Framework for PBBGs? – DB Planning
Good day all.
I don’t know if I mentioned it here, but I am looking into creating a framework for PBBGs using PHP. This is not only to help myself create games but to make it easier others to start to create their own games.
What the first problem you think of when you think of making a framework for games? For me it was databases. We all approach these differently, and will want different info to be stored. After a bit of thinking, the easiest way to do something like this would be to put objects of data into the database and have your code know the schema of the info.
Doing some searching it seems Google beat me to the punch with this idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigTable
So this gives me the impression its plausible to do what I’m thinking, but is it really efficient? Can it be done is such as way so that each call isn’t grabbing ALL the info related to a player. The goal would be to return a query then to deserialize it. And not to perform string manipulations on it during the query.
Let me give an example of the problem of having all of ones data in a single object.
You have 5 stats, experiences, weapons, armour, magic, a guild, quests, inventory, gold, friends, mail, an attack history…
I think you start to get the point. That’s a large amount of info when you only want your players names and id. I can think of a number of problems for using a large scale solution like bigtable, but is there a way to keep a similar structure on a smaller scale?
To make descent framework for games, the DB needs to be incredibly flexible and this is the only thing that comes to mind when I try to think of a solution.
So for you all DB guru’s out there, what are your thoughts? Can it be done? I will try to put more thought into it over the weekend.
Also, does anyone know of any good database stress testing tools?
Themes changes
Sorry for all the changes. I don’t really like any of the default themes that are offered so I am constantly torn. I am going to leave it with this until I either get a paid account or my own server to host the blog on.
Can Flash be used for PBBGs?
In short, I think the answer is yes and I will explain myself as I write this post.
This post is in response to a comment by jmucchiello on another post. He has suggested that I write this, and since I have been looking for topics, here it is.
Lets define what a PBBG is.
A persistent browser-based game, or PBBG, is a computer game that satisfies the following two criteria:
- It is browser-based. The game is played over the Internet using only a web browser.
- It is persistent. Progress in the game is achieved over multiple playing sessions.
PBBGs merge the depth and longevity of an application-based game with the accessibility and portability of a browser-based game. PBBG can be spoken as pee-bee for brevity.
And by extension should not involve being continuously connected to the host system
Busy – Looking for idea’s
Hey all. Just a little update to let everyone know I am still alive. I’ve been rather busy the last few weeks working for RasiedMedia and doing some freelance. Hopefully I will be getting a new laptop soon (hopefully in about a month or two) which will increase productivity for me.
Anyways, I was thinking about ‘advanced’ gaming features to develop in my free time in PHP/Actionscript. Anyone have some idea’s they are willing to share? I’m thinking I may try to tackle a crafting system and a quest building system. These both would be targeted to RPGs and likely will use a flash interface since I like flash and think I can make use of it for games. I know I could use AJAX but I don’t know javascript so Flash it is.
But back to the topic. If you have some suggestions for some features I can try to build them. If I do, I will make the code available. I probably will do the same with the quest and crafting systems if I get them working the way I want.
