Browser-Game

Browser-Game
- Procedures
  - Registration procedure
    - Make sure the user account is only used once
      - An AJAX request may give the user faster feedback
    - If required make also sure that the email is used once
      - Another AJAX request might be helpful here
    - Both passwords must match as verification
    - Non-required form fields are checked only if there is content for XSS or other bad things
    - Encrypt/hash the password (should always be performed)
    - Complete the registration by adding the user account to the database
    - Registered partners shall be notified with different ways
      - XML-RPC is the default
      - Different notifiers shall also be possible
      - This might be queueable to avoid long waiting times for slow partner pages
    - Send out confirmation mail if requested by configuration
    - Redirect the user to a new page
      - Default is the "Registration completed" page
      - Home page shall be chooseable
      - Other URLs can be used as well
    - Alternatively login to the internal area
      - The account is not useable if email is not confirmed
  - Login procedure
  - General
    - Most steps shall be done by an intercepting filter pattern
- Pseudo-3D graphics
  - Still graphics
    - Different ships
      - Passenger ship
      - Oil tanker
      - Container ship
      - Misc small ships
    - Buildings
      - Shipyard
      - Dry dock
      - Terminal building
    - Vehicles
      - Container carrier
      - Crane
    - All pics should be self-shooted
      - This avoids copyright conflicts
      - The requested buildings/vehicles must be found in reality
  - Slightly moved graphics (GIF)
    - Water surface
    - Sky texture
- Tick-based simulation
  - Cronological job (cron)
    - Addional requirement for installation
- Click-based simulation
  - User clicks a button, action performed
- Fully XHTML 1.0
  - Latest Internet standard
  - Older browsers will make lesser trouble
  - Should validate with the W3C HTML Validator
    - http://validator.w3.org
- Design is CSS-based
  - Themes are possible
- Nice AJAX features
- Website structure
  - External guest area
    - News on the front page (home)
      - The news source can be choosen from different
        Previously typed and stored in database
        Local XML files
        Hint: Created by external generators
        Remote XMLs like RSS feeds
      - The typer can choose a category
        New categories can be suggested by the typer
        An admin can create new categories
      - Comments are allowable
        Logged-in users
        Guests as well
        Secured with CAPTCHA
      - One object for all news should be fine
        Do not use one object per news entry!
        The object receives a "Requestable" object
        Obtain page number and sent comment data from it
    - Registration form
      - One single page
      - Multiple pages
    - Login form
      - With guest login (disable by the admin)
      - Password reminder
      - Link to the registration form
      - Different login methods configureable by admin:
        By username+password
        By email+password
        By username/email+password
      - Wether cookie-based or session-based login
        This shall be configureable by admin
    - Screenshot gallery
      - Comments are allowable
      - Should be kept simple
    - List of enabled features
    - Statistics of the game (not whole network!)
    - List of playing users
      - With link to their public profiles
    - Pillory
      - Should be used to combat abuse
        Child pornography
        Nacy activities
        Spam attempts
      - Username (who got locked)
      - Date&Time
      - The admin
      - Stated reason
    - Small extra pages
      - Imprint (required in Germany)
      - Privacy policy (required in some countries)
  - Internal game area
    - News on first login page
      - Like on "home" page except that there is no captcha required
      - Including history of recent events since last login
      - Announcements in special sub-category for newly founded shipping/travel companies
    - Create new game character
      - The gamer can have all varriants
        This may be limitable by admin
        The player still cannot make contracts with own characters
      - It should cost somewhere a fee
        The fee shall be payed from user account
      - For first character creation he shall have enougth game money plus some extra
      - Types of characters
        Shipping company founder
        This includes the fee for funding new company
        A news for the community shall be placed
        The admin/mod can still moderate it
        Travel company founder
        Like shipping company...
        Jobholder
        Starts unemployed
        Some money left for sending applications out
        May ask goverment for financial help
        Has to pay monthly fees
        Rent for a "fake" house
        Meal and drinks (faked)
        Others costs like phone,electricity
        Merchant
        Raw resources
        Constructed ship parts
        Smaller complete ships
        Marketing Agency
        Sells marketing/merchandising products
      - This is only possible if account is activated
    - "Load" existing character
      - Contains link to "Create new character"
      - Player sees some basic data about listed characters
      - Locked characters should not be removed instead marked with "Locked"
    - Refill account points
      - The admin may choose if the in-game can be converted with a low rate to account points
      - This option might be disabled by admin
        Then the gamer can only refill in-game money per character
    - Update gamer/user profile
      - Enter the current account password
      - Send email to the user only if no email has changed, or if ...
      - Has the email been changed?
        Send new confirmation to new email
        Send notifier to old email
      - Change account password
        Enter current account password
        Enter new password twice
        Send an email to the user
  - General infrastructures
    - Point system (in-game money)
    - A.I. goverment
      - Shall help unemployed gamers staying alive (but not becoming rich)
      - May later on collect taxes from companies
        For paying unemployed people
        Financial support for broken companies
      - May ofer social security services
      - Goverment is not playable at the moment
        It should be "played" abstractly by the server
        Gamers may help each other with financial support
- Strict coding guidelines for clean PHP code
  - General code structure
    - Fully object-oriented
      - Use of different but practical design patterns
        Factory-method pattern for smother initializing of objects
        Template method pattern where it matches
        MVC pattern for the website core
      - Only one index.php shall provide access to the whole game
      - Slower in PHP5
  - Documentation
    - In-line documentation
      - Script header with full copyright and license as requested by GNU GPL 3
      - Method headers with Doxygen compatible tags
      - Comments above single lines for better understanding what is happening
    - Files in directory "docs"
      - COPYING*
        License files
      - Conception
        As OpenDocument and later PDF as well
      - NEWS
        Latest news around the game (coeer and gamer)
      - README
        Includes installation instructions and general gaming guidelines
      - ArgoUML diagram
        For visualization of the class structure
      - FreeMind document
        ...
      - THANKS
        All people helped in some direct or indirect way, less or more.
      - minmap_yyyymmdd.html
        Exported FreeMind maps to HTML with CSS and JavaScript
  - Folding of the code
  - Tabs and spaces