Since a couple of days, we started to work on a new game engine, when I say we, I could say mainly I, but lucky me, some good people on the Make Web Games forums seems to jump on the train too.

This game engine will be GNU licensed, which means, it will be free to use and run. However some modules as well as the support may be offered for some fee later on.

What will do this engine? Well basically the engine already does or will do what you may expect from a text game:
- Allows to customize the look & feel, even players will be able to choose which look & feel they want to use if the game offers more than one.
- Allows changing language (and being able to edit the languages file via the web interface).
- Have background events like restoring health or energy, and this without the need of any crons.
- Easy to develop new “locations” or “tools” without the need of modifying each and every file for it.
- Comes with a premade generic game, to demonstrate how things work.
- Unlimited stats.
- Self installing engine (on the database and configuration side).
- Self installing modules (on the database side or any other needs the module may have).

But don’t just believe on my words, go to the website http://www.zapengine.com, and download it to see how it goes by yourself! Of course, currently it’s not a full game, and I cannot promise you will not need to change the database and/or lose data if you upgrades later on. Be prepared also to see code like you never saw while working with other game engines. All is cleanly separated in different directories; each with it’s on function. Modules are within their own directory and defined by a file called “part.def” which the core code will check and use as “hook” to use the module. The current status is more than promising, and I highly encourage everyone here to test it and comment it out.

What I can promise is, that as long as there is some interest in it, I will continue to contribute.

About the author:
Alain Bertrand is a game creator and owner/creator of “Nowhere Else and Beyond” (NEaB) since March 2005. From 2005 until 2009 more than 110,000 players registered, all of this was achieved using most of the strategies mentioned here. It proves that constant work pays off, even in the current hard times.

A good idea indeed! I would actively encourage it, as it will make you learn a lot of things in a lot of different areas. However, before attempting to pick a game engine, or to start coding your own, you should consider a few things:

Now you may ask why you should follow such a checklist and should not simply start right away with a code which is already a full game, or offers nearly all you need. Well the answer is simple enough. If you make a game just with the hope to make money without much effort, or simply want to be an admin because you think its fun then something is wrong. A game will work if you are unique enough, and offer something to the players that they could not find somewhere else. Why should players play your game, and not the one which has existed for more time? And don’t tell me, “Well I will have some nice look and will use a lot of mods”. Sorry, but that simply means you do not have a clear idea of what you want to offer. Instead, if you say “I want to make a game like XYZ, but instead of doing that I will offer this and make it run like that” then yes your game can indeed have some success. Games based purely on some existing code, with some mods, will have a hard time later on. You will be always classified as “Just another XYZ game”.

To make this last idea yet clearer, you should avoid using any engine even if it would allow you to “startup” a game quickly. Anyhow there is no quick ways to do things right. So, think, re-think, and take the time to learn how to do things right. If you feel it’s a huge job, then you are starting indeed to understand it. I don’t want to stop you with your ideas, understand me well, but still, you need to come up with your ideas and not just put online somebody else work and then declare it yours. That generally don’t work, and if you will ever get some players, you may even get hacked just because you don’t understand what’s under.

So what to do? Start with YOUR OWN idea, and try to think what you want to offer. In future articles we will offer advice on how to advertise your game, and how to pay at least the game bills.

About the author:

Alain Bertrand is a game creator and owner/creator of “Nowhere Else and Beyond” (NEaB) since March 2005. From 2005 until 2009 more than 110,000 players registered. All of this was achieved using most of the strategies mentioned here. It proves that constant work pays off, even in the current hard times.

For new players in the field, and especially for young people, having your own game seems a real achievement and look like something fun. In this article I want to talk about my own experience and point out the good and the bad side of it.

I personally started my own experience as game owner / creator after playing a web game and being unsatisfied by the lack of depth of the game world. I then started to think how a real game world, like those of the old 2d RPG, could be implemented, and slowly started to build it. Now after more than 4 years of work I can look at it and say that I indeed succeeded in creating a virtual world. But it wasn’t all easy, and it is certainly never really finished. As a side effect of creating this virtual world, new players talk to me like they would talk to somebody really important or a semi god. Honestly I don’t like that, even if for some it would be a dream. Why? Simply because I don’t feel special, and also because I do see the responsibilities linked to the task more than the privileges. Indeed, having to act like a god and change / introduce rules is not an easy task as any change needs to be as balanced and as smooth as possible. Oddly enough, the older the game is, the more complaints you get every time you touch it, even if you just add new features. Another really annoying side effect, if we avoid talking about those players that just want to chat with you to feel a bit special as well, is the huge amount of requests / suggestions I (as well as the other admins) get. Some are actually good ideas but somehow the majority are just useless or actually impossible to implement. Generally, the more useless the request is the more annoying the players are and say things like “if you don’t do it your game will die”; odd then that we survived for more than 4 years without it, isn’t it?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I still have pleasure to work on my game, especially when I see where we are now and what we can offer to the old and new players. I still have a lot of ideas and a lot of areas which require more work to be up to par. Basically, what makes me happy is when I’m able to materialize an idea, and let then the players try it. This concretization of my ideas is my “drug”, and what pushes me again and again to continue. On top of that, the contact with a few people, which now I consider good friends, is the icing of the cake, and I’m quite sure I would have stopped if I wouldn’t have those contacts and the huge help they offered, and still offer. I again take the occasion here to thank Croesy, for example, as well as Iya, Zorich. I stop here before the list grows too much, even if many other helped a lot too.

