I'm seeing more and more of these types of games: http://www.trentonmade.com http://www.rpgbunny.com/games/spacecommander/login.php some are Mafia, others are sci fi and pirate types...but they all are just stats and data... just looking at your HP and trying to get more money and leveling up...most have just still pictures no moving animation... Made in PHP. is there any books on making games like this in PHP? ...game development with PHP? it seems easy to do for someone that's a beginner in programming? ....right? thanks

I used to play a few of those with my friends. They're simply called browser games. Wikipedia also lists them as server-side browser games. You'll see a lot of them. There was a site that I lost the link to but it basically had links to hundreds of them. Lot of multiplayer ones actually. I liked the tick based ones. I played a few zombie tick based ones for a while.

Yeah making one of those just takes basic PHP experience with database experience. Haven't seen a book, but I don't see why one would be necessary. It's a good way to practice &#106avascript, CSS, SQL and other web programming topics.

Im curious what are the pros and cons of making such a game using the browser, css, php, &#106avascript etc, VS just using Flash to make the same game? (Well, Flash and PHP and database access I suppose, but the point is using Flash instead of the actual browser for graphics and interaction)

Quote: Original post by AndreTheGiant
Im curious what are the pros and cons of making such a game using the browser, css, php, &#106avascript etc, VS just using Flash to make the same game? (Well, Flash and PHP and database access I suppose, but the point is using Flash instead of the actual browser for graphics and interaction)

It's easier to use CSS and Ajax. Flash would only be useful if you needed a continuous socket open where the server needs to broadcast changes randomly.

Imagine you had a list of objects you can purchase. You can create a listbox via CSS like <div id="shoplist"></div> and then have an ajax function called RefreshShopList which queries the server using action.php?action="getshoplist" that returns series of <ul><li>Item< a onclick="ChangeSelectedItem" ></a> </li></ul> etc. (just an example) that allow you to select things and then a buy button. Now using ajax you can just replace the inner text of the element shop list with that returned list. So clicking a button to buy something could call RefreshShopList() and RefreshPlayerCredits().

I could go on, but yeah coding one of these games is rather trivial. In Flash you'd have to parse a returned string or use the XML stuff and get creative with displaying it all.

Ajax is fast. To show you 3 weeks ago I made an ajax multiplayer test that simply updates a database and lets clients query for other people's positions really fast. Sounds insane but it works. &#106avascript test</a> Not something you'd do for real. It's taxing &#111;n a database. It's like google's search hints.

Some of these games are huge scams, offering cash prizes for the winners. After purchasing 'turns' with a credit card, you will be mysteriously beaten by a stranger with more turns than you. (the stranger is a player who's given free turns just so you won't win the purse. The stranger is not given any cash, just a chance to play for free).

One of them offered me a job making graphics for them, but i didn't want to be involved in anything like that.

They even moved their official headquarters to the cayman islands, because what they're doing is illegal, even though the entire thing is operated by people living in Chicago.


Though its not hard to imagine that people like these games - i don't know about you, but i spend 5 hours a day staring at a browser window already....