Question

I am a programming novice, so please forgive the technical ambiguity here. I will try to be as specific as possible about what I am trying to accomplish.

I am trying to build an interactive website where multiple clients can log on and view a board game. The board game consists of regions on a map with color (player who controls it) and number (armies) variables, as well as draggable tokens.

I have built a client-end version in JavaScript using the Raphael interface for SVG graphics, and would like to build a server that can process any changes one client makes to the board and update the boards of the other clients. In my mind, the sequence would be something like:

1. Action performed by the user
2. Action listener updates client view
3. Update sent to server
4. Server changes database to reflect change
5. Server notifies all clients
6. Clients update view

I’ve read up on Ajax/XML a bit, but the tutorials I have found have mostly been about getting static data, and I haven’t seen an example of actually CHANGING dynamic data on a server, nor have I been able to find any examples of what the server functions should look like.

So basically my question is, can anyone point me in the right direction here? I would very much appreciate a general outline about how I could go about accomplishing this, as well as direction to a tutorial or two that relates to the task. Thank you!

Answer 1

You may look at nodeJS and socket.io.
With this technology it is possibile to create real time web applications.

Its a bit older, but here is a game we did some time ago:
https://github.com/stravid/unitacs
It also uses raphaelJS.