted by the user or admin. If a user's account gets deleted thats where things will get dicey as there will be more then one colorscheme that will be destroyed as well as needing to change multiple different users using each of the various ones. This could break the site itself if not handled correctly and might require backend administration which will most likely have to be done manually if things do indeed go wrong. This will require a lot of time and sweet on my part to make certain every users colorscheme is not null and is instead the Default color. So any questions? View full news

Bouncy is a relatively simple game with 3 walls, a paddle, and a ball. Each time the ball is hit by the player it will get progressively faster. However the speed of the ball will eventually hit a max ceiling that will border on Battletoads Orange Hard Difficulty. If you can survive that long you will earn a huge amount of points from it. You will only have one life in this game, if you miss the ball once the game ends. There will be calming music during the beginning portion of the game but the music will change as the speed of the ball increases. Eventually you will hear this: When you hear this you are at the max difficulty rating. A timer will begin to count down and if you survive that long you will be labeled a grand master. Maybe in future builds you will have to deal with walls coming in and baddies. While this is nice and all there are going to be many technical limitations I will have to overcome: Collision Detection which will be pretty much my worse enemy, and will need to be as precise as possible for this gameplay to work. Without this working the game will be unplayable. This will probably require a lot of outside knowledge and help. I don't have any money to pay for this as I don't do money transactions online. Not to mention that basically every single game through the history of video games requires collision detection. Graphic generation will also be a problem. I will need to display graphics to the screen which is a big challenge if I do this in C++. Number counter will be a relatively smaller problem. The number counter will keep score of how many points the user has recieved and as such will be of lower priority. Music will most likely be a optional feature for the very first iterations and might not be added till later but something that could still trip me up.

@Corsair: Maybe try to draw something small like a bat or a mouse? What about something like this to help out a bit?

@Design1online: I am not going to expect them to help me build the next big 3d game or an even better game then Megaman. I have taken a couple of online courses they are pretty useful. I want to start on something small or maybe help out another user on a project to get some knowledge. I'd like to make something simple like maybe pong, snake, or Gorrilas(Qbasic) starting out. I will give your blog a look as well as the game development courses. I like recieving knowledge as well as sharing knowledge of what I know with other users to help make their games better.

@Design1online: Well I guess it wouldn't hurt for me to check though. One of my goals for my pet site would eventually be to develop my own minigames on my own. While adding an existing one might make me feel better in the short term it doesn't really help me that much in the long run. I need to gain confidence in designing games with other peoples help first before I shoot off on my own. I want to feel comfortable that I can do something on my own rather then rely on someone else to provide the work. Its kind of like fishing. While you could potentially catch all the fish you want for me, it would help me if I can catch the fish on my own.

@Design1online: Doesn't that count as stealing?

@Nova: I have the high-contrast option right now almost officially working on my local computer. It still has a few bugs that need ironning out.

@SugarFoxKym: Speaking of neopets I just made a whopper sale: Transaction Result 1 1000 shares of MPC Sold 1000 shares of MPC for 121000 NP. 2 799 shares of MPC Sold 799 shares of MPC for 96679 NP. 3 1000 shares of TNPT Sold 1000 shares of TNPT for 99000 NP. 4 799 shares of TNPT Sold 799 shares of TNPT for 79101 NP. Nigel the Chia charges 20 NP as commission. Summary : You had 336 NP. After 4 successful transactions, you have 396096. I originally had bought them at 16 - 17 points range

I received a lot of feedback through my suggestions feature on the old site that there is not a lot of things to do beside pet battling. Some suggested that maybe I add a couple of minigames to my virtual pet site. Others suggested that I might allow pets to befriend other pets. I am kind of a bit worried about my skills as a game designer. I been through about 4 tutorials or more from various users on game development. I have tried my hand at least 3 games and each has pretty much burned up in flames. I had a Sonarbat java project that I was really proud of but I ran into technical limitations due to a lack of understanding of collision detection and my character would pretty randomly fall through the floor as soon as he would jump, he sometimes get stuck in walls and glitch through certain sections of the stage. I was not able to get very far with and the time I spent on getting the music and colors on the pet wound up being totally worthless. The second project I attempted was to try porting it to C++ instead since I know that a bit better. Unfortunately I ran into many issues with that as well. I can't even get text to appear on the screen or get anything that I had in java working in c++. My third project that I attempted was an old text based adventure game which it almost ended but I wound up getting that even wrong. This has kind of lead me to kind of question my abilities as a developer and I feel very discouraged because of the projects I was not even able to get working. I really like to just get at least one project that is successful even if it is just a clone of the simplest thing imaginable. I have a bit more pressure on myself because my users have told me that they want minigames added to the site itself? How am I even suppose to do this even if I can't even code a simple text based adventure correctly? I know this is not something I can manage on my own and I need someone who can help me to build a minigame together. Its why I need someone is a bit more of an expert at this. While I know flash games are good and all, I'd like to eventually build a c++ game in addition to the flash game so that if a user is on a mobile device they can still play games even if their phone doesn't support flash. Will you guys help me pretty please?

