Game values website idea

[the_site]

In many MMOs many people are often stumbled upon how much should they buy or sale an item. I have an Idea of making a values page for a game and for my self in general knowledge. Anyways, I can make a webpage and post values of how much of this item.... But its so tedious changing prices on the webpage. I wonder if any could point me in the right direction, how would I do this through a database. Where it would be at ease.

[albertdiones73]

Aside from price it'll be also useful if you can add the attributes whatever it is on your game.

Then about changing price, how about putting a constant NPC price (if there is) then create another table with `item_id`,`price_suggestion`,`ip` or `username` then get the average

To convince your user to help you by submitting prices, then you'll have to make it the most noticeable(but not so intrusive) part of your page. Having them visit your page looking only for price would break the purpose of having them visit, so it's good if you have other things that may interest them like attributes of that item.

Also try having comments feature so everybody can suggest you stuffs or add more info about the item.

And the ultimate point of your web development is to have an online system on how they sell there items, like having a button "I sell this item" or "I buying this item" if player to player trade is allowed on your game

Or having a map showing what NPC's you can buy those items

hope these ideas help

edit: watch out for spam! :D

[descalzo]

So what you want is a sales list with prices for items like "ultimate foo hammer" from "World of Wicked Ninja Werewolf Magic"?

Do you want the public to add input? Just yourself?

Manually? Or via automation (ie 'scraping' info off the Web)?

[the_site]

@descalzo: Yes, I want to do a Price guide site. Where "TheChosenOne" can see the price value of " Ultimate Foo Hammer" xD

People can just look for prices by word of mouth, but figured this could be a fun project to work with.
Keep in mind prices of items fluctuate often, so I would like to build this where It be simple to change up the prices.

[essellar]

Although you can get pretty sophisticated with the display part, like a financial (stock or currency) info site that lets the user know the price history and trends, or like an online catalog that tells the user a lot about the item, or even keep it down to a simple price list, that's not the immediate question here*.

What we need to know is how the prices, etc., are going to be set in your "dream" version of the application. (Okay, maybe not your dream version -- there's no easy way to have the server read minds yet.)

You've said that posting the prices manually is (or would be) tedious. How are you imagining that happening right now? And what would the process look like if you had your druthers? Would you (or a team of logged-in "admin" users) be doing the updates, or do you envision an automated process (where the server would "watch" the market for in-game trades)?

The manual process can be easier than you might imagine -- just type in a new price on the web page and hit "Enter" to change an existing price, and a background XMLHttpRequest will update the value on the server. Deleting items is just as easy if you need that option. Adding items is only a little more complicated, but that's really only because you'd need to type or select more information (the game if you are handling more thn one game, the item category, the item name and the price). All of this depends on using JavaScript in the browser (as well as a database and a server-side scripting language like PHP), but it doesn't mean having to manually edit your HTML or even loading a separate form to make an update -- it can be as easy as using a spreadsheet. If that's all you want, then the implementation isn't too terribly difficult (although it may be way beyond anything you've done before, it really isn't that hard to do).

If you are looking at a completely automated process, then things get a whole lot more complicated. Not impossible, just a whole lot more complicated. Sometimes you can use a game API (Application Programming Interface -- in this case, a way to get at game data directly); sometimes you have to load web pages and look for gold among the gravel. A word of warning here, though: something like this can take more time and resources than you'd be allowed to use with your hosting plan if you're using shared hosting of any kind; it often makes more sense to set up your own machine (at home) to do the heavy lifting, then post the raw updates to your server periodically -- even the crappiest old off-lease piece of junk you can find on the used market can be set up to do something like that, and it will spare you having to worry about resource limits on your web hosting server.

I hope I've given you enough information to ask a better question. We really do need to know a lot more than you've told us so far before we can give a constructive answer.

* You do need to plan all of this as well; it will affect your front end (the web page the user sees), your "middle tier" (the code that sits between your user and the database) and your back end (the way the data are stored). Some things are easy to add later on with a relatively low cost in development effort (like catalog descriptions); some things need to be there pretty much from the beginning if they're going to be of any use.

[the_site]

To give people a better knowledge of what I want to achieve, here are some links;
http://itemdb-rs.runescape.com/frontpage.ws
http://www.grandexchangecentral.com/
http://habbox.com/#!/Rares/Category/Classic Rares
http://www.wowhead.com/
Im assuming they are called a Price Database. I like how the following sites have features like the Price History, High & Low Demand, Search/Browse, and more. Like to see more on the forum to share their ideas/knowledge... finally found a great project and really excited to see how far this can go.

[the_site]

*Bump

[claxon]

Where can i get a complete web selling system?

[Dead-i]

@claxon - You might want to look on http://www.softaculous.com/ for 'E-Commerce' scripts. They are all free and you can download/install them on your web hosting (like x10Hosting) free.