I want to develop a web-based game-style interface. I don't know if this is the right forum. I first posted this in Game Designs but it looks as though it isn't even being read.

A little background info....the interface would be primarily for mobile devices and would involve a few images that respond to each other. The basic premise is very simple, something similar to a combination of jQuery features (move, resize, pop-up dialogs, etc.). I started to create mathematical formulas for the correlations between the images because I thought I might need to give this to a developer. It occurred to me that I may be recreating the wheel. There must be tools that GDs use for these tasks.

Of course my first objective is to get to the right forum. Then my objectives are to get a little technical advice to save some time and to connect with programmers to get a budget.

BTW, I am a Florida CPA willing to barter services if anyone has the need for a CPA.

I really appreciate any advice!

Mainly Game Designers use tools or plugins that developers make for them specifically for determined task.

I guess there is not a magical tool that solves your problem unless you ask someone to make it.

Then again, I didn't quite understand WHAT are you trying to do. So...

Thanks, Brunopava. I'll try to explain with a little more detail with a very simplified example. I want to be able to embed interactive graphics on a web page. Imagine a triangle, a square, a circle, and a star within a frame on the page. Each object is labeled with a related topic or thought that the user would like to explore. Because there is a strong corellation between the circle and star topics, if the user selects the circle, informative dialog related to the circle topic may appear AND the star grows and moves closer to the circle while objects with a negative or no correlation to the circle topic, the triangle and square, shrink and move away. Because there is a correlation between the star and the square, the square will expand and move closer to the star as the user moves from the circle to the star while the circle shrinks to former size and moves away.

The size and distance of each object is determined by a relationship factor which is called from a template. That factor (or index value) may have, as an example, a base of zero so that equally related objects with a zero index all appear to have the same relative starting size and distance from each other. Items with a negative index (correlation) to a selected object would shrink. I had assumed that if I gave this task to a regular programmer, the programmer would need specific formulas for moving and resizing the objects based on XY coordinates.

Of course more is needed than this simple example. I don't know what can even actually be accomplished within a web-based structure, what skill sets are required of the programmer, are the formulas I am creating a waste of time, and of course how to budget this project.

It seems to me that a game developer would be more appropriate than a "normal" programmer.

That's pretty basic UI code that you've described, and any competent HTML + JavaScript developer could make short work of it. Your biggest barrier to getting your game made may be communicating your concept.

Hey sounds like a cool project. I would recommend checking out pixi.js. It claims to do everything you are describing, working in all browsers and on mobile devices as well.

Here is a page with several working pixi examples, which you can check out:

http://pacific-waters-2592.herokuapp.com/

That should give you a good overview of what can be accomplished these days with basic html and detailed javascript. Pixi has support for webGL, but also works on older browsers which don't have webGL.

If you are interested to look "under the hood", so to speak, here is a github repo which is identical to the website linked above:

https://github.com/MattLemmon/pixies

I would be happy to try to help you move forward on your project in any way possible, and I would be glad to barter for accounting services if it gets to that point.

EDIT: You could also check out http://pacific-waters-2592.herokuapp.com/files/ and http://pacific-waters-2592.herokuapp.com/assets/ to get a sense of how some of the .js file structure works on a live website.

EDIT: You mentioned jquery. Some of the examples linked above use jquery.min.js and jquery-1.8.3.min.js.

EDIT: By the way, do you have any experience working with a text editor (vim, Sublime, etc.)? If you don't already have a beefy text editor (in addition to Word and Notepad), I recommend installing Sublime Text 2. Also, what OS are you on? (Windows 7, Mac 10.6, Linux, etc?)

I guess there is not a magical tool that solves your problem unless you ask someone to make it.

I think pixi.js comes pretty close to being the magical tool you are looking for. It allows for the use of lots of plug-ins and .js libraries, which can be tailor-suited to the specific needs of your application.