@Hare: I think this might be pretty helpful. @Nova: That is something I am going to have to figure out. I now have accessibility to a 64 color pallete that has fifteen dark colors and 32 light colors. So that will give a bit more versatility. I am working on a new one of 125 pallete with 58 light colors. Each time I make new discoveries the default color will change to the next one up. I have css now hooked up to a mysql database which I am currently testing.

@Digital: I do agree with what they mentioned. My plan is to make items consumable by having a type of drop down counter that starts at x and drops to 0 whether they eat it, or use it in battle. The quest idea is a nice idea but I don't know how to implement something like that yet. For example if an item is like close to 1 and the user doesn't want it anymore then they give it to an npc who gives points in exchange for it.

@Nova: The main problem is if I don't have it by default then the color blind people will not be see anything on the site at all. I am trying to plan for color blind people first and if a normal user would like to change it later than can as well. One of the big reasons I am not a fan of white against blue is its a bit too grating. Its too bright. @Hare: how do the color blind use the site if it is not designed for them by default if they can't see the buttons or links?

@Anoua: I do like the idea of items being consumable even weapons and armor. @Pepper-Head: I don't really have quest items, for my site I want every item I have to have a purpose and not have any form of junk item. Junk items as dung and rotten apples sound boring. However if they can be used as maybe a type of fertiler for a farm or such then I might consider it. The way i see my site is one who's items where out over time regardless if they are rare or common.

@Anoua: My big problem is how do I say take for example gray color aaaaaa and replace it with 0000ff? I am developing a color scheme that kind of obosoletes everything here. What is it does is css color: <%= getColorAtribute("Header") %> What this does is take the rubyfied version of this color and apply it to css on the fly.

@Cybura: Sometimes the biggest creators of drama at times are the pet site owners themselves and not the members of the site itself. One needs to learn to be a bit more tactful as well as to try avoid using the word drama in this type of circumstances as it is a relatively overused word. If one tries to restrict content of news too much the site itself can become a type of Dictatorship. Information needs to flow whether it is good or bad but it should do so in a way that doesn't generate bias on either end. It needs to state the facts of both sides to show the opinions of each one. A news writer must have no bias regardless of the outcome. One must be cautious to not create a mountain from a molehill. Your emotions as a petsite owner Cybura need to be kept in check otherwise you can paint your website as a bad picture. Your leader of it and need to remain calm and gentle even when things are out of your control.

I heard of people using point sinks and point sources to balance the economy. However what should a pet site owner do if they have too many items in the economy? How does one get rid of the excess items? I heard mentioned that item sinks are important in getting rid of an overflow of items. How often are these things used? I am thinking of implementing an item sink that exchanges the items for points and having the items themselves decay after each use. Once the durability of an item hits 0 it is removed from the economy. How do pet site owners handle too many items in an economy?

@Digital: I don't know how to create a grayscale base. @Pepper-Head: I don't really have a content page available as I haven't applied these settings yet. I'd like to avoid grey on grey as I heard from some older people that they can't distinguish between two closely related gray colors. I could add white for the text portions. I want something that doesn't shine too much. @Anoua: I don't really know how to operate in this environment or how to colorize grayscale colors on the fly.

I am working on a new pet formula. I am thinking of 1:4 ratio for atk,spd,def and a 1:26 ratio for hp. I like the atk,def,and spd values. The restriction is that only 2 fields can be the same and the other field needs to be either higher or lower than the others. My big problem is with finding a formula for damage section. My current damage max is 13 for level 2, level 3 it is 31, level 4 is 57 and level 5 is 91. Can you help me find a method to find a good formula to the damage?

@Navy: Well I heard a lot of feedback that a couple of bots were ruining the rps that my users were doing as well as the chatting aspect. They told me in no discrete terms please get these things out of here.

@Pepper-Head: Its for color blind users. I am starting with the most restrictive color patterns so I kind of leaned to throwing red as a difference otherwise the whole color scheme would have been mixes of just green, and cyan or blue.

@Navy: Bots are pieces of programing that are created by a human that can perform a task without human intervention. Bots come in too types of bots good ones and bad ones. Good bots tend to be helpful to the users and don't get in the way. A welcome bot welcomes new users to the website kind of like what digital bot does to make the users feel kind of at home. Point bots reward users with points if they fave, watch or lama certain type of users. These exist in da. Dahub is a known bot that rewards users. Bad bots tend to be unhelpful or harmful to the user. Spam bots flood the sites with spams of marketing ads and other noncense. They also can target the forum if not stopped. Porn bots flood sites with pictures of peoples private parts from rl in either art, journals or where they can get in. DA is known to have been attacked by these in the past. Sometimes they will post 100 submissions a minute.

I have yet to have had my site go down for nonpayment but i kind of came close to that. I was able to resolve it successfully but my biggest problem is I guess the bots. I believe they kind of discourage users signing up if there is too many of them. One of my biggest advantages to my site is due to the way the code base is structured is that I can take down any feature without affecting the others. This way users can use other parts of the site while repairs or updates are going on. I have a tendency to do a mass update if it is a complete overhaul but most require just one to three database additions. I also have difficulty in marketing the game due to wording that I use as well as my lack of experience in this field. I am not a market person, more of a hobbyist. The petsite is not for me to make money but for others to have an outlet to play at.