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| ' /| | __| __/ _ \  | ' /| | __| __/ _ \ 
| . \| | |_| || (_) | | . \| | |_| || (_) |
|_|\_\_|\__|\__\___/  |_|\_\_|\__|\__\___/ 
              _  ___ _   _        
             | |/ (_) |_| |_ ___  
             | ' /| | __| __/ _ \ 
             | . \| | |_| || (_) |
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=================================================

Welcome to KittoKittoKitto, a Virtual Pet Site template app.

Kitto's goals are simple:
    
    * Help new petgame developers get off the ground as quickly as possible.
      Writing the whole register/login/boards/adopt pet thing over and over
      is a pointless waste of time.

      That said, it is not within the scope of Kitto to provide *everything*
      you would see in a run-of-the-mill petgame. What is in this package is
      every major feature a basic installation of Kitto is going to provide.
      
      There is no battle stadium or trading post. There are not even user
      shops! The purpose of Kitto is to provide *the very basic* components.
      It is my personal belief that providing *too much* functionaility will
      just encourage dozens of sites using the Kitto code and *no*
      custmizations to speak of will spring up.
      
      Your game should be unique - but that does not mean you should waste
      time re-inventing the wheel. I will probably be publishing several
      extensions to Kitto to add those functions, but they will be optional
      (and, of course, Free) add-ons.  
    
    * Help educate brand-new and novice programmers by giving them a well-
      designed application to hack away at. The code in Kitto will (hopefully)
      service as an inspiration light of Best Practices and Brilliantly DRY
      code to the next generation of pet-game developers.  
    
      I started programming because of petgames. Three years later, I work for 
      an ISP doing web applications. I want that to happen to you, too - it's 
      fun, it's good experience, it makes money. I built a career because of
      what I learned, and I am all about sharing that experience with whoever
      is willing. 

== Installation ==
The Kitto wiki is gone, but you can find install directions in ModularGaming's
wiki. This old revision of their install document is what you want:

<http://modulargaming.com/projects/modulargaming/wiki/MgInstall?version=13>

== Post-Installation ==
My tips to you at this point:
    
    * Read through the code. Learn where things go in the directory tree. There
      really isn't that much code to look at - most of the work is being done
      by ActiveTable automagically.

    * __LEARN HOW TO USE ACTIVETABLE__. It's a brand-new library, and docs are
      still forthcoming (although there's pretty good in-line documentation that
      can be compiled into HTML with phpdocumentor), but ActiveTable is a 
      *SERIOUS* timesaver. Without it, I would not have been able to write
      Kitto in (literally) five days. 

      There's some documentation for the library at 
      <http://elsa.godless-internets.org/aphp/index.php/ActiveTable>. It's not complete, 
      but it's not exactly sparse, either. 
      
      Writing and debugging SQL is a bitch. It's error-prone. It's a timesink. 
      Why not have most of your SQL written for you by ActiveTable? ;-)

      Furthermore, ActiveTable uses PEAR::DB#prepare()/PEAR::DB#execute() for
      all of its operations, so you're absolutely safe from SQL injection,
      even if you don't use stripinput() in whatever you're passing it. How
      can you pass that up?

   * Use Smarty templates. As you can see, they keep all of your script files
     very small, clean, and easy-to-read. Plus, Smarty has a kickass caching
     engine, so when you realize the boards are causing high server loads, you
     can have Smarty cache the HTML it generates with a few extra lines. 
     
     No SQL/HTML generation = less load. You can even have Smarty expire a 
     cached template whenever someone makes a new post. Believe me - Smarty
     has a lot of features that make it worth learning.
     
     The Smarty manual is available at <http://smarty.php.net>. Give it a once-
     over, at the very least!

Nick 'Owl' Evans, 2007-09-22

KittoKittoKitto has been brought to you by the Yasashii Syndicate. 
<http://yasashiisyndicate.org>

Yasashii yoake, guys!