I am working for a start-up company that is building a platform of HTML5 gambling games. I was asked to suggest the server technology and hosting solution that should be used. The games need to be able to communicate, allowing among other things for a system of credits that will allow shopping within the site. What do you recommend? Please list all technologies/frameworks/etc you recommend as an integrated solution for such a platform of games - playable on any device.
Also please recommend books that could be helpful with development, hosting and administration of it all.
Lets breakdown your question into simpler parts. Many technologies can help in each of these parts. I will list the most popular open source ones.
Ruby on Rails: For fast development and deploying of scalable web apps.
Database: Many options available depending on RDBMS approach or NoSQL approach. Production level performance examples include sqlite, mongoDB etc.
Twitter Bootstrap: For the best front-end GUI experience on multiple devices.
CMS : Joomla, Drupal for getting a quick start. Not recommended for very fast scalability.
Infrastructure: No one beats Amazon in prices! You have many solutions to choose from and also pay only for the infrastructure that you use.
In addition, follow the development blogs of hugely successful gaming corporations (Rovio, Zynga etc.) to get more details of the stacks they use.
If you can tell me details of technologies that are already used in your start-up, I can zoom in on solutions which will be faster for your developers to switch to.
Related
How are you all? I'm a beginner with the web programming. I am planning to develop my personal e-commerce Bookstore for myself. I've basic knowledge of ReactJS, ExpressJS, Spring MVC, MongoDB, and Mysql. I've already done some basic project in ReactJS, Spring MVC-MySQL and Express-MongoDB like Personal Diary, Cost management system, School management system etc. My future plan is to build a native mobile app for this Bookstore. I am a little bit confused to select the language and framework. I've some question and need experts opinion and suggestion like you.
ReactJS or NextJS(Server Side Rendering), which one will best for the frontend of this Bookstore?
Do I have any possibility to face any problem in SEO in the SPA?
Which Framework and Database will best for building the backend for better performance and lower hosting cost?
By using that backend service, can I use the same API endpoint to build a native app?
Any alternative technology to develop the bookstore?
Thank you all in advance.
-ReactJS has a vibrant and big community, so you would find plenty of support
-As far as i understand type of language for the front-end or SPA's shouldn't affect your SEO
-Java is rock solid, battle tested whereas NodeJs is new and a lot of experiments still going around it. Although it is claimed to be faster and easier to work with.
-Cost ? the cheapest would be PHP Apache shared hosting. Java and or JavaScript will both cost almost the same on platforms like heroku or digital ocean.
-Yes you should be able to build native apps using the same endpoints.
-With what you know do not look for alternate technologies. (What you have is more than enough)
-Moral of the story - If you are alone doing everything, JavaScript can save you a lot of time and effort. (Building web-apps, hybrid mobiles apps and server side APIs, all using JavaScript), however if you choose Java for server side, that knowledge may help you build a native android app and then you will need to learn Swift for a native IOS app and JavaScript anyway for web apps.
Everything boils down to what you are doing and how you are doing it.
All the best!
I am going to create Web portal, which I would like to be some kind of illustrated guide of city. In brief, It would be a union of Web mapping application and image gallery application. User should be able to navigate on the map to find some interesting locations, then user may view images and read articles about these locations.
This application has two important requirements:
Has to be RIA / Single Page Application
Must support CMS approach, with separated Front-End and Back-Office sections.
I contemplate which technology and framework offers the easiest and most powerful tools to fulfill these requirements with the least of effort. Currently I am thinking about ASP.NET MVC and Google Web Toolkit. What is your opinion? What about other platforms? Or maybe there are existing systems, galleries or CMS platforms which suit to my demands?
Do you know any existing websites with similar architecture and functionalities?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks
Since we are ambitiously aiming to be big, scalability is important, and so are globalization features. Since we are starting out without funding, price/performance and cost of licences/hardware is important. We definitely want to bring AJAX well present in the web interface. But apart from these, there's no further criteria I can come up with.
I'm most experienced with C#/ASP.net, PHP and Java, in that order, but don't turn down other languages (Ruby, Python, Scala, etc.).
How can we determine from the jungle of frameworks the one that suits best our goal?
What other questions should we be asking ourselves?
Reference material: articles, book recommendations, websites, etc.?
For me, the most important things to consider were:
Fantastic lead developers who I trust to keep working on the project.
Googling a question brings a lot of good answers.
Most importantly, I have to like the way the code flows.
