Language to program multiplayer game

New here, so "Hi all"

I used to create simple games on the Amiga (using AMOS) and these days I'm a php web designer/programmer.

I'd really like to get back in to game programming and I'm currently looking at the different programming languages.

Long term, I'd like to create a top-down game (think AlienBreed) but multiplayer. In an ideal would, I'd be able to put this on the net and have anyone that visits my website to play it without having to manualy download/install anything (I don't like the 'feel' of flash based-games).

As an extra bonus, I'd like to be able to develop PC applications too.

Any ideas/thoughts?

Thanks for your time

If you don't want people to have to install anything, then you have to use Flash.

Director is more powerful and has a true 3D enigne but the browser plugin is over 8mb to download (and most visitors will have to download it).

Otherwise you could use Java or C / C++. But again that would probably need a big download to get the actual game.

You could make some kind of game using PHP, it has been done, but the kind of game you could make would be limited.

Most of the game's created in php are RPG, So what type of game are you looking to create?

most people have java installed on there system so if you make your game java based it would be quite accessable.

If you don't want people having to download the game you'll be seriously reducing your choices in languages. I can only think of tree possiblities for that: Flash, Java Applet and Browser-Based (i.e. PHP).

If you want something in realtime the browser-based way will fall away too leaving you with flash and Applet.

Java is a pain in the *** to even load on a page, like seriously it might just be me, but I goto a page with some Java in it and my browser goes really slow, an Applet icon comes up on my explorer bar, and my whole computer lags for a bit, even happens in good ol firefox... most annoying thing ever.

PHP is the way to go for any web based game, but its not gonna be real time unless you get some crazy AJAX going, which is gonna make you pull your hair out if you attempt to write something up. For PHP the best your gonna make is a RPG, with minimal 2D (sprites) animation, if any.

Java, PHP, C++...

Depending on what you plan on doing, basically... most actual games nowadays (nothing web-based) primarily use C++

Have you tried a fresh install of windows? Whenever you get around to it you might find it runs faster.

Also PHP can be real time, you just have to keep refreshing the page, an example is http://www.advancedpowers.com/me_4g/ it's a space RPG type of game, where you do play real time against live players, and if you don't refresh often you'll find yourself dead.

I have freshly installed it once (back in the days that I used IE). Its always been slow, for any computer I use, its about as slow as opening a .pdf file internally in firefox, gets really slow for about a min or two. My computers in perfect shape now, and it still lags.

PHP cannot really be real time, if it requires refreshs its not really real time, the closest you can really get to doing real time online without flash, is AJAX, which does require refreshing, but its in frames and you dont notice, the page just updates stats and characters positions and such, via dhtml and javascript, every single time new data is recieved from the frame that constantly refreshes. The main frame doesnt refresh.(By the way, if your playing against other people online, I believe the term is MMORPG [not just RPG])

MMORPG's can always seem like real time, by automaticaly refreshing it, but your not gonna find a real time php based game ever. Actually when it comes to MMORPG's computer games, some dont even do realtime, they just constantly connect for new updates, because its not necessary to keep a constant data stream, battles are turn based in most cases, so it doesnt matter, its not gonna effect you if you dont get the update immediatly, a few seconds of delay wont mean a thing.

Now when it comes to other generes of games, they need to be realtime, like a shooting game, or sports game, everything has to be updated in real - realtime, a few seconds of delay can be the diffrence of killing someone, or getting killed.

Flash is capable of realtime (or something very close), but you just have to set up a flash server, there could be other ways, but thats the only one I know of.


So if you want to create a real time game, online, you have pretty much Flash as your only option, and your most likely going to have to rent or buy a server for that.

You can have semi-real time by using PHP and AJAX, but AJAX is so complex, that you should leave it to only a programming geneous, and its so 'ify ify on browser support' its not gonna work for probably a forth of the people atleast. Plus the best your gonna make is a mmorpg that doesnt require noticable page reloads.

You can have something that can be confused as real time, but its nowhere near, by just having the page automaticaly refresh every couple of seconds, but the best game you will make with that is a turn based MMORPG.


And on a side note, if you make a computer game that runs in real time, and keeps an ongoing connection to the server, your most likely going to have to rent a couple of servers atleast, or buy them... and you will need a huge amount of transfer.

Let us know if you ever get the game going

Brokenhope is right, flash is by far your best program from a game that can be played right off the website. Director would be next, and is a decent program, but unless you want to do 3D I would go with flash. You say that you dont like the look of flash games, well, a lot of games use the flash tools for the design, so a lot of them tend to have a standardized look. However, you could easily create your graphics in a 3rd party program and include them as 24bit transparent png files and have a game that looks NOTHING like flash. However, by doing that you are going to make your game rather large in download size.

There is other ways to get your flash game to be multiplayer without having a flash server runing with different zones and stuff. You could use the XML object supported by flash to fetch and send information, also, there is a load vars object which will do the same. The flash server does not connect to a database, it just allows you to share current flash data between different flash applications via some included actionscripts. Flash itself also does not have database connectivity, so you will need a third party language like PHP to handle your database stuff.

Actionscript is very powerful, and if built correctly, can produce some very amazing games. However, the use of multiplayer games with flash is... So so at the moment. THere have been some major break throughs with online games such as Club Penguin located at miniclip http://www.miniclip.com/games/club-penguin/en/ also there is Runescape, which they say is all built in javascript, but I am sure that it is built in director which uses Lingo, a form of java type scripting.

Anyways, get flash, it will work.