I forgot to mention this in the post, but the games themselves run on the server. This gives every game multiplayer for free out of the box, and clients just read the server state and send back input.
The idea is that you could use a browser or custom client or whatever to connect to a game server
One thing I forgot to mention is all of these games run server side and thin clients just render and send input back to the server. So a game session needs to exist for the back and forth communication to work.
Theoretically you could do this all client side too, but that would remove the magic of every game getting multiplayer for free
If you architect your protocol cleanly, you should be able to run the simulation client side too without much effort (certainly the web platform has everything you'd need). This is how modern game engines do it, it goes back to the Quake VM and probably beyond.
You'd still get multiplayer "for free", but it could be turned on and off. You could do it with zero code change for the actual games, they don't have to know.
It seems some of the games could do with a singleplayer mode that doesn't depend on the backend having free slots.
Nice idea. I found a couple of interesting games on this.
Thanks for sharing! Cool that you haven't stopped working on this project after that long time. It gives me inspiration to work on my projects which I can't find time to finish.
Thanks! I'm planning on making a lot more. I made most of this stuff before AI tools were available. But now Claude can one shot really impressive stuff, it's amazing
I worked on a similar concept (padgames.io now defunct) that offered a state sync networking system with rollback netcode style stuff. It could handle exposing only certain information or fake info to certain clients (to prevent cheating). It integrated super nicely with vuex or react stores as it was all observable and all game actions just turned into state mutations.
I made the game I wanted, enjoyed it with family and friends, and then let COVID sweep it away. Congrats on continuing to work on it.
Isn't it strange, how some incredibly crude game written in the 80's will probably live forever in an archive somewhere, while the sophisticated things we create today are amazing but too numerous to be preserved or remembered. Working on a rollback netcode system as well currently.
Thank you! I don’t have any super fleshed out games with progression yet. I have some ideas but the most thorough game at this point is vegas trail. The balancing is busted in that at the moment. Will definitely fix that and make more games with some depth
The idea is that you could use a browser or custom client or whatever to connect to a game server
Theoretically you could do this all client side too, but that would remove the magic of every game getting multiplayer for free
You'd still get multiplayer "for free", but it could be turned on and off. You could do it with zero code change for the actual games, they don't have to know.
It seems some of the games could do with a singleplayer mode that doesn't depend on the backend having free slots.
Just an idea from a fellow web games person!
Why reach for a server unless you truly need one! My multiplayer mode is p2p planned
fun
Anyway nice concept. I’m also making web games (see my post history) so if anyone wanted to connect and discuss, send me an email (in profile too)
Just keep pushing, I know how hard it is
Thanks for sharing! Cool that you haven't stopped working on this project after that long time. It gives me inspiration to work on my projects which I can't find time to finish.
I made the game I wanted, enjoyed it with family and friends, and then let COVID sweep it away. Congrats on continuing to work on it.