So exactly what are the jobs of a game owner? Well the jobs are multiple, and in completely different areas. The main tasks are; to monitor the game to avoid abuse, and keep the community on track (e.g. avoid bad mood, flaming wars); fix bugs; implement new features and here we finish with the obvious one. Now, for the one which you may not imagine; there are all the emails and private messages to answer (even those which are just annoying); close non-existent bugs explaining what the player did wrong; manage the forums; try to fill the documentation, such as wiki; research new innovative ideas; try to make contacts with other game owners to get support, or more traffic to your site; do the system administrator work (e.g. apply patches, handle the domains, the hosting); do all the administrative work (e.g. pay the bills, find the hosting); and finally do all the marketing work to make your game known to the biggest number of potential players. If you think this is a small job, well you maybe don’t really realize how time consuming any of those tasks are. However, don’t get depressed even before starting, as you may delegate one or more tasks to somebody else. Crucially, the time you spend depends on 2 factors: the size of your game, and your own goal. If you don’t want to grow too much, then it will certainly not require too much time.

In conclusion, yes being a game owner is like being a god for that particular virtual world. With the power of the god, which let’s you modify the world as you want, there is also the responsibilities to make it work, and the drawback to hear (if not listen to) the huge amount of requests / wishes. Think of it this way: the more wishes you get, the more players you have and the better your game is.

About the author:

Alain Bertrand is a game creator and owner/creator of “Nowhere Else and Beyond” (NEaB) since March 2005. From 2005 until 2009 more than 110,000 players registered. All of this was achieved using most of the strategies mentioned here. It proves that constant work pays off, even in the current hard times.

Whilst working on many projects and looking at how people get their sites more known I have come across some very well known strategies, today I will be introducing you to some of these strategies, then over the next couple of weeks I will further elaborate on them (in no particular order). First of all let’s get something’s clear.

Is getting your site known important?

Although this might be a funny and strange question to some, I have been asked this question a number of times, which I always answer by saying yes, if you want it to be successful. Although sometimes many game owners fail to understand this they do try to do the best they can by doing some of the things I will be talking about today.

How long will this take?

This is something you as a game owner should never stop doing, working on these steps all the time is the best way to get 100% out if it. Doing so will help you, your game and the gamers who play your game.

Is it easy?

Depends on how you look at it, if you see this as a task you don’t want to be doing or want to start then it’s going to be hard, but not very hard . If you are ready for this and really want to do it, it won’t be hard at all.

Let’s get started.

1. Advertise

Although advertising can be really expensive it can sometimes pay for it by itself. This task requires you careful look at which sites should be used for advertising and how much you should spend on it. Sometimes after starting an advertising campaign people tend to forget about the stats, which is a huge mistake. Sometimes people can make mistakes in advertising but they also need to know and learn from those mistakes, most advertising sites allow you to keep track of those advertisement campaigns but you also need to keep track of it using your own methods. Using PHP we can easily add a referral tracker to all in coming advertisement clicks this can help you to identify all clicks in-coming to the site and also see if the advertising campaign is successful.

2. Get on those Top lists

This is sometimes ignored by many game owners, getting on to top list sites is usually very easy and at the same time it is FREE, we at the CE Network have CETopWebGames.com which game owners can subscribe to. This opens many doors as there are many “Top List” sites allowing you to add games to their sites and in return they allow its users to find your game easily and they send them right to you. Simple and affective, CE Top Web Games allows you to even let own gamers vote for your game which takes you higher up the leader board and exposing you even more to hopeful new gamers.

3. Say it on Forums

This is another step many forget about, advertising on forums is very simple, at PHP-Games we allow game owners to showcase their site on our forum for FREE which helps exposure of your game, you can also add your game site link in your signature space which helps out a lot, this also gets you more known by search engines like Google who crawl forums on a regular basis.

4. Get a review

Sometimes hard but with the CE Network this step is easy as 1-2-3. We have a very well know site called CE GamesDirectory which was built for games to be more known by its gamers and future gamers, you as a game owner don’t even have to do anything. Simply adding your game to CE Top Web Games can get your site listed and you can send your gamers to our site which after they review your game, we leave it and search engines pick it up and allowing your site to be more exposed to Google.

5. Get Referred

This is one of the hardest parts, getting referred is something you can’t really do yourself unless if you have a game which your players like and want to tell everyone about it. Most large games have seen this as being beneficial to the growth of the game, they also approve of referrals and also reward their users with in-game awards such as “Most Referrals in July Award” and also by giving them in-game items such as weapons and money or even “Donator Packs”. Rewarding for some games has been very rewarding with more users and more donations.

I think I’ll leave it here for now, join us next week for a deeper look into Advertising

The simple answer is yes, if you want to keep your game alive. Many games have seen the amount of user’s online rise after adding an in-game chat; this has helped their game to become bigger and more successful.

User’s are more likely to stay if the game has an in-game chat which is built into the game and also has active members, new members like this simply because they can talk to the game owners, the staff and also other members.

So how should I setup in-game chat?

There are number of ways you could do it, but the simplest way is to get in contact with an IRC Network who will allow you to host your own chat channel for free on their server. We recommend iPocalypse, not just because they host CE Chat but also because of the friendly service and the nice community they have.

I want to use iPocalypse chat what do I do?

Firstly go to CE Chat then follow the instructions found here (if it asks you to register your nick go here). Then go here to add your chat to your site. You can also connect to your chat channel using mIRC, XChat or IceChat

For more information on how to use IRC these guides may help:

• Learn IRC in less than 1 hour!
• iPocalypse IRC Commands
• IRC Beginner