Website Rebuild for Multiplayer Role Playing Game

A Moment in Tyme is an online role-playing game built in a text based environment. These types of games are often referred to as 'Multi-user dungeons' or "MUDs' for short. Here's what I would like to accomplish on this project: * Refresh the back end PHP code and MySQL tables. * The code was originally written by coders with limited PHP experience so the code does not follow best practices for PHP coding. * Tighten the integration between the game server and the website. * They share the same database but there is some duplication of effort between the two. I'd like to make as many of the games features as possible available through the website. This including reading/sending mail, posting messages on bulletin boards, looking at your players stat sheets, etc. * Clean up the user interface * It needs to do a better job of attracting new players. It also needs to be standards compliant and work equally well on large screens as it does on hand-held devices and smart-phones. * Improve robustness of our AJAX-Client. * We have an AJAX based MUD client on our website built by myself. I followed some tutorials for building AJAX based web apps and I have had some success with the client. However it is still a bit buggy and I would really like someone who is very proficient in AJAX to fix this up and make sure it works flawlessly across Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari and mobile browsers such as iPhone Safari, Android and Palm WebOS. The website in question is: [login to view URL] We are a free to play Multi-User Dimension (MUD) currently undergoing a major code refresh. The back end code for the website is written in PHP (v5.1.6) and it runs against a MySQL database on Linux. The web server is Apache (v2.2.3). My goal is to clean up the existing PHP code to make it more consistent and easier to add new features while also adding some new features at the same time. ## Deliverables Currently our website includes the following features for all players: * Introduction to our game. * Explanation of what a MUD is. * A way to see which players are currently on-line. * A way to connect to the game with a Java applet * A way to connect to the game using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript) * A way to READ in-game bulletin boards. * A way to send and receive in-game 'mud-mail' * A way to create and view personalized player profiles * A way to access in-game help files * Various links to Wheel of Time and MUD related content. We also include some advanced functionality for staff members: * A tool to edit help files and policy files on-line. * A tool to edit in-game script files on-line. We would like to enhance or ADD the following functionality: * Read/Unread functionality to be linked into website bulletin boards (This functionality already exists in game) * The ability to POST new messages to bulletin boards. * the ability to search for a bulletin board message. * Read/Unread functionality for MUD-Mail messages. * MUD-Mail functionality needs some enhancements, such as only displaying 20 or so messages at one time, filing messages into folders, and support for deleting/moving/copying multiple messages at one time. * The AJAX based MUD client needs some code cleanup from someone who knows AJAX. In summary the skills I am looking for in this project: * HTML * PHP * MySQL * Specifically I'd like someone with knowledge of MySQL stored procedures and functions so that some of the shared logic between the MUD and website can be migrated to the database. * JavaScript * Experience with AJAX is a requirement. * * *This broadcast message was sent to all bidders on Monday Nov 22, 2010 11:19:07 AM: Hello everyone, The bidding or this project as ended and I never quite received any bids that cover all of what I wanted to accomplish. Therefore I am changing the project to a 'pay for deliverable' model and I will detail out the specific features I want built and rather than bidding on a per hour or per week basis, you will need to bid on your estimate of the total cost of the project based on which deliverables you are comfortable delivering. Please specify exactly which aspects you are comfortable doing when you bid. If you are great at PHP and AJAX but you are not so comfortable with MySQL stored procs and functions, please say so when you bid. I may accept multiple bidders or do some of the work myself. Also keep in mind that I do want to see a mock-up of what your proposal as well as a fairly formal documentation for the work you do.