Original Post
In case this was of interest to anyone except me:
There's a new web-framework some of you have likely heard of, known as Meteor; a JS web platform that's recently had $11 million injected by various VCs.
Three key features struck me as particularly interesting from a games programming perspective:
There's a new web-framework some of you have likely heard of, known as Meteor; a JS web platform that's recently had $11 million injected by various VCs.
Three key features struck me as particularly interesting from a games programming perspective:
- Live page updates - This means client/server synchronisation is already done for you; there's actually an example of a chat room application done in less than a few hundred lines.
- Latency compensation - Fantastic, so we are going to be able to give a reasonable user experience for the player.
- Clean, powerful data synchronization - All the back-end messaging is hidden from us, we just write in what we want to update.
I decided to write a Graphical MUD using this web platform, and in less than 100(!) lines, you have zombies scrolling down the screen:
http://fasterthoughts.net:8080/
Not particularly impressive; hell, you can bust up my server with Web Console commands if you really wanted to, since there's no security implemented in MeteorJS (that's what the millions are going towards).
What you won't be able to see, is that the scrolling zombies are in the same position for every client; it's a persistent world with a snap of your fingers.
Load a map in with XML/JSON, finish the player functionality, and you have a GMUD at the snap of your fingers; there's barely any boilerplate code required.
Please let me know if you're giving this a shot
- Nick