Question

I’m a noob programmer who recently created a 2d puzzle game in Flash. To be honest, I don’t really know much about anything aside from what I’ve learned so far in using the Flash/ActionScript 3.0 environment to build my game, but I’m more than happy to learn. I’d appreciate some advice regarding what tools I could use to complete the next steps in my project.

Here’s what I want to do with the game now:

• Create a website and post the game online for people to play
• Have players create an individual account that shows their performance on each puzzle game level.
• Have the capability to upload data about player decisions and performance metrics on each puzzle level in a form that can be exported later for statistical analysis using MS-Excel/Access.
• Create a ranking ladder where badges/points/rewards are given to players for participating in the game and being top performers on individual puzzle levels.

Could anyone please offer some advice about what resources and tools I could turn to in order to get started on achieving these goals for my project?

Also, in what sequence should I try to complete these goals?

Thanks in advance for all the help!

Answer 1

[I am assuming that you want to do it yourself, not using some premade API]

Creating a website. You’ll need to learn HTML and CSS. They are markup languages and you should be able to easily pick it up.

The backend for the website: I suggest PHP, which is run on a server. You’ll also need a database to store your highscores. There’s many databases that works with PHP. I’d go with MySQL.

By the way, look at the following code:

public static function getById( $id ) {
    $conn = new PDO( DB_DSN, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD );
    $sql = "SELECT *, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(publicationDate) AS publicationDate FROM articles WHERE id = :id";
    $st = $conn->prepare( $sql );
    $st->bindValue( ":id", $id, PDO::PARAM_INT );
    $st->execute();
    $row = $st->fetch();
    $conn = null;
    if ( $row ) {
    return new Article( $row );
    }
  }

Isn’t that similar to AS3?

Then, you’ll need to make your game interact with your site. This can be done by making the swf visit certain urls – such as http://yoursite.com/highscores.php?action=addHighScore&name=John&score=330. Then your backend (PHP) adds it to your database.

You probably also want to display the high scores too. You can make it display in the swf or on your site.

So, what I suggest you do is read up on HTML, CSS and PHP and have google handy.

Here’s a tutorial about building a simple CMS:

http://www.elated.com/articles/cms-in-an-afternoon-php-mysql/