One Feed To Rule Them All

I've created a Yahoo! Pipe that pulls together and sorts nine different PBBG related weblogs. Obviously this one and Building Browsergames are included but so are several others related to other projects out there. The RSS feed for all of them together is this link:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=Lldj4owd3hGSI1RvwjSbTQ&_render=rss


If you go here you can see the construction of the pipe and even copy and make it your own. I would ask that if you do know of some other PBBG related blogs, please either email me or add a comment to this post to let me know about them. I'd like to have a definitive list in this one feed.

Edited

It has been requested that I put the current list in here so here it is:

http://buildingbrowsergames.com/feed/
http://lorbsbg.wordpress.com/feed/
http://openbracket.ca/?feed=rss2
http://www.pbbgblog.com/feed/
http://rangersheck.com/feed/atom.xml
http://blog.forumwarz.com/feed/atom.xml
http://xalthorn.wordpress.com/feed/
http://madgameslab.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://www.galaxy-news.net/feed/

Another Aid To Building Better Support For Low/No Vision PBBG Players

Since I already use the excellent Yahoo! UI (YUI) CSS files to help me layout the pages in my game, the news that you can also now embed hints to screen readers with your YUI grid layout code is good news. This article tells how and even has a video example to illustrate how it can give the low or no vision user the ability to flip from section to section more quickly because they can tell the purpose of each area on the page because you can label each one.

Note: Even if you're already using another library to handle JavaScript (e.g. Prototype/Scriptaculous or jQuery) then you can still use YUI's CSS files to clear out browser specific formatting, standardize the appearance of basic tags from one browser to the next, handle font size differences, and layout your page without resorting to tables. It's a great set of files that can save you a ton of time.

Finish

I once started reading the book Getting Things Done but I didn’t finish it. If you think the irony of that statement is lost on me then trust me, it’s not. Finishing things is a lifelong problem for me. I start things and get a great start on them but when they turn plodding and hard, it’s really tough for me to power through. Plus, there’s always some other neat new idea or technology to play with that I could make a lot of progress with quickly before it started to get difficult.

Then there’s just basic fears about success and failure that haunt me. What if I build something and it’s successful but not successful enough. I might build two or three games and have a lot of extra work to do supporting them but not be able to leave my current job. Or, what if I build it and nobody comes? With LOL.com that wasn’t a problem, we knew people would come simply because of the URL it sits on. But people might show up to a beta game, play for five minutes and then leave for good. In fact, I’m sure lots will. If you stop and think about stuff like that you can paralyze yourself enough that you never get anything done on that side project. Instead you go hit your favorite site again to see if anybody posted something new or watch a cool TV show you like, etc.

With all that said, here’s what I’ve learned over the years:

• Build something you are truly interested in. Don’t build something just because there’s an empty niche somewhere and you realize you have the skills necessary to fill it. I have actually done that. I built a website because there wasn’t a site like it and I thought people would need it, then I realized I had zero interest in maintaining that site.
• If you do care about it, never ever quit. You may think that some other site has you beat completely, but you may be able to just outlast them. The amateur ones are run by people who thought it would be cool, enjoy it for a while, and then don’t want anything to do with it again. It’s the online equivalent of buying a boat. The commercial ones are often created by people with no great love of the topic (see my point above) and they often seem to run out of money.
• Know why you are doing something. Don’t do stuff just because you think it would be cool. I tried podcasting and it was a mistake. I was OK at it, god knows I’m as opinionated as hell, but I didn’t have any reason to do it. There wasn’t anything I was promoting or selling and there was no concentrated focus for the show. If I were to do it today there’s no question but that it would be a show about PBBGs and I could actually make some sense out of it by promoting them, reviewing them, and plugging the ones I work on. So maybe I’ll do it again some day, but before I do, I’ll know why I’m doing it.
• Only work on one new project at a time. You can still keep blogging, you can still go back and make improvements to an existing project while you work on the new one. But don’t start another new project while you’re working on the current one. I think it’s OK to think about it and make some notes for your next project, but don’t let it side track you. And definitely don’t start building anything for it until you’ve reached a usable state for your current project.
• Break it down, break it down. This is one thing I did learn from what I read in Getting Things Done. Often my to-do lists read like this: “Build Operation To Steal Secrets From An Opponent’s Lair”. OK, that’s something Big Villain needs alright but how long is that going to take? How big is it? It’s not really a to-do item at all, it’s really more of a project in itself and it needs to be broken down into a series of smaller to-do items that will each take an hour or less to accomplish. I actually shoot for smaller items that I think can be done in 15 minutes. Then I am more likely to do one “real quick” when I think about it. Often I find I’ve done two or three and without realizing it I’ve made some real progress.

Learn from the many mistakes I’ve made and you will actually get your projects to the finish line. I may be crawling along with Big Villain right now, but “slow and steady wins the race”.

ForumWarz Shows Off Their Conversation Editor

ForumWarz has done a follow up posting to their previous posting where they showed the admin tools they use with their game. In it, they do a screencast to show off the web based conversation editor they created (note: the example conversation, like much of ForumWarz, might not be work safe for you).

I thought it was pretty slick because it was capable of connecting different nodes together like Yahoo! Pipes.

Fun Flash Games

Most Flash games I've encountered are a fling rather than a long term relationship, but that doesn't mean they aren't fun. Here's three I've played recently and enjoyed:

The Space Game

Shopping Cart Hero

Mutiny

App Engine Is Going To Become A Better PBBG Host

I use Ruby on Rails for all my web development work. I think it's greatly preferable to the PHP in which so many games are developed but I don't think that Rails is the only good choice out there. Another excellent alternative is Python and Django, something which Google's App Engine supports. One of the problems with App Engine though has been that it lacked certain features that are very helpful for building a PBBG. Often you want to be able to run a task on a regular basis or handle background processing and getting that from App Engine required a lot of work arounds. The latest version of the roadmap for updates scheduled for App Engine in the first half of this year includes all of that and quite a bit more.

• Service for storing and serving large files
• Datastore import and export utility for large datasets
• Billing: developers can pay for more resource usage
• Support for a new runtime language
• Support for scheduled tasks
• Task queues for performing background processing
• Incoming email support
• XMPP API (that's the ability to send and receive instant messages via the XMPP/Jabber protocol)
  

Given that many people who want to start a PBBG have often not done a lot of web development work before, I think the idea that App Engine offers a hosted environment with a lower barrier to entry so they can write an application without worrying about how to configure servers and deploy software (or perhaps scale past a few hundred players) is a good thing. I'm not going there any time soon myself, but I like to always keep an eye on it. After all, maybe soon they'll be supporting Rails as a development platform too.

Upcoming Changes To Big Villain

Just recently I've fixed some problems with logging in or to be more accurate failing to login. But what I've got upcoming is code that checks to make sure a newly created player is correctly setup before letting him/her into the game proper. That will involve making the user choose how many secrets to keep in the game and which ones (some have higher VP values than others).

That brings up victory points in general. Obviously the real numbers are not even started yet, but the general idea is that scoring for a user will be done by giving out victory points for money on hand, number of clueless employed, number of minions, number of agents, vps for different lairs constructed, secrets of your own kept successfully until the end of the game, secrets of others revealed during the game, and evil schemes completed. Each of these will have a curved scale of some kind so you can't just sit and turn the crank in one category until the end of the game and expect to win. You've got to diversify and have some success in multiple areas in order to have a good score.

After I've got the setup completed then I'll be turning my attention to the operation that you run to find one of an opponent's lairs.