I''m developing a Web based multiplayer board game (a''la Risk/Axis&Allies) Everything is 2D, so I don''t need sophisticated graphics (although later I hope to add some animations) The game consists of a board with multiple territories, playing pieces, and one or more decks of cards. I''d like to support layered and tiled windows, polygon graphical hotspot images (for the territories), a chat window, a zoom window, among others. I am a C++ programmer, however, I''d like something with an integrated GUI library, and fast prototyping (I don''t really need power as much as speed now) Also, the cost of this is coming out of my personal, unemployed budget, so it can''t be more than $300. Would Macromedia Dreamweaver meet my requirements? Any other suggestions?

Hi LostLogic, thanks for your reply.

A question: I need to be able to support multiple games in progress simultaneously from the Web server. Is this possible with 3dgamestudio?

Another question: I hope to market my game to an existing multiplayer games Web site to add to their suite of games. The purpose of this is to save myself the cost of marketing my game and the cost of setting up a server with high bandwidth. Is this idea feasible, as far as you know?

Just one more: learning Dreamweaver would give me marketable job skills, but I''m not sure if the same is true for 3dgamestudio. Is Dreamweaver totally unsuitable for the type of game I want to build, or would it be considerably more difficult to do it in DW vs 3dGS?

Thank you.

Dreamweaver is really just an HTML editor. A really good, one, but its focus is creating HTML pages. You could create HTML pages for your game (if you wanted it to be HTML/forms based) in Notepad or any other editor, you just lose some of the nice ease-of-use/point-n-click. There are, however, loads of problems with trying to support a multiplayer game using just standard HTML and forms -- state issues, refresh issues, etc.

For what you are trying to do, the most common solution is to create a Java applet as the game client (runs in most web browsers) and then write some backend server scripts which handle the game state..the language you use for these scripts depends upon what you have available on your web provider...If you are hosting your own site you can use anything, C/C++, Java, Perl, Python, whatever. Most external web hosting sites support a subset of languages, Perl being the most common.

On the positive side, you can get all the software for free. Java JDK is free to download, there's tons of free/open source web scripting solutions to choose from on the back end.

On the negative side, you'd have to learn Java (if you don't know it already -- its very similar conceptually to C++, but much easier to program in most regards) and code things by hand, I'm not aware of any 'multiplayer web game creation toolkit', other than WildTangent WebDriver, and that's probably overkill for what you're doing, being 3D-focused and perhaps being a cost issue.



Edited by - gmcbay on October 4, 2001 2:38:56 PM

gmcbay, thanks for that helpful reply.

Do you know where I am can find tools to streamline Java (java-script?) development? I don''t know how primitive Java''s GUI APIs are, but I''d like a library that offers a high-level GUI API. I don''t really need much graphics power, and I don''t want to get bogged down in details.

Can you recommend anything, and do you know where I''d find it?

Thanks again.

P.S. Can you tell me what the difference is between Java and java-script? Which should I use to write my applet? Thanks.

ajoling, you are confusing Java (applets) with java-script. Aside from having the name "java" in common, those two things are completely different.

I have seen instances of Java applets being used for multiplayer games and communcation. In fact, here''s an example I just saw recently:
http://www.brettspielwelt.de/gate/jsp/base/

This is a German site that incorporates many well-known (well, if you like German games) board games in a multi-player environment. From what I''ve heard, it''s all done in Java.

However, that being said... it is my firm belief that the REAL tool for this job is good ole tried and true C/C++. You need a dedicated server app for hosting games and a dedicated client communicating via raw sockets or DPlay. Java is just too limiting... you''ll have problems with networking, speed, and most ESPECIALLY the GUI. Windows provides you with all the customizable GUI you need -- you can use as little or as much as you want. You could use DirectX and do it all from scratch, or you could take advantage of MFC and build your GUI in a drag-and-drop interface.

Oh, you said it was "Web-based." In that case, the first thing that pops to mind for me is an ActiveX control. Basically everything I said before about the Windows GUI is true, but it just has to also be an ActiveX control. So spend that $300 on DevStudio if you don''t already own it.