My drupal game

Posted by afeijo on May 6, 2010 at 12:02pm

Hi guys, I want to share with the community what I've done in the past 20 months

www.outer-core.com is the game address, built on top of Drupal 6, using naturally jQuery and a few excellent modules available on d.o

It is a Scifi text-based game, with 35 different ships, over 15 base structures, over 10 types of base defenses, etc. You start with 1 colony (in a planet or moon) and a Colony Ship to build your second base right away. As you growth and improve your empire, you will getting more bases up to 20+ bases and 20+ starbases (orbital mobile bases).

Today we have 3 active universes (servers), the first one is Beta where we use it to test new stuff, Argos is the first official universe, and the last one but not least Speed universe where the game runs 5x faster !

Soon I plan to unleash the Deathmatch universe; where the most able and aggressive player wins each round.

If you wish to make your own game, fell free to contact me with any question.

See you among the starts in O-C ;)

Comments

Looking good!

Posted by TapSkill on May 8, 2010 at 2:56pm

Looks good!

I was wondering what modules you use and how you went about setting the site up. Do you use a multisite setup or is it simply a single standalone site with a subdomains-for-url-aliases feature? I'm also curious if Drupal gave you any headaches during the development of your game.

Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Thanks, It is a multi site

Posted by afeijo on May 9, 2010 at 11:37pm

Thanks,

It is a multi site setup, where I point all subdomains to the same apache folder

I built the game module, and I currently use the following modules:

Chat
Chart
Devel
Private Messages
Nodewords
Nice Menus
Smileys
CAPTCHA
Wysiwyg
Views 2

Drupal gave me no headaches, just the opposite, it toke away all the pain to do html from scratch. And jQuery makes javascript so fast and so easy, that I added extra dynamic features and ajax that I don't know if I would without jQuery ;)

regards
Feijó

Well, jquery is just a

Posted by TapSkill on May 10, 2010 at 3:34am

Well, jquery is just a JavaScript framework. You could use it without Drupal.

Anyway, thanks for answering. I use most of the modules you mentioned, but I have to admit I didn't like Chat, and Nodewords, well, I never used that. I'll check Nodewords in a minute.

Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

I know that jquery can be

Posted by afeijo on May 11, 2010 at 11:46am

I know that jquery can be used anywhere, I did used it in another very simple php project, and even with delphi

But I wasan't aware of jQuery until I also found out about Drupal ;)

regards
Feijó

Wow, Nodewords must be such a

Posted by TapSkill on May 10, 2010 at 3:36am

Wow, Nodewords must be such a time-saver!
No, seriously, I wish I knew about it sooner. I was doing a lot of custom statements in my themes to get good keyword placement.

Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Thanks.

Posted by tpainton on May 9, 2010 at 7:57pm

Actually, it's all original modules. I use queryable variables, and AJAX forms, as the only required modules. The rest runs off what I wrote. It is a single stand alone, but I do have unique hash fields for every room, and character so that theoretically they could traverse servers. Don't know how yet, but I thought I would add that. I leaned HEAVILY on ubercart for examples of code. Essentially, the room code I use is similar to the product code. Rooms can be ported from one server to another. Also, rooms will eventually be set up so that you can make sub classes. At present you can create different classes of room and then children of that room type. I have not yet implemented attributes of each class yet.

I have been working on a 4th submodule that was going to be called 'network' that was a virtual network for the game world but I am getting frustrated with theming. I wanted to have a command prompt and a simulated command line where players could hack through a virtual internet but in trying to get that original dumb terminal feel, I am going in circles. Ajax and AHAH and JSON on my!! I think I am just going to mothball the network module and get back to the original MUD aspect of the thing. Currently there are five modules geo, portal, notify, character, and core. They all are required.

One aspect that is a problem is the live chat and live message update status. IT's a lot of polling on a server. Imagine 100 people on a server, all polling with JS setinterval every 3 seconds. Until a true PUSH browser technology comes along, there really isn't a way I know of to have live chat and updates though.

I will likely see if I can get a CVS account and start a project page. I was going to call it Gaming On Drupal (GOD Module) . Based on the early "gods" who ran the original MUDS and MOOS. The problem will be of course that there are already a few drupal game modules available, namely Game, but as I said earlier I have a significant philosophy departure from that module, namely peripheral data files. In addition, I am already into a very different node based architecture. I am not even sure the two could be combined at this point.

So, if I am refused because of that, then once again, I'll go the ubercart way, start a website distribute it there and see where it goes. I remember once upon a time when eCommerce was the only module in CVS. Sometimes combining forces just isn't possible if there are considerable philosophy differences. Hey, it's free, and fun and why not just see who likes what?

Next will be the Inventory module, development of in game items, then once that is set, further character development and finally interaction module that will deal with all things interacting, like combat.

Network module is officially on hold unless I can get more excited about it.