Indie-Resource.com

Hi everyone,

Ever since i joined this community i`ve been trying to create a small browser based game. I did manage to get a basic game set up, however i cannot find the time to finish it, and since my last edit was over 5 weeks ago, i doubt i`ll finish it. Anyway, did want to post some screens i made, just to show i did not do nothing in the time heheh.

If anyone likes, you can finish it, i`ll give the code and resources. I`t all pre alpha i suppose so you can do pretty much anything you want with it.

http://img5.imageshack.us/i/ov1h.jpg/
http://img802.imageshack.us/i/ov3v.jpg/
http://img148.imageshack.us/i/ov2k.jpg/
http://img156.imageshack.us/i/ov4b.jpg/
http://img268.imageshack.us/i/ov5z.jpg/

Wow, looks nice! Was that a template you downloaded, or did you make that yourself? Regardless, all the GUI elements look nice!

i did it pretty much all my self, since i could not find any resources. All of the UI elements are self made, with the exception of the mail/post icon. The background is loosely based on a tutorial i found, same goes for the menu background i suppose. The rest is made up of stock images.

wow looks real nice

The visuals are awsome, loved it! I really think you should finish it

Thanks, all, but meh i don`t feel up to it. It`s harder then it looks, or let me say it differently. it`s a lot __MORE__ work then it looks. Where a normal website could have dynamic controller set up, here, this is impossible. So that means every function/controller/model and view has to be created. You don`t want to know how big one of the models has gotten heh.

Anyway, i think i`m gonna try something new, but i`m not going to be writing my own framework. It takes ages to get something set up. Instead, i`m going to look into either CakePHP or CodeIgniter. Both Zend and Symphony are too big. ( Cake is kinda big too.. )

Anway, i looked at the structure of the frameworks, they work a bit the same ( CI and Cake ) however, there are some distinct differences between both. For one, CI is not truly MVC ( neither is Cake , but it`s works OK ) and Cake has scaffolding. Naming conventions of Cake are better, ( CI barely has any )

However, i do like the easy setup in CI. Don`t get me wrong, both CI and Cake work outside of the box, however, once you are configuring your application, CI just works, whereas Cake needs a bit more readjusting of config.

Cake is almost as bulky as Symfony, and my own benchmarks showed it as being slower, but all were slower than CI. Of course that is because CI is the most lightweight of all of them, while Zend is the heaviest. Some of the objects it must load to serve a simple page are near 200kb.

And I actually like the few naming conventions. I am still not convinced that CoC is the end-all, be-all of web development because I have gotten very few benefits from it thus far (in fact, accidentally not following a convention can be one of the hardest debugs you have ever dealt with in your life). Most web apps that would require framework are so complex that a simple 1 view = 1 controller = 1 model relationship is going to be impossible. This means you are going to be spending most of your time calling them by name, so why not start off with a framework that is designed to work that way?

Try KOhana, i built a game with it.

All true Jack, then again, i never claimed any of the aformentioned frameworks wouldn`t do it. But i guess you are right, Cake has been scraped from the list, i`m still not sure what to use next, i started working in symphony, and the debug tool they have is really nice, finally a stacktrace comparible to more OO languages.

However, i do like the speed of CI, i actually created a simple video site where you can upload video`s or add some youtube video`s. It took me 2 days lol. Complete with admin panels and a user community for comments et cetera.

Anyway, i don`t know what to choose for the next project. I guess it`s going to be CI.

I really enjoy CI. It is simple, lightweight, doesn't enforce styles that won't work with your project, and is so flexible that you can even use it with HTML5. With most other heavy-weight frameworks you are at the mercy of either the development cycle to add HTML5 features, or code it yourself. Even if you have no interest in HTML 5, it is nice to know it is so flexible you could use it in almost any way you wanted to.

Kohana is good, too, from what I hear. Kohana is actually a fork off of CodeIgniter that came about when the members of the community felt that CI had died somewhere pre-1.0, I think. No bug fixes, no new features, etc. Of course CI has exploded, and has reached greater heights of popularity than it ever has before. Its community has also grown to the point that the community could likely carry CI on no problem if a lag in its development was ever to occur again (not that I think that will ever happen, as CI is quickly becoming one of the most popular PHP frameworks available today).