So this weekend I decided to start my php training. I kidnapped my webmaster David Turner (otherwise known as the God of IMD) and together we made our way completely through this site: Tizag.com PHP Introduction in about 8-10 hours. He took me on a few side jaunts, but in all it was a massive influx of information to my poor brain.
Then I set up MAMP and it was off to the races. I had a pretty good idea of the “site” I wanted to create. I’ve been developing an analog card game for ages 6-12 with a few other students, and it was a perfect candidate to get cyberized. I sketched out a few rough layouts, texted out the gameplay a little bit, and we got started.
Now learning from a tutorial and actually creating something are two totally different things, and this is very well known to me after working with UDK and Maya the last few weeks. So it was no suprise to find myself staring at a blank template for the site and going “derp?” Fortunately the God of IMD is a patient one.
After that, the weekend pretty much went like this:
Me: I want it to do this… this is what I code, yes?
Him: Very close. But do this too.
Me: It’s gonna eventually have to do this other thing too.
Him: We’ll worry about that later.
Me: But I’m just sayin…
Him: Code this first.
Me: How about this?
Him: Wonderful, but also do this because blah blah blah.
Me: Look what I did!
Him: Ohhh Shineh! And we can do this…
Me: Ohhh Shineh.
And the result of all our hard work is a half completed game that breaks quite a bit, but is fun enough that we sit and play with it and giggle when we test it. That’s a mark of success, right? We have a long ways to go yet with it, but the functionality is coming along nicely.
I even learned that you can’t use // comments in the modern CSS because it causes things to break inexplicably. I have commented my rage at learning this little lesson into my CSS, actually. It’s commented correctly. Since it’s a children’s game, I’ll probably end up taking that particular comment out though… (thanks Duane, for schooling me on THAT one!)
Here’s a little collage of the site for you. Things will get a bit more shineh after the backside of the site is completed, but for now it shows what it needs to show in order for us to work. Enjoy!