I'm just trying to decide which platform might be best suited to designing, coding and implementing a realtime online multiplayer web-browser game.

 

It will be a fast paced 2D shoot-em-up, but because it will be online and web-browser based it needs to be efficient to at least try to minimise "lag" between players, and it needs to be suitable for displaying many animated graphic effects such as weapons with many bullets, explosions and particle effects at any such time.

 

An example of a similar game would be Soldat, which runs standalone (it's coded in Delphi) as opposed to with a web-browser.

 

 

To see how fast Soldat actually is, you can see a quick video here:

or moreso:

 

The reason I'd like to keep it web-browser based is that many game sites these days (such as Miniclip.com or Kongregate.com) require it.

 

I was initially leaning toward Flash/Actionscript but I've noticed that even the very simplest of animated graphics "tear" or "rip" on the screen, and aren't particularly smooth in motion either. I made a quick example to show this, it's basically just an image (PNG) of a black bar moving across the screen at different frame rates. No coding, just a simple tween.

 

[tearing 15fps]

[tearing 30fps]

[tearing 60fps]

 

As you can see, tearing and jerking occurs when using any frame rate, and it's only the most basic of animations. It's an undesirable effect I've seen on many flash anims and games on the web.

 

Are there any better platforms than Flash that would be more suited to what I'd like to do? Shockwave, Java, Silverlight, etc.?

 

Basically I'm after a platform that stands to offer:

 

* The ability for at least 2 online players (via P2P or server-based)

* The ability for minimal internet connection lag between players for more accurate game-play (of course you'll never be able to get around the players' physical distance and ISP lag, but if you can at least steer it in the right direction with the platform it's running on...)

* Efficiency and suitability for lots of graphic effects

* Smooth handling of graphics and animations with minimal tearing/ripping of images

* Web browser based

* A platform that has mainstream penetration (in otherwords not an obscure platform)

 

I know this all may be vague, but basically I'm starting from the bottom upwards. I'm hoping if I pick the right platform to start out on that is most suited to what I eventually want to do then I can learn the language and build up from there, rather than using Flash and ending up with something that may be unusable do to the platform's deficiencies.

 

Thanks for any insight!

 

Timo

I've been playing browser based Quake live recently as windows 7 doesnt support Gameguard yet (I usually play Crossfire), and it's a hoot.

 

I'm not sure what language it's in, but it might be a good line of investigation

I'm on quakelive, I'm not very good though but play AA3 which I also am not very good at lol

I'm on quakelive, I'm not very good though but play AA3 which I also am not very good at lol

 

lol - I'm terrible I think the longest I've ever stayed alive is about thirty seconds, it's absolute chaos out their, loads a fun.

 

my fave will always be ghost matches on crossfire

* sigh * how I miss being invisible, sneakin up on folk and then bonkin them on the head with a field shovel lol

Have you tried unity? I'm no expert but from what I have seen of unity games they are pretty good. It supports multiplayer too...

Therer seems to be a rise in "advanced" browser based games, though I have no idea what they're using, I think they're custom built. Quake live and Free Realms are two examples. Quakelive uses the q3 engine and it was just somehow implemented into a browser though.

 

Although not 2D like you wanted, this may offer some insight into what you're working with: http://www.codededge.com/elflightengine/

Thanks guys, but I was wondering which of the more mainstream, universal web platforms, namely Shockwave, Java, Silverlight, or Flash or similar could offer the best choice.

 

Cheers for the responses.