Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Best choice for server-side game programming
kyrathaba:
Reposted as separate post per Tinjaw's suggestion (also slightly modified the question):
Question: can applets be downloaded from just any old website, and run in a browser? Do they actually just sit on the server, inert, and not execute until downloaded (if that were the case, I'd think you could host them on even geocities or some other free host)? There's a game idea I'd like to eventually implement, where the game would just be textual. I'm wondering if Java or wxWidgets would give me the capability of authoring such a game that would run on my website and allow users to connect to it.
Traditionally, server-side programming has been performed using
Perl, Python, C++, or some other language to create CGI programs, but more sophisticated
systems have since appeared. These include Java-based Web servers that allow you to perform all
your server-side programming in Java by writing what are called servlets. Servlets and their
offspring, JSPs, are two of the most compelling reasons that companies that develop Web sites
are moving to Java, especially because they eliminate the problems of dealing with differently
abled browsers
--- End quote ---
f0dder:
Applets are downloaded and run by the client, and can thus be hosted more or less anywhere (some free hosts have limitations on the types of files they let you store).
If you want to do something server-side, you need a decent host. Things like the non-realtime space conquest games can be implemented with some server-side scripting language and a database (usually php+mysql), and while you might not be able to find a free host that supports this, you can certainly find some cheap ones that do.
If you want to do something interesting, you need to run real, live code on the server... and then it comes down to which programming language(s) you're most comfortable with. Usually things like that are programmed in C/C++, but you could do java, dotNET, whatever. You're not very likely to find free hosting that lets you run code, though, and for paid hosting it's probably not going to be cheap.
kyrathaba:
some free hosts have limitations on the types of files they let you store
--- End quote ---
Yes. For example, I've never encountered a free web host that would allow .EXE files (unless they were zipped), and I suppose that's quite understandable.
In particular, the "game" my friends and I are hoping to someday develop would be a first-cousin to multi-user dimensions. It would have quite low server load (probably no more than a handful of people connected at any one time). However, it sounds to me that, at this point, multiplayer game programming isn't very accessible to the hobbyist programmer on a tight budget.
Of course, I could always serve such a program off my home machine via Filezilla or some equivalent, but that of course comes with the well-known security threats and reliability problems. Still, these concerns aside (and I'm not saying I'd actually do this), I suppose if I did serve off my machine (just for a handful of friends, say), I could use .NET to write a server that web browsers can connect to. That would effectively make it multiplatform, since everyone has an internet browser, regardless of their OS.
f0dder:
Multi-User Dimensions?
If you mean MUD, then you'll need to write a real game server. You probably could fudge around and make something PHP-based, but I don't think it would be pretty.
As for running a MUD on your home machine, this shouldn't be a problem at all. Even a small ADSL connection should be able to serve "quite a few" people, and just be a bit careful when coding (ie., use safe datatypes and avoid buffer overflows) and you'll be fine.
kyrathaba:
Thanks, Fodder. Yes, I mean something similar to MUDs, as defined by your link. I actually had a working vb6 program to which several people successfully connected simultaneously and were able to chat and issue commands to effect the virtual environment. I abandoned that project, however, because vb6 did not natively, without the purchase of 3rd party components, offer robust socket programming. I couldn't get asynchronous connections going, and had to use a queue (might have been more programmer ignorance than language weakness, though ;>) I know, however, that .NET offers fairly robust support for network programming. Also, I'm sure that .NET's OOP is more suitable to such a project than vb6.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version