My winning entry: Mage Duels

[raestlyn]

Team: Only me! I'm a PHP coder, so the graphics are not going to be anything amazing, but I'm ok with that

The Game: I have had idea for PvP based RPG game for long time, and this contest is good excuse to make it

I'll start coding the base today.

EDIT: Now I have finished the Registering, Login and simple Javascript I need for AJAX. I've looked trough some tutorial for AJAX Tooltips, but I think I'm going to stick with premade script.

the Url for the demo is mageduels.net76.net. Its not 100% ready yet, but its playable.

[raestlyn]

The core is starting to come together; I have simple, working battles, library where you can see your past fights and a chat.

I'm working on the shop, items and spells at the moment. When I get them somewhat balanced I think I'll add Guild system for bigger fights, the basic battle script support unlimited amount of participants, although it will stress the server quite much if there is more than 2k at the same time. Thats the amount my LAMP could handle

I'm not sure should I add races and classes straight away in to the game or let people build up their character freely.

Things in the to-do list:

Summon spells
Shapeshifting
Mass Damage Spells
Mass Heal Spells
Ingame messaging system
Ingame forum, if I have time left. One page layout makes it so that I can't use premade software.

[Zeggy]

Cool! Do you have a demo URL somewhere?

I'm interested in your battle. Is it just instant one-click battles, or is it more interesting like a turn-based one?
I'm wondering because you seem to have a large variety of spells planned, so how/when would you choose to use them?

[raestlyn]

Sorry to dissapoint you, but its just a one-click battle. The whole battle system is made thinking of offline players, so no-one would get any advantage of attacking someone who isn't online. I could do it as a turn based, but it would require quite advanced automated algorithm that I don't have time to do or be too abusive against offline players.

The spell system has some elements of Estiah battle system, like random order of the spells and general targetting. The general idea is to use Spells first, after that when you are out start beating the opponent down if he is still standing. If I have time I'll add more strategical options to that.

[raestlyn]

Done:
General Battle with reports
Skills and bonuses from them
Summon spells
Shapeshifting
Mass Damage Spells
Mass Heal Spells
Melee battle

Store and inventory system
Chat
Simple layout (that was hard because I'm not css guru but now it looks pretty and simpler than it used to at the begining)

Things in the to-do list:
Hiring Henchmen
Spell and weapon balancing
Boost spells
Mass Boost spells
Curses (anti-boost)
Mass Curses
Adding Classes (Maybe)
Adding Guilds (Maybe)
Ingame messaging system
Ingame forum, if I have time left. One page layout makes it so that I can't use premade software.

So, it seems that the game is consentrating on Spells and Skills. I have several classes planned, but I'm quite unsure should I add them. The game is playable right now, but it lacks quite lot content. I'll try to get playable demo out before monday.

[raestlyn]

Done:
General Battle with reports
Skills and bonuses from them
Summon spells
Shapeshifting
Mass Damage Spells
Mass Heal Spells
Melee battle
Boost spells
Mass Boost spells
Curses (anti-boost)
Mass Curses

Store and inventory system
Chat
Simple layout (that was hard because I'm not css guru but now it looks pretty and simpler than it used to at the begining)
More simple layout because I'm not that good with CSS yet. I'll try to improve it a bit.

Things in the to-do list:
Hiring Henchmen
Spell and weapon balancing
Adding Classes (Maybe)
Adding Guilds (Maybe)
Ingame messaging system
Ingame forum, if I have time left. One page layout makes it so that I can't use premade software.

Now I have a demo website with older version of the code if anyone is intressed. It doesn't have Spells yet because I managed to screw something up when I was transfering my database to the site so I have to do that again. Url is in the first post.

[gostyloj]

Looks pretty good.  Couple of things stood out as needs to improve.  The site is sloooow to respond.  I would assume you are using a framework to publish it.  Which one?  I don't know much about frameworks.  In fact I am learning my first one (Symfony) for my entry.  I have noticed that is can be slow too.  Hope it won't affect my game too much.

One thing that I found confusing was that the text is clickable but when the mouse cursor is over it, the cursor changes to the "I am over highlightable and not clickable text."  It did not help that it took over 3 seconds for the site to change when I did click on something.

Just to let you know, I am using Chrome, so if the slowdown is from JS or AJAX, then I have the fastest production browser for looking at that.  I would assume that if you are not using a framework then the slowdown is the database.

Update:
I looked at it some more and the site started moving faster.  I bought a sword and trained my dude and then I attacked someone over and over again.  My rating is now -6 .

[raestlyn]

Well, the slowness is the free server cluster I'm using, it does the same thing for me too.

The game doesn't use any framework, I really don't like them. I have used few but like you said they can slow things too much.

I hope I can find another free server because if that lag will stay the game will be unplayable.


PS. -6 isn't much at this point, you'll be able to raise it quite easily.

[raestlyn]

Ok, I did remake the Rating system in the game. Now its impossible to get negative rating and attacking people with <80% or >120% of your rating will give you minimal gains. That should balance up the battle system where you are getting bonuses to stats based on your rating. It also affects to your spells, Summons and Shapeshifting shapes.

I had to do full stats reset because of that, so everyone will start at the same point again.

I also added underlinings to every clickable things because I got few complains about the subject.

Added few Fire and Ice Spells and boosted up the Summons. Now the spell shop list looks cleaner than before.

I'll start writing the bbguniverse.coms article hopefully tomorrow.

[Renex]

I have taken a look at the homepage (later I will look into more).

You should put style="cursor:pointer" on the links in the left panel (Home, Login, Register)

[Chris]

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: User XXXX already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections in XXX/guild/connect.php on line X

You definitiely need a better server.

[Tribal]

Urm. This might just be me. But the last 2 times i have tried to Aliss it has crashed my browser. Im using: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4