My project: -yet unnamed game-

[Chris]

At the end of every turn, the processing script will check how many fuel cells had been sold.
If more than X, the price will increase by 1 credit. If less than X, price will decrease by 1 credit.

And to find X you will need to make such complicated things that it would not be simple anymore.

This is supposed to force players to populate the whole game area.
A simple random price change will not have that effect.

I think equal population is boring. Stations with higher and lower optimum population sounds more exciting (just multiply the required quantity of transations for price change).

And metagame. Each station has affiliation (let's say owned by different company), each time you make a transaction your reputation within that affiliation increases and decreases a bit with remining affiliations (and you get some benefits for reaching certain reputation level with certain affiliation). Now not only price is driving you but also the desire to increase affiliation of your choice.

And limited sale! There must be limited sale offer in space

[tellmore]

X is a static value.
I will set it to say.. 1000 for fuel cells.
plain simple.

Every time someone makes a purchase, the database will store the amount purchased.
End if tick this will be compared to X (in my above example will compare to 1000),
IF it IS larger than X, increase price by 1.
If not, then decrease price by 1.
And reset X to 0.

Tada.
plain simple, I can't think of any simple method like the above.
Limited sale offer would be quite troublesome.
As I already told, a player with large capacity could buy ALL the fuel cells at the starting location, players who just joined the game would have nothing to trade with.
It would be like if you would find a nice big box under the xmas tree, and a puppy in it.
A dead one, that is.

Also, since I can adjust this X variable for every station, and at every stuff the staion sells, i can basicly influence how many traders can a station support.
I like this idea.

Why should it be complicated? This would make things rather simple.
There is no limit for the market, a station can not run out of anything is sells, and will buy any amount of goods.
Price is what will change.
For example, fuel cells sell from 12 to 20 credits.
Who would buy them for 20?
The maximum sell price is also 20 credits for the fuel cells.
So no one would buy them.
Thats almost equal to a fixed number available for purchase.

[tellmore]

3558 views for the most viewed topic in this section.
Already i have the most reply.

So, will it continue like this, and will this project be the most viewed?
I would certainly love it, lol.

[jannesiera]

You could even use some economics - math functions (like in statistics, not programming) to create more dynamical changes.

So there could be important differences between stations and you have to think carefully to which station to go next.

For example one station's price decreases a little bit every time more is bought and another station would still almost provide the same price, until a certain point where the price would decrease enormously. (exponential and linear functions etc.)

[tellmore]

Yes, I could employ some higher lvl functions to simulate a more dynamic economy.

But, before i make any significant changes I will first need to figure out more and more stations, ore processing plants, ore mines, yadada...

Depending on how well my dirthy-and-easy solution works out i may have to employ some random events, but i may happen there won't be any needed.
A highly complex economy system with way too many dynamic elements can simply get stuck.
(if say.. demand of raw materials would be the basis of production of various other goods)

I have to avoid that at all costs.
So, my simplified model does in fact reflect what commodities players trade with, and where they trade whit them, but it is not complicated enough to risk a possible economic crisis. It will be complicated enough to set proper prices, and price ranges. No need to make it worse with complicated economic variables.

So, for now it does all i need.
I'm simple minded, I wanted dynamic market , so i have dynamic market.
Added a check mark on the list, now for the next task, lol.

Creating over simplified code has a HUGE benefit, later on modifications will be easy, so would be enhancements.  The most complicated operations currently take from start of loading to the end around 0.0023 seconds. I don't have images or graphics yet. And considering my powerful development server I think my code is doing good so far.  The above test was done with 200 users worth of random entry in the test database.

So, now i should create finally the special system objects, such as GATES.
Gates will allow players to go to another system.
And, the first ship dock shall be made in the next few hours, where players can buy cargobay extensions, AND later on fighter drones.

I came up with the idea that fighter drones will take cargospace, just like wares players buy.
Still I have no idea how to make PVP, random pirate encounters are supposed to be done with ease.
I don't know yet how the combat system will work, what will happen if the player looses against pirates, or other players.

Oh well, test of soup is the dinner, so first i will make the things i'm sure i can do.
Future is something i don't have to worry about. YET.

[tellmore]

haven't made recently any updates in this topic.

Anyways for now i just polish what i have...
I try to put everything possible into functions.

So far the list of stuff i have:
-login
-purchase cargo
-sell cargo
-fly to another station
-use jumpgate to get to another system
-re-calculate prices of stations on each tick

What i would like to add:
-ability to extend cargo space
-ability to purchase fighter drones
-add chance of pirate attack based on value of cargo on the ship
-add ranking system
-CHAT for every system
-ingame mail system

problems to solve:
-I don't know how could i make a lightweight chat /approx. realtime chat/ ---><b>suggestions welcomed</b>
-how to make an interface for the game that would work for different screen resolutions

[jannesiera]

-I don't know how could i make a lightweight chat /approx. realtime chat/ ---><b>suggestions welcomed</b>

You could always use an open source chat client or something like that. It's not like you really need to create a chat for special functionality or anything... Unless you want to have the experience of creating a chat off course.

-how to make an interface for the game that would work for different screen resolutions

How do you mean? That's kinda basic css stuff .

[tellmore]

well, I have around zero knowledge of CSS.
I don't know how to use them.

I did not know it can solve the issue.
LoL.

Anyways, I depend on fixed size Iframes, so I would think I have to adjust where to put that Iframe so it does not looks "dinky" on those 16x9 aspect ratio monitors.

DO I HATE THOSE, darn.
I better like old 4:3...

In fact, both of my monitors are 4:3 aspect ratio....
I use a 15" LCD close to me, I run the komodo editor on that one.
For the rest I use a 17" CRT monitor.

Honestly I prefer CRT over LCD..
But soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hard to find nice CRT monitors now days.
The colors on CRT is a lot better than on any LCD i ever seen..

[raestlyn]

-how to make an interface for the game that would work for different screen resolutions

0.o
You never tried using % instead of px or em? You can make fluid layout that way. You really should read a tutorial or 2...

[tellmore]

Shocking eh?
And You are right. Never tried anything else than fixed px placement of stuff.

Up until this point I never ever needed anything like that.

Will try to do it later, lol.
Until that people will have to get used to 1024x768 resolution.

[tellmore]

superawesome..
000webhost guys have 1 (one) peep there who is working, rest is just blabbering.
I was just about to finally give up on them.

After all these days, someone finally fixed the cron jobs.


Its 22:48 here now, and tomorrow I will be cleaning  coal out of a   barge, so I will not upload anything new today.
But, stay tuned, maybe if I have some stamina left tomorrow I will upload a working /hopefully/ version of what i made so far. For kicks I made a benchmark on the 000webhost site, seems powerful enough.
Also tested my script maximum ram usage, it is around a quarter Kbyte on page load.

Wee, maybe it will be online at some part, at least my pals won't bug me to leave the "production server" on.

I don't quite know what they enjoy in shipping the exsisting 2 goods between the exsisting 2 stations, but if thats what they need.. Let em have it. I don't mind. Few text links, if thats what they need.. LOL..