I know what I know. I know what I don''t know. I don''t know what I need to know. I have decided I have too many ideas in my head to just let them vanish. so I''m taking up programming but I''m not taking it up lightly. I realize I"m going to have to devote some serious time to learn what I need to learn to get this working but I need to know what i need to learn first. (I am currently learning VB) I want to create a web based came (simple browser game without fancy plugins). it will be multi player and allow interaction between players. expansive universe, modest graphics, etc. I would like some pointers as to what direction I should be taking after I am comfortable with VB. I do know I need to brush up my HTML skills but that''s about it. thanks in advance for help. to flamers: ~~~~~~~

A multiplayer web based game isn''t a good starting point unless you are already familer with Java/J-script or some form of server side scripting like Perl or ASP. I''m afraid VB isn''t going to help you with a browser based game (unless you use VB-script with ASP).

You might find Java a good language to start in, have a look at a few game applets. Start with single player, multiplayer requies a lot more knowledge as data transfer across a TCP/IP network is involved. Or stick with VB and work without using a browser, there''s no major advantage to using a browser base anyway and not a few disadvantages.

,Jay

He''s right! A game like that is not good for beginners! I would suggest making simple user interaction games, since your using VB. Don''t go for the Multiplayer games until you''ve learned a lot of Visual Basic! The key is to start small and work your way up!

Master Conjurer

oh well I"m definately not going to start a game of this magnitude without a great deal of practice. I''m even thinking of writing a single player fantasy RPG in VB as my practice app. I know it''s going to be a very long road but I just love to play games and wanted to contribute to that. isn''t that how most game programmers start?

I started by reading Andre Lamothe''s book on 2d game programming. Of course, that was in C instead of Visual Basic. I made a sorry clone of space invaders by altering his code, but I enjoyed it and it felt great. Then I graduated to the first contest on this site with The Tailgater game. Now I''m moving on into OpenGL. Anyway, start small then go big is my humble opinion or else you will probably end up with a tangled web of mess that will never get completed.

Do any of you guys know anything about java? You dont need to know any tcp/ip, etc. stuff to make a network game with it. I consider that its best advantage.
You should definitely use java for this if you dont know much about programming. sending over a network is as easy as outputting text.
I dont know java myself because i never needed it or took the time to learn it, but i know network/internet stuff is easy with it and some people learn it as their first language.

If you have a lot of ideas, document them for yourself. You could get so far into what you''re trying to get to work your ideas may even change.

If you somehow forget some of the little intricacies you were planning on putting into your game, having them documented helps you remember what you were trying to do in the first place.

It might even be a few years in your learning before you get to the point where you would need to refer back to old notes. But at least then you can formally decide to continue forward or scrap some or all of the ideas. It may also help you maintain a sort of freshness of the attempt.

I''ve not used Java to communicate over a network so I cannot argue with the last comments about that, but sending a simple message to a known IP is a lot different from creating a lobby server, joining peer-to-peer or client-server machines together, sending packets of data out that can be used to construct the game world with, and reading in data from the keyboard/mouse to send out for central processing (server).

Start with single-player .

,Jay