Browser Game Maker

[hallsofvallhalla]

My thoughts often go back to building a browser game game maker. Now it is not exactly what it sounds like.

My idea is to build a program, using C#, that you input the name of your site or game, name the stats, resources, ect.. add in pictures, and then click build and it builds and places in a folder everything from the style sheet to the login page, to the database, to pretty much a running game. PHP and Javascript that is.

After the project is built you then use the program to edit the maps, equipment, and style of the game. It would basically be a good game starter. It could eventually have several types of games to choose from.

Comments? Would it be valuable?

[Torniquet]

Sounds like a good idea, but imo it would only make the lazy lazier.

People would reel off game after game in different genres n what not just to make money. There would be no work involved and no originality

[Gustava]

Def. the lazy factor like he said.

Just an idea here, if you the game maker was sort of linked to your tutorial on browser games..customizable template they could enter in info, but after going through the videos and doing some of the work themselves to see how it's done, they could continue where the game maker would cut off and add their own features..edit things..etc.

I have seen a company with a sort of browser game maker, not sure if they are in business anymore..there's looked pretty good I would have to say, but after a couple hundred people did it the market was flooded with the same thing. More as a learning tool if you wanted to go that way it probably would be pretty awesome for newer developers trying to create something and having that motivation to keep going after they have a structure put in place to build upon I guess..

Anyways, just a few thoughts :p

[Jackolantern]

The "lazy factor" has been mentioned several times. Every time a new game engine is about to come out for a new genre, people are worried that it will allow cheap game after cheap game with no originality to come out. But that never happens. People said that Realm Crafter would create a sea of similar MMORPGs, and non-developer players would see one and say "There is another RC game!". But to date only a couple of games were ever made with it. The same goes even for engines that don't have large asset requirements, such as some of the easier to use MUD engines.

Why don't they cause a storm of games to flood out? For one, because it still takes a lot of effort to create something worth playing. "Lazy devs" are still out of luck. Second, the engine does not market the game for the player. It either takes a lot of luck to make a popular game that makes money, or a decent marketing budget. A cookie-cutter game made by a supposed "lazy, unoriginal dev" will have neither and no one will ever know it was even made.

I would not worry about engines lowering the barrier to entry. Real developers who actually have a chance of anyone knowing their game will just put that much more effort into the content. Having more engines that do more things is never, and has never, been a bad thing.

[hallsofvallhalla]

agreed, and the maker would not build the entire game, only get the project started. Would build all the log and registration and database. A easy start to a browser game.

[Xaleph]

Why not as an eclipse addon? That way you can provide an (semi) good IDE as well. And, if done well, if the engine itself is solid structural good ( MVC/MVP) you can even provide default interface options. Eclipse also comes with a design tab ( like DW ) however, this design tab is custom made, meaning you can add whatever you want. Not like Tables or Divs but real interface items, like menu`s or maps. You can go back to code view and bind maps to popups or bind tree items to pages et cetera. Definitely potiontal there, however, building an engine is not an easy job, let alone an interface for it.

[Jackolantern]

Why not as an eclipse addon? That way you can provide an (semi) good IDE as well. And, if done well, if the engine itself is solid structural good ( MVC/MVP) you can even provide default interface options. Eclipse also comes with a design tab ( like DW ) however, this design tab is custom made, meaning you can add whatever you want. Not like Tables or Divs but real interface items, like menu`s or maps. You can go back to code view and bind maps to popups or bind tree items to pages et cetera. Definitely potiontal there, however, building an engine is not an easy job, let alone an interface for it.

What about going the route that prominent PHP engines have gone and make it like their scaffolding tools, where it would be a command-line-based application that, with a few parameters (or a couple of configuration files), can create all of the setup needed, such as files, folders, database schemas, etc.? That would allow plugins to be made for any IDE that will interface with the command-line tools (the same way it works for Zend Framework), while still allowing those command-line tools to be used directly by devs either using an unsupported IDE or not using one.

[Callan S.]

What I would love for just a utility is something that keeps track of all the variables your drawing upon on a page and it fills out the mysql query and turns them into usable variable itself, automatically. You just have to type in the variables! And also when you want to write something, it'll fill out all that. So if I want $playermoney+=1;, I can just type that and it'll do all the database code itself. So I can just focus on the numbers!

Oh, and if the utility kept track of all of the variables you have, you could just click on which ones a particular page uses, that'd be simplify things too.

[hallsofvallhalla]

Firebug?

[Callan S.]

Maybe? Perhaps I was a bit off topic and this idea is more a set game design (with names and graphic changes) and then once users have the code they can mod that?