2 Non-PHP PBBGs
February 25, 2008 – 5:41 amSo many browser games are written in PHP that it is easy to forget that they can be built in any language. PHP has great features for web game development and it is widely available, but it is not the only option out there.
To make this point (and as a shameless plug) I want to mention two : my game WMD Tank Battle, a multiplayer conquest game written in Perl, and RangerSheck’s Pioneers of Aethora, a tactical RPG written in Ruby on