miscellaneous

Hi guys. Does anybody know which programming languages were used to make this game?? I'm trying to teach myself a little programming and, in the future, I'd love to make a text based game like this. Obviously not bots as its been done and is a huge success. Just something low key to test skills.

Any help would be massively appreciated :-) cheers people!

PHP, SQL, HTML, CSS and javascript. Did i miss anything?

I can do a bit of HTML, CSS and Javascript. When I say a bit, I mean a little JS and a bit more CSS and HTML.

How are PHP and SQL to learn from scratch??

PHP is relatively easy to learn, even more so if you have experience with basic programming like for and while loops. SQL is the language used to grab things from a database and is super easy to learn, though with PHP you'll be using MySQL, which is very similar.

JavaScript wise, Ender has used jQuery and I'd recommend you do the same. It's a library of JavaScript functions that, once included into a page, makes performing certain tasks like Animations and AJAX calls a LOT easier.

To learn JavaScript, jQuery, and even advance your HTML + CSS skills, I'd recommend Codecademy. It has interactive lessons and is what I used to learn jQuery.

To learn PHP/MySQL I did this course. It's lectures and tasks covered by a Harvard professor. This covers PHP, MySQL, AJAX, JSON.

If you ever get stuck, StackOverflow is a great place to ask any questions you may have, and you'll get many replies very quickly.

Jans pretty much nailed it.

PHP and SQL are good to learn together because they complement one another nicely and are fairly easy to learn. You'll find a lot of PHP/MySQL tutorials online of varying quality.

For JavaScript libraries, I've used two. A lot of the original code is written using Prototype, but newer stuff uses jQuery. I'm now more partial to Google's Closure, which is really a set of tools that includes a JavaScript library. I haven't used it for anything on this site yet though.

And +1 for Stack Overflow.

Thank you loads!!! I may start building something. Just need a guinea pig project :-)

You can never have enough guinea pigs.

Ender - How long did it take to program a game like this? There seem to be so many variables and then all the equipment and weapons and stuff. Must've been a long slog!!

6-8 months for the basics?

Wow!! That's a lot of dedication!! I'm impressed!!

I wouldn't know where to begin but I'll see what I can do!

Some dates:

• February 2010 - Started project, not sure exactly when coding began
• Sep 29, 2010 - Closed beta starts
• Mar 7, 2011 - Open beta starts
• Jul 1, 2011 - Official release

The basic game concept, gameplay, and items were already figured out for me fortunately, so it was really just a matter of hunkering down and building it. It's hard to quantify, but I would estimate 1000+ hours spent on the project. It's still very much an ongoing project and will be for the foreseeable future.