[StefanOnRails]

Hi, I was thinking at making an online multiplayer version of Pong, for learning purpose. My question is: can this be done with my current level of skills - Advanced: HTML,CSS; Medium: Javascript(+JQuery),PHP(including OOP),MySQL; Low: Java, Ruby, C, C++ ?

There are any chances? Or should I start learning Flash / Action Script ?

Note: A lot of my friends told me that I tend to underestimate my skills, so some Medium skills may actually belong to the Advanced section

[William_Wilson]

That is certainly enough to make a solid attempt.
In university I had a similar project where we wrote a networked multi-player Pong game with Java and C++.

Are you planning to make it a web/browser game or an application which connects to a network and/or internet? That will help to determine your game's view and the languages required, then you can workout the multi-player communication.

[StefanOnRails]

William_Wilson, on 19 August 2012 - 10:15 PM, said:

Are you planning to make it a web/browser game or an application which connects to a network and/or internet?

Well, I was thinking to make a game who runs inside the browser (at least for now), but to be honest I always wanted to create some sort of application which can be installed on your OS and then it would connect to the internet / network. I think this would involve working with Java sockets and streams, but as you see I'm not really a java expert (my biggest java application was a JFrame Tetris game which was running as a single Thread ).

Considering that I think I will stick with my initial decision to make a browser game. My biggest concern though, is how can I block user from editing my JS files using Chrome Developper Tools? I know these changes would not be visible for everybody, but I still don't want him to be able to mess around with my Ajax connection files or slow down the speed of the ball or something similar. Well, actually my initial plan was based on storing the attributes of the game inside PHP Objects and then getting them using Ajax connections, but the problem is data is not sended back fast enough .

So here it is, I hope this offers you a better view over my problem. By the way, if you know any place where I can get additional information about developing browser-based multiplayer games, don't hesitate to post a link .

[SixOfEleven]

If you want to go the HTML/Javascript route I'd consider picking up the book HTML 5 Games: Creating Fun with HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL. I bought it and thought it was absolutely brilliant. It goes over some of the concerns you have about your application.

You could also try Adobe Flex, which uses ActionScript for the back end. There are some nice tutorials on game programming with Flex on the web.

[StefanOnRails]

Thanks for replying my question. Those links are just what I needed!

[Miikalsen]

I think this is very possible. And the idea seems to be very good. Some things that you would consider adding is like a rank system. I'm not sure if you ever played Facebook tetris ? There you get one star if you win. And five stars ranks you up. And if you loose you lose one star and so on. It'll much more interesting for sure.