Indie-Resource.com

I found this tutorial today which shows step by step how to build a brower game using Smarty and Bootstrap, and tries to make it accessible to absolute beginners. There is a demo game up, and the completed game is on Github. I thought this tutorial would be great for those who would like an intro into using frameworks for browser games.

http://makingbrowsergames.com/basic-bro ... -tutorial/

Honestly I would not pick smarty for a web game. You could do something really similar just with plain PHP and have a lighter game at the end. Also, if I would design a text we game I would still go for an ajax or websocket game and not a click and load one anymore.

This is great! Even if there are better ways of doing things, for beginners it is wonderful.

I loathe smarty. Not saying any more

However this is a great way for people to learn frameworks!

Some of the browser game engines I've worked with use Smarty which was a huge headache for me. This basic tutorial was exactly what I needed to wrap my head around some things. I do agree that using plain php and keeping the html separate is probably much better than using a framework like Smarty, but since people will come across it again (and again...and again) it might help to at least know the basics. The demo game looks pretty nice too, and the bootsrap makes it responsive which could help android game developers.

I wrote a tutorial for player avatars using their tutorial game engine. This is my first coding tutorial I ever wrote, and I did it just as much to teach myself as to teach others. I did everything on my own wamp server to make sure the code was working properly. My next step will be to learn how to do dynamic avatars with equipped items, and once I get that nailed down, I'll do a tutorial for that too. I definitely learned a lot about using Smarty, and I'm probably a little closer to understanding frameworks in general. Here's the link to my avatar tutorial:

http://forums.makingbrowsergames.com/sh ... php?tid=48

Whelp, their site went down, and I kinda expected it to as no one logged in to the forums to answer questions and they were getting lots of spam. I kinda wished I had downloaded the tutorials so I could re-post them here for those who want to learn to use smarty and bootstrap. Their demo game was kinda nice, and I'll probably put up my demo, and if people are interested, I might try to remember the tutorials and reverse engineer some of them, then create my own. It really was a nice little game engine, and with others contributing, it could make a spiffy looking web game. It already had most stuff we need like registration, stats, a pvp system, exploring and fighting random monsters, and training your character skills. While it's not fully MVC, the templating system made the code very organized, separating php from the html, and it was easy to find stuff and know what it was for and why it was there. It would make a great foundation for new game designers who are learning to program to get their feet wet, and since it's so small, it would make a good community project too with more tutorials and adding in features.