Edit: Also they have to be anal about coding standards. If there is inconsistency, I get very annoyed.
Those 3 points brought me to Symfony. It is always using the latest cutting edge features of the latest PHP version. Symfony 2.0 is using namespaces before any other framework.
Two of your points were:
i18n - there is great support for it (helps that the company behind it is French, so i18n is a first class citizen).
Scales - Yahoo Answers and Vimeo use Symfony and contribute back code. If those guys can scale Symfony to 100 million users, you can too :)
It all depends on the type of project you will be developing.
Are you building a web application or a heavy content website or something else?
You also mix up programming languages with frameworks. The frameworks for PHP that I know are: CakePHP, CodeIgnitor, Zend and Symfony. For an out-of-the-box heavy content website I would suggest Drupal or Expression Engine.
It seems you won't be developing yourself. In that case I would determine the cost and availability of programmers and how widely the framework is supported and by who it is backed. The Zend framework is backed by the guys behind PHP, while CodeIgnitor is backed by the guys behind Expression Engine. Drupal has professional support packages,...
IMHO, for something that will have a lot of users, go for a compiled language.
If you don't try it, you will not know. So, I'd say do a small project in each of the frameworks you are seriously thinking about. I would prepare myself to do a lot of testing if it's something I'll be maintaining for some years. It's better to start off on the right foor than to get half way through a project only to realize you took the wrong path. There may be some requirements that end your search. For example, your servers' OS, a framework feature, or scalability. If you lay out your software plans and requirements, you probably will have very little left to choose from - unless your project really is quite generic or simple.
I am very curious about what you think is the best approach for people that want to start webdevelopment. I'm now talking about people that finished their education and so want to start from scratch.
I still have questions like:
Where do you start?
What software gets involved in webdevelopment?
What tools / setup would you recommend?
Offcourse i'm interested to hear alot more then only the answers to those three questions.
I am not writing this to get a load of people react on my post, i am trully interested in knowing how much work and money it will cost a webdeveloper when starting from scratch.
I hope to get a clear view on how to approach and to maybe hear some best practices.
Well one thing's for sure, education isn't finished! There's a whole lot to learn, and the more we learn the more we seem to need to learn.
If you're really starting from having no programming background whatsoever then I think you'd be advised to take a staged approach. For example:
1). A web page with a few different text formats and pictures and colours. Here you're just learning HTML. For that any browser and a notepad editor would do, but probably a tool such as Eclipse that gives some HTML editing capability would help.
2). More adaptive HTML - stylesheets that let you change appearance without changing all the html. So that's CSS.
3). Using the above, improve your designs. There are loads of formatting tricks good web sites use and you'll need to learn those.
Note that by now we've done a lot of study and we have not actually written any programs!
4). Dynamic web pages. Now we move to the programming side, rather than just writing some HTML files write a program that delivers the HTML and in some way changes the content. Starting with something really simple such as including "today's date is ..." on the page. For that You would need to pick a server development technology such as Ruby/Rails or PHP or Java/JSP ... You'll get a lot of different advise about "best" for this.
5). Now you can start to work on accepting input from the user and doing something with it so that useful work gets done. Things such as databases start to become important.
There's a whole load more after that, JavaScript and so on. An experienced programmer can pick up this kind of stuff quite quickly, if you've never done any programming at all then you will need to be prepared to take a while before you can get to the level you probably target. I think the key is to acknowledge that a great commercial web site reflects a lot of collective wisdom and skill picked up over many years, and probably is the result of a multi-disciplinary team working together. For one person to match that is a big ask. For one person to produce something nice and useful is more practical, but still does need a lot of different skills. It's quite reasonable to specilaise in a subset of the skills. For example, good visual designers write little or no code but are highly valuable.
you need:
a browser, eg. FireFox, Internet Explorer. A webdeveloper toolbar might also be useful.
a webserver, eg. Apache, Tomcat, IIS
a programming environment, eg. Php or ASP.NET
a development tool, eg. Notepad, Notepad++, Visual Studio .NET, Eclipse
most of the times a database, eg. SQL Server, mySQL
I'd say it depends what you want them to master: the technologies only (up to which skill level ?) or the whole software engineering behind a web project
A sample and fast technologies learning tree could be:
1) HTML
2) CSS
3) HTTP
4) Server side programming (PHP ?): programming concepts, interacting with HTML/CSS, then PHP API
5) Databases (start simply with MySQL for instance) + SQL (CRUD with Joins, Subselect, Indexes, Views and Transactions)
6) Client side programming (JavaScript first then Ajax)
7) A web framework (ZEND ? cake ?) and a good IDE (lots of...)
