From: Michal Suchanek <hramrach@...>
Date: 2008-04-04T20:38:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Web-based games?

On 02/04/2008, Seth Mccauley <mylogin4all@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michal Suchanek wrote:
>  >
>  > Perhaps if you could make the framework so that multiple servers can
>  > be set up in rotation people could host the thing from their DSL lines
>  > or such. Still you need to set up the rotation, though.
>  >
>
> This could be tricky to set up... but I think you have a good idea here.
>  What about making a web-based multiplayer game that communicates
>  entierly peer to peer? That's how most of the fat client online games
>  work... the server let's meet and chat with people to set up a game
>  with. Once the game starts, each player's computer talks directly to the
>  other player's computers and not to the server.

That completely ruins the experience of web based games that can be
played easily at any time from any place with network connectivity
using only a web browser. For security reasons the browser scripts are
only allowed to connect to the server from which they were loaded. And
many people have firewalls or address translation that forbid p2p
connections entirely or make them very hard to set up.

>
>  Does anyone here know of this already being done in a Flash or Java
>  web-based game? I think it could be done, although it would probably be
>  difficult.

It could be done in Java because trusted Java applets can connect to
the network. Still the problems with setting up networking for p2p
apply to any language.

Thanks

Michal