need help with planning out my game

[mystd]

My game is already a boardgame I've made, it's lots of fun, played it countless times with my friends. But failed to get it published, so I've decided to make it into a Video Game. I want to go with html5 since it supports almost all devices. I still haven't decided if I should go 2D or 3D hopefully you guys can help out. It's a turn based horror survival game with a master and players the master builds the gamemap while the game is running places traps monsters items etc. and the players try to survive. Its a mix of pen & paper and boardgame, the videogame adaption will be bit different though. Its very bloody, body parts get chopped of etc. so going 2D pixel style would take some of it's horror away which might be not so bad, but all the items and the animating might be faster in 3D. But in 2D it would work on more devices so..... What do you guys think?

Since the game is already master - player based I thought about making it host-client based to take off server load (Is that even possible with html5?), I want to use the server for matchmaking and account creation etc. If not what kind of server/performance do I need per 100 players?
Cheating would be easier then too, but since I'm not made of money I'd rather not spend too much on a server.

I'm currently searching a good library and or engine I can use. I'm pretty new to game dev and hope I can get some tips.
I want to make my game free with donations so a free library/engine would be best. I'll make the game open source, I want the game to be highly customizable, want players to be able to add their own content etc.

[vitinho444]

I never used HTML5 for games, so my opinion will be based on the type of game and the mechanism behind it.

I see there's a master, so your master could be your system, and the traps placement could be pre-determined (But still random). But then each game worked like sessions / rooms, and those rooms where different than the others.

Ok, then you need to be constantly sending information to other players from the other players and from the server.
This might get tricky

Ok.. it's all because i dont know if the game is like monopoly or something?

Good Luck

[mystd]

You'r right all players game sessions need to communicate with each other and/or with a server, every player has his own fog of war anyway. But since it is turnbased it shouldnt be too hard to implement. The question is can I make the master the server or do I need all players to be bound to (my) server.

I need more than luck for this XD My coding skill are pretty basic so it's gonna be lots of hard work. Ill probably start off with some smaller games but this game is my goal.

[vitinho444]

If you do this, it can be very reward(ish?) because a board game turned in a video game it's some serious thing, and if your friends like it, then go ahead start!

About the mechanism.. well.. i got to say.. thinking as if i were you.. hum.. probably it will be a challenging project.

[Jackolantern]

I would probably go 2D, since that is really the way of HTML5. There is not a great cross-platform 3D browser-based solution. There is Unity, but it really doesn't work in the browser on mobile devices. It has to be split up into browser game and platform-specific mobile apps.

You could use node.js and ImpactJS together to create an online multiplayer HTML5 game. Halls is working on a tutorial series here on making node.js and Impact work together to make online games.

[mystd]

I've thought it through and I'll go 2D it's better than doing low poly 3D. I like the old school arcade 2D look anyway ^-^

I'm thinking about doing a small mmo to learn everything since halls has made the tuts. For the future, should I use mysqrl as database for user registrations and/or ingame stats items etc.? Or is it better if I do some file I/O and write it to several files on the server? Like one for user accounts and per user one file for the char and everything that needs saving.

[Jackolantern]

A database will always be superior to file I/O (aka flat files). Databases are tuned for blazing fast and parallel access to data, whereas flat files are not. The simplicity of relational databases such as MySQL today make them the better choice even for small websites, and anything bigger they are a must