Full-time learning those technologies requires at least 1.5 year , based on the experience I have with my students and people must be trained mainly on concrete projects.
Then people should learn software engineering (cf link text) covering at least
- software requirements
- software design
- software construction
- software testing
I think people can have useful experience in this software engineering tree in 1 year and can (should) combine learning technologies with learning software engineering.
For training someone from scratch (technologies + software engineering) I'd say a least 2 years if working on at least three 6-month projects
This answer is Microsoft specific.
For starters you'll need an editor, a (optional) database and a few starting points.
Microsoft supplies most of these for free: you can download the Visual Studio Webdeveloper 2008 Express Edition for free, this includes most of the stuff you'll need.
If you plan on developing database driven websites, and who isn't, you might want to use the free SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
When you have the tools setup it's time to download some samples and see see how they work. Again Microsoft supplies some for free. You can check out tutorials and samples at their Asp.Net site.
When you are ready for some more advanced stuff, check out ASP.NET MVC, again at Microsoft.
With these tools and examples you should be able to get started.
I just want to add that you will most likely also need Photoshop or other tool to create the graphics for your web sites.
In spite of java/.net/php,the HTML,CSS,JavaScript are the basic web development toolkit.
Get a job as a junior developer that will put you on a project that is developing a web application. I personally think it should involve one of the two most established platforms, Java or .Net. I know some will disagree, but these are good foundations to branch into other tech platforms later.
Make sure you open an IDE (e.g. Visual Studio or Eclipse) everyday and code something. If not, find a new job immediately.
Read religiously at night. Start with "Code Complete", then move on to other books.
Learn the fundamental technologies of the World Wide Web:
HTTP
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
DNS, URL's
Good luck and happy travels!!
you need:
a google chrome . This provide you some advantage like inspect option. A webdeveloper toolbar might also be useful.
2. Html, Css, JavaScript are the basic language that you should be know
a programming environment, eg. Php or ASP.NET is needed for storing data and making login type page
a Visual Code Studio is needed for coding. This provide you emmet facilities that suggest you while you are coding
i've been making web app's and working with various server side language like php, ruby, perl for a while now. I've always been curious about game development, it's actually what I set out to do but I ended up in web development. I am trying to transition in to GD, but I cannot help see games from a web development POV.
GD = Game Development
WD = Web Development
Technical Questions.
How do you design UI in games? in WD you have CSS, and need minimal graphics to create a quick menu. are there similar tools or concepts in GD ?
How do you deal with storing data ? Do you use flat text files? Or is there something like MySQL or sqlite that you use to store information about objects, users, and etc ?
What game engines is commonly used ? Are there any that use scripting languages ? I only know VB and basic understanding of C.
With the proliferation of Iphone and Android, is J2ME being phased out for mobile phones ?
open 3D web is coming. What is your thoughts on having 3d applications running natively from your browser ?
What tools make it easy for creating 3D objects, levels, game environment, and animating characters and so on ?
Where can I find out more about how server/client, client/client, and MMORPG networking works ?
Where can I get or find generic or commonly used game flows ? for multiplayer ?
How do you deal with physics? Is there freely available algorithm or library that you can use ?
How are real time cutscenes made in games ?
Market Questions.
Which market should you enter? Mobile, iphone, wii, PSP, DS, android , ps3, PC etc.
Shouldn't you always enter mobile market, as it is easy to make small games on your own yet sell a lot ? Are there any resources where i can find more about each markets ?
What is your thought on Steam content distribution ? Is it the distribution model of the future ? Whats wrong with the traditional publisher/distributor model ? How does the traditional model work exactly ?
How big is the web games market? ex) Flash games.
How is game development different from any other software development or web development ?
I have a lot more....but those are the ones that I have been thinking about lately.
Thank you very much for reading !
UI Development
Depends on the game- is it animated, or a board-style game? Generally, UI assets are created as images, sprites, or storyboards.
Data
Again, depends on the game type. Realtime games need FAST access, so you want to store your data in a local database and cache it as much as possible. Local file-based databases tend to be the norm, either custom or off-the-shelf, such as SQLLite.
Engines
There are tons of engines out there for 3D, board, etc. Popcap has made their C++ game engine open source. Others include Unity, Ogre3D...
J2ME
I wouldn't target this platform for games.
