starbasecitadel

Just go to the local Starbucks at prime time.  Half of them still have decent performance but I find when there are 15+ people I often see packet loss spike from 0/1% to 5-15% and latency spike from 150 to 300-2000.

I added the reference to the Excel log, good call.  I also added in a clause covering transferability in case I switch from individual to LLC/corp down the road.

Thanks!

I agree with the others.  For example here is one way to normalize it:

character

========

id

name

attribute

======

id 

name

character_attribute

===============

id

attribute_id

attribute_value

unique index main_ind (id, attribute_id)

Your character_attribute table will now have 500 rows per character.    This is much more scalable and still easy to work with.  

edit:  Just to populate this a bit to further illustrate:

character table

===========

id , name

1 , Conan

2 , Gandalf

character_attribute  table

===================

id , name

1 , class

2 , level

3 , strength

4 , spellpower

character_attribute

==============

id , attribute_id,  attribute_value

1 , 1 , Warrior

1 , 2 , 15

1 , 2 , 18

1 , 2 , 0

2 , 1 , Wizard

2 , 2, 20

2 , 3 , 5

2 , 4 , 19

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/carmine/quintet-for-android

Love the concept.  I had a similar idea a while ago, thought it would be cool to have each player performing a different role on a starship co-operatively in realtime, sort of based on the Star Trek universe.  

For example, the Helmsman would steer and fire (or even better split that into 2 players roles), the Communications Officer would help send and receive orders to other ships in the area to coordinate, the Engineering Officer would help with damage control, the Captain would help with overall strategy and perhaps fill underling roles when a bridge officer is incapacitated or otherwise too busy, and each role would get a totally different interface.  I never developed the idea but always thought it had some potential.  Not sure if this concept is kind of what you have in mind but good luck regardless, would love to see more true teamwork types of games.

In terms of the programming side, I feel it is easy to underestimate how long things take particularly if you are new at programming.  Most aspiring game programmers have this idea that "games are FUN, therefore they must be super quick and easy to create!  I'll just bang out a revolutionary new multiplayer game that is better than Starcraft by myself in a year or two of hard work on the side" and thus they tend to underestimate a realisitic schedule.   Many commercial games have a dozen or more programmers working full time on it (as well as a small army of artists, modelers etc) so you just got to be realistic about things.  That generally means start with a very small game -- complete it -- and work your way to more and more complex projects with more and more team-members.   

Good luck!