Jacob Santos » progress report

Progress Report: 10/19/2005

santosj — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 02:21:50 +0000

City Management:

I completed the city management, which wasn’t that hard since all there is to it is adding the name and changing the taxes. The underlying CRON job code hasn’t been finished yet, but I think I know how I am going to do it. I’m pretty damn sure that people will recognize the system pretty quickly and understand how to exploit it. There will be other stats that work decide how many people will be born and die.

Mining Management:

The CRON jobs still need to be made, but I will work on that when I finish up the other parts of the game. The player can refine their metals and upgrade their mines. I added a feature that should be helpful for upgrading the mines.

Mecha Management:

I want to add what armor and weapons the player has for the mecha suits, but right now there is only the upgrading of the mecha suits. The maximum level upgrading is 50 and I have worked out the prices for upgrading. It is cheaper than upgrading other things but will still be pretty damn expensive.

Metals Market:

I finished the metals market after a long time putting it off. It was easier than that I had thought and it works really well. There are checks to make sure that the player doesn’t take or give more than they should. There are no checks for max values and letting the player buy only what is left. There is also no errors given to the player for doing stuff. I don’t think I will put those in right now and I may wait until the next revision of the RTS mode before I do that.

Armor Market:

The armor market works and it allows maximum buying and selling. It is pretty damn cool, and it requires that you use your own metals to make the armor, this will keep players from buying too many higher level armor suits.

Ranking:

The ranking page displays the players and what they have, the buttons doesn’t work because some of the features aren’t finished yet. I want to add to the display the group and alliance.

To Do:

1. ~~Power Calculations~~
2. ~~CRON Jobs~~
3. ~~Weapons Market~~
4. ~~Attack Log~~
5. ~~Thium Bug in Metal Refining~~

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Progress Report: 10/13/2005

santosj — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:01:40 +0000

RTS

The RTS Prototype is moving along at a fairly quick pace and I should have it done by the end of this week, if not starting the form processing pages to take the game into beta. I have been thinking about extending the RTS version, but currently I can’t think of any good ideas of what I can add to it. Right now I’m just doing a basic RTS version where you grow your army, build your base defenses, and attack other players. The underlying code is a little bit more than that, but that is the general idea.

Besides, perhaps Group and Alliance wars, I can’t really think of anything that it needs. I will be looking for input from beta testers and people playing the game to extend the game. I may extend some parts myself after playing the game for a while and after I get a feel for what parts would be good to extend. I guess that after I make the game I will look at other RTS type of games and see what they do and see if I can’t add it myself to the RTS game.

In the next version I will be looking at adding missions and allowing players to roam the landscape. That would be pretty cool indeed, but right now I don’t have the time frame to complete those features for the RTS version. I did want to connect the RTS version and RPG version, but I may not do that after all. With the current RTS implementation, it is kind of possible to do, with the cities and everything. It would be cool to do it, but it will be at the bottom of my wishlist. I was hoping for a basic RTS version, but not as basic as it is going to be. It does kind of suck at how simple the game will be played.

I should just work to completing what I have planned so far and then look to extending in a new design document. After I complete the game engine I need to work on making both modes work off of the same game types. I also want to try to make the RTS version include computer controlled players to add into the mix. I was thinking of add that to the RPG mode.

Online Members

I need to add online members list to the core Game Engine Features. I was thinking of just listing how many admin members and regular members are online and then have a link to them. Depending on whether they are in the game or not, have the name allow them to attack the player. If in just account viewing, then have the player mail the person. I think it could work off of the member list in some way to simplify coding.

Future Roadmap

The game engine needs to function like a game engine and allow customization. Right now the game is a little too hard coded to be too much use to anyone. I will go through and add the administration pages and make the game more customizable with using MySQL and SQLite. I will eventually switch over the mysql tables to SQLite for the basic account pages. I am still going to use the finished product of the game engine for Heat of the Race and package the game engine for download. I’m not going to sell it because I don’t want to support the game engine. If people like it and want to donate cash for me developing it, then that would be great.

I think the basic tools of the game engine are great and I hope to further the development of the tools. I will keep track of features I want to add and changes I want to make. The game engine is far from being complete and seriously needs more work before I can give it out. The administration pages are nonexistant and I can’t release the game until that and the rest of the core features are finished along with the basic RTS and RPG game modes.

Versioning

Major.Minor.Bug Fix. Security Fix

The Major Rewrite is usually a complete rewrite of all of the game features from a core templating and uses a totally new system of development. The major rewrite will break every other part of the game and cause the game to be remade.

Minor rewrites are for adding new features or changing old features. Features should be bundled into one minor version. If the minor rewrite, rewrites a lot of the core features, then it doesn’t justify a major rewrite, since only a few things would be broken. Minor rewrites should focus on small changes and adding features to be added to the next major rewrite.

Bug Fix name speaks for itself, it will be used for fixing of any bugs in the minor version. Security fixes will have another decimal devoted for it. I don’t think there will more security fixes than bug fixes. If there are then the two will be switched.

1.1

Simple Plug In Feature.

Adding Full Customizablity to Game Engine

Private Messaging: Maximum PM count for Donators and Normal and Folders. Feature Complete (no BBcode through).

Message Board: Feature Complete (no BBcode through).

1.2 – Plug In Filters and Game Events

1.3 – Additions to RTS mode.

Missions

TBD

1.4 – Additions to RPG mode and Changes based off of the Simple Plug In Features.

Spell Handling.

Missions Creation and Handling

TBD

1.5 – New Installer and Plug In Installer.

1.9

Rewrite of core templating system and game features for adding API type features to the code.

Major Assessment of the game engine and its features from Research and Development.

Feature Assessment from Feedback and Self Development of Mecha Asylum and Heat of the Race.

Administration Assessment from Feedback and Self Development.

Work on creating the API tools and modules for version 2.0.

2.0 – Completed Rewrite of the Game Engine from Research and Development of version 1.9 and previous versions.

After version 2.0 is complete, Mecha Asylum and Heat of the Race will also be evolved to the next version of game play and features. I also hope to use version 2 to create two other games and extend the development. I also hope to sell the game engine, if I deem it fit enough to be sold.

I have a very limited time frame for completing the first version, but I want to continue development of the game engine to take it to the next level. Other game engines are being evolved and I don’t want to be left behind. In the world of free game engines, the one that has the most features and ease of development is what succeeds. Also free is great towards the success of the game engines. After Mecha Asylum and Heat of the Race, I will go back to developing the game engine and once the first version is completed, I can use the old pages and features. That way, I can develop and evolve the features from the first version in a quicker fashion than in the first version.

By the second version, I also hope to have most of the version 2 core features finished by the time version 2 comes out. Some of the core features won’t be evolved beyond the basic features. There is only, so much one can do, before you can’t do any more. When that happens, I can look away from that feature and focus on a new one or improving an old one. I continue to debate the Message Board and the use of it. There are many forums that far extend anything I would ever be able to do.

I do need to focus on adding BBCode or something like it to the game engine. I don’t really think it is that important, but it would be something for an API to focus on. For the Message Board, I want to add support for linking to the forum. I suppose the first one would be phpBB, since it is open and free. It would also be the easiest to do because of that. Or I could work on making a skin for it instead. I don’t know, I could just work on making my message board as good as I can and then finalize the features and not work on it any more. When I make the API for it, I can allow the other developers add features to it.

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Progress Report: 9/24/2005

santosj — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:27:56 +0000

Need Admin Pages

Adding/deleting Resources
Adding/deleting Mecha Suits
Managing Game Values for different pages.
Setting values for the market.

Prototype Pages

I have finished the bases prototype and will begin programming the completion to make sure everything works. I think that since the bases pages are stand alone that I can create those pages without having to go back and break things later in the game. If it took a great deal of time to create the design, then I think it should take three times as long for the rest of the stuff. Perhaps not, but some code is going to be extremely complicated and could take a week to complete, if that is the case then I will have to come back to it later. Well, it isn’t that complicated, but I have to test the values to make sure it isn’t too easy and also to make sure it isn’t too hard.

To Do

I do want to get started on the moon and colony prototype pages. If I remember correctly last time then it wasn’t all that long to create them in the last prototype. If I create the colony then I will need to create the group and alliance pages. Which wouldn’t be that bad except I never really thought out how the group and alliance parts would work. I should do some more designs to make sure I don’t screw it up that bad, but I do know what I want to do and how I could do it.

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Mecha Asylum Alpha 3 Progress Report 9/21/05

santosj — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:47:14 +0000

Major work has been finished on administration and SQLite tables. There is still a lot more work to be done on administration, but it is almost at the point where the rest can be logged and continued at a later date. I want to get started on the game and then add to the list of administration pages that need to be created afterwards.

Administration Pages

Activate User
Simple Administrator
Ban IP in Ban User Administration

There will have to be administration pages for the groups and managing the logs. There will come a time to create other management pages for the various parts of the game, but since the game isn’t finished then there isn’t anything else for me to do. I could finish the pages, but they aren’t that important. Well, the second is fairly important, since I wanted it to be finished so that I can give the admin link and control who can view the admin pages.

The first is for viewing who has registered and not activated their account. It is also for testing the register page. It would allow for deleting rows that are invalid.

I finished:

Ban User Administration (User)
Delete User
Manage News (Updates)

Game Pages

Register
Users Online
Sign In

I still have to create these before I start on the game coding. Well, I could start on the game coding and come back to it at a later date. Much rather do it now instead of later. Most of the Sign In code is finshed, I just have to plug it in to the page and debug it. Should work nicely.

I started on the Users Online class and database table, but I never got back to completing it. The other administration details came first.

Most of the game will work with SQLite and MySQL, but most of the game will work with MySQL and SQLite used for administration and other non complicate database stuff. MySQL is extremely powerful in its builtin SQL commands and I don’t want to reinvent the wheel for SQLite. I have tried for somethings already in building the Administration tables. There are some really cool things you can do with MySQL, but then again there are some cool things you can’t do with MYSQL that SQLite does very well.

Simple Administration

It is usually a bad idea to use levels for administration, but the game isn’t going to be that advanced to use a more complex and detailed administration system. I will work out the different level issue at a later time when I decide it is time to work it out and decide which pages will need what levels.

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