I want to develop a game like wordfeud for android and iPhone. For now I don’t have a mac so I am not able to use xcode to develop for iPhone. Therefore I have decided to use adobe AIR so I can link the game to both android and iPhone. Feel free to suggest other solutions if you think my idea is bad.
Well to the problem.. I am able to build offline games like tetris etc. but what should I look into when I want the game to be multiplayer just like wordfeud where you can have several games running at the same time. I know I need a server for this, but can I use xampp for now just to test the application and then export the db to a real server or is it a different kind of server I must use? I am completely lost here so any help would be great.
There are some excellent commercial products aimed ad multiplayer flash games. The top two would be
SmartFox Server http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
and
Electrotank server http://www.electrotank.com/
As an useful aside, there is an accompanying book for flash multiplayer games by one of the founders of Electro tank. Its a very good read and will help you a lot.
http://www.amazon.com/ActionScript-Multiplayer-Games-Virtual-Worlds/dp/0321643364
You will notice these servers are aimed towards massifly multiplayer online games, but I assure you they are equally suitable for developing a simple game also. They both scale up nicely, and both are free to develop.
I’ve used Electrotank, and liked it. I have not used Smartfox, but it is widely used in the flash online game world.