I got my Astahost account in hopes of making a multi-player, online, text-based game in real time. What I need help with is the programming side of things, a little advice really. I talk to the maker of a similar type game that I play, and he suggested I learn PHP with MySQL and ASP, and I cant really remember if he said anything else. I have been playing around a little with PHP and only dabbled with MySQL, but I know nothing of ASP except that it stands for Active Server Pages.

So basically, the advice I'm looking for is, what kinds of scripting/coding would people think I should use for this type of game? I plan on having a shoutbox somewhere, some kind of forum-like thing, it would have many menus to choose from with sub-catagories. There would be pictures involved also, and definitly it would need a registration/login page and some way to track users. There is more involved, but its late and I'm getting sleepy. With that info, what do people think? Maybe I'm asking to much, but thanks for any input.

The languages needed in my opinion would be PHP and MySQL at least, also some javascript would inhance the interface making it more playable and easier to navigate.

You can do most things with the php and mysql, the forum, login (And registration) page, so really you need ideas to make it happen.

The shoutbox would be pretty easy to code with php and flat files (No real need for a database there). It also depends on what style game you plan to make. RPG, some other text based games?

That is probably the bare minimum of what you'd need as far as the programming side goes

-HellFire

As far as I can tell, I should say that at the minimum, PHP and MySQL should be sufficient. In terms of MySQL, learning few of the DDL (Data definition) and DML (Data modicication) and ofcourse the SELECT statement should be sufficient. It would not be required for indepth knowledge.

But, in the end, it is hard to say, because, from your post, it seems like you yet do not have the design finilized. By design, I mean the gameplay. You would need to come up with strong design of how you want the game play to take place, and what should be accompanied by each action performed by the user. Having such a desing, would help you decide on what else you would be needing apart from PHP and MySQL.

My advice to you would be, atleast whip out your Notepad, write down all the things you think should go into the design and start refining it. Something more you can do is, put what you have designed here in the forums and there would be many here who would help you refine things up.

Of course a good knowledge of HTML is necessary, and CSS would help. Personally, I would make the registration/login etc. first, so that you have a starting point from which to test from.
I would save the shoutbox/forum until the end, as they are not too hard to implement and you really don't need them. You could even download PHPBB or some other such forum engine. TagBoard is a nice shoutbox type thing, and I'm sure you could find some more if you just Google it (or use whatever search engine you like). Of course, like HellFire said, it's really quite simple as long as you know the languages.

Goto Mccodes.com
That is an Source script for online-text based Rpg.

You will need good knowledge of javascript, PHP, MySQl, HTML
To make New things for the game.

I have seen that been done with flash, you can make an online multiplayer game and chat and things. But the game you make with flash won’t be a game like UT2004 obviously, it will be a game like chest or something. But you will need you right action scripts to do that.

Personally, I don't like text-based games, I prefer some kind of movement , but if you want to go that way, don't choose ASP, as it will only run on a Windows server (don't think it will run on Astahost server, correct me if I'm wrong). PHP and MySql are the basics, so you might start off with that. That will give you the "game engine", that is, the functions and tools to do it, but as it was pointed out before, you really need to know WHAT you want your game to do. It's not the same to have a strategy game like Ogame than a RPG game, or a mafia game.
Apart from this, you should also pay attention to layout and graphics. You may come up with a great game, but unattractive visually. So get at least a basic knowledge of CSS, a good graphics program, even better if you have nice images, and some flares of AJAX will spice it up a bit.

Well, I also don't think it will run on Astahost, but also I think that it is good that it cannot execute. Anyway, I just wanted to say that it is possible to execute ASP or ASP.NET on a Linux Server using Apache web server software, but as I remember there are some issues, so rather leave it for Windows. ;D

I also say that PHP and MySQL for programming is enough, but automatically using those you need to know html, css, js and maybe xml and ajax in the future. Text games are fun, not so long ago, for university I needed to create something using REXX language, the Regina-Rexx and I created a text adventure game in the style of monkey island, but everything was running in console/shell. It was quite fun, especially to play with ascii art and programming. The hardest thing for me was to to write into the text files all the dialogs, conversations, actions, information about available things and the worst case, when you write:

use bottle
with what? picture bed drawer
picture

I think that is a stupid idea

and my "engine" was written in a such way that I needed to create a text for every such action available.. ohh.. but it is written only in my mother-tongue, Lithuanian.

Well... PHP with mySQL can do pratically ANYTHING ... If you use then you could make a game ... But if you use Java , flash , ASP , JSP , CGI would help much too ... Php is better just for * text * games ... You can add images too , but won't be very easy... I sugest to download some free php text-based game scripts on Hotscripts and learn a bit about php text-based game making ; or just edit a game script to make your game ... Good Luck

Pogramming on note pad
Advice About Making A Text Based Game

Replying to Vyoma

Hi, I'm into programming but know just enough HTML to get by and very little php but other than that I know next to no programming languages. I'm interested in the classic games like Elite (pardon my spelling)and I was wondering if it would be possable to create even basic text based games or DOS games on note pad. Also would you know of any programming languages I would need to know as I am fairly new to this?

Cheers :)

-reply by Jinfox91