Don't know much about "Open 3D Web" but it sounds very browser-dependent, so mileage may vary across browsers.
You can play with 3D with Google Sketchup and Caligari Truespace. Truespace was bought by Microsoft and made free.
Again, tons of engines out there for networking. Example: Microsoft's XNA framework has some networking bits you can leverage.
Not sure what you mean there.
There are physics engines built into some of the gaming engines I've mentioned, and external ones you can use.
Once upon a time, realtime custscenes were pre-rendered with 3D Studio Max or Maya. These days in-game rendering is often good enough for cutscenes: look at the latest Halo 3:ODST game. All cutscenes use the in-game engine.
Market
I looked into game development earlier this year. Casual games look to me like a growth industry- high volume, relatively low development cost. Big Fish Games for the PC is a good example there- they publish a few titles and resell most.
I think mobile game development is a huge potential market but the barriers to entry are high because it will be a crowded space. iPhone games are the 800lb gorilla but Android is coming up. PSP and others have a limited audience and are notoriously difficult.
The most important thing I learned in my research is that game development is a labor of love. It's hugely multi-disciplinary: you need programming, art, concept, production. It's more like making a movie than anything else. It's also rough to make a profit because of all that overhead. If you want to get into it, I recommend joining a game developer to learn the business. Once you have experience you can carry it forward to larger gigs at larger publishers. Eventually you can get to work on a major AAA title, after which you can really write your own ticket.
I'll stick to answering the technical questions:
1 - UIs are usually completely bespoke, with nothing resembling a standard in the same way that HTML/CSS is a web development standard. Some people use ScaleForm which is based on Flash but that is by no means common.
2 - Data is often stored in flat files - rarely text, more commonly binary. Again, these are almost always completely bespoke formats. Sometimes they are aggregated into archive files which use the zip format or something similar however. Occasionally, some programs might use sqlite, and online games often use SQL databases.
3 -There are many game engines used, although the definition of 'common' is vague. There are well-known ones like the Unreal or Source engines, down to lesser known ones like Panda3D or Torque. Some of these are heavily focused on 3D and leave much of the rest of the functionality to other packages (or the game developer themselves). Most are able to be used with scripting languages, or come with one built-in. (eg. UnrealScript).
4 - J2ME - couldn't say, that's not the sector I work in.
5 - 3D web will be interesting when it's ready, but cutting edge games currently require gigabytes of client-side data. Running the application in the browser doesn't get around that download, so it's not a great benefit. Nor is it likely to be as high performing as a dedicated 3D game renderer for quite some time. So while it opens many doors, it doesn't significantly change the state of play for gaming just yet.
6 - 3D art assets are usually made with 3D Studio Max or Maya, although there are several other related tools.
7 - MMORPG networking firstly requires understanding of basic networking (ie. strip away all the HTTP fluff and get right down to the socket level). Start with Beej, work up. From there, you're best off reading talks given at conferences and reading the Massively Multiplayer Game Development books, coupling that with anything you can find on traditional game networking. 2 good starting points are the Source Multiplayer Networking docs, and Gaffer's Networking for Games Programmers. Don't expect to understand everything the first time you read it, either. And bear in mind this is a field with ongoing research and the problems are far from solved yet. And that it's also a field where "if you have to ask, you can't do it yet". Emphasis on yet.
8 - I don't know what you mean by game flow - it's not a term I've heard used before.
9 - There are several physics libraries available, including Havok, ODE, Bullet, PhysX, Box2D, etc. Some are free, some are not. You can also write your own physics for simple games, as it's not all that hard, and indeed that is what everybody did until relatively recently.
10 - Real time cutscenes are typically either pre-animated in something like 3D Studio Max, or scripted to run within the game engine.
It depends very much on the platform you are developing for. some game engines, or platforms, have built in platform specific means of creating UI systems. An example is developing for the 360 where there is a proprietary UI system provided with the SDK tools.
However, systems like these tie you to a particular platform and this can be undesirable.
Another alternative is cross platform libraries like Scaleform, which provide game-side libraries for displaying UI elements, and a common way of editing and creating UI systems across different platforms.
The complexity of UIs in videogames varies wildly. Look at something like Peggle, compared to something like Codemaster's Dirt or EA's Dead Space. Each system is therefore implemented differently.
Some use 3D packages and the standard game engine to animate and render UIs. Others implement Flash. Others roll their own custom solutions. There's no easy choice or a standard like CSS I'm afraid!
Hope this helps,
-Tom