Browser Based Game Creator

[hallsofvallhalla]

With all the hits to my videos, sites, downloads, ect.. I just have to look at the possibility of a browser game creator. Much like Realm Crafter, Torque, RPGMamker, ect.. except for text based browser games.
1. Could it be done?
2. Could it be sold?
3. Would it be popular?
4. Could you get it dynamic enough to keep it from being a cookie cutter?

my answers
1. Yes, easier than one might think
2. According to the thousands of people I have already seen interested in making a browser based text game, I would say yes, people would pay $20 or more.
3. We have already got community and a channel to get the engine out there, i would say yes.
4. This would be the toughest one. You would have to either have several startes(mafia, quests, farm, ect..) or just make a base the user builds from.

I think this would be a money making opportunity and be a way for someone to get their name out there, but It would be some massive work. Solo could take a while, a group of truly committed devs could pull it off faster but everyone would have to committed. No slackers.

Does make one wonder.

[Genaga]

To be honest it could all be done and pretty fast. Nothing is incredibly hard on it the only main issue is security.

[hallsofvallhalla]

eh i wouldn't say fast or easy. Not a true dynamic creator. You are talking about basing a system on multiple different types of games and routing all the variables and major features to a dynamic system set by the user.

[Jackolantern]

One way to do it would be to develop it as an application that starts with the skeleton of a PHP MMO, and then edits that skeleton and adds to it based on editing decisions made in the GUI. The GUI could either be a desktop-based application, or it could be web-based itself and offer download links to the user's prepared PHP files and instructions on how to add them to a web server on demand. The latter would likely be a better option if it was a commercial editor, since the former would be very difficult to control. This would likely be a fairly time-consuming project because of all the text parsing.

Of course another way would be to basically have a game page and a web-based game editor backend that alters the database. However, this would be more limited without having any code parsing functionality, since the logic would be more difficult to change based only on database data.

And even another way to do it would be like #2, but add a series of include commands to separate PHP files. Those PHP files would contain the customizable logic of the game and the users would be given those for manual altering (like writing scripts for Torque or BWT). This would give the best of both worlds as far as customization (both point'n'click GUI database manipulation and customizable game logic), but it would require PHP knowledge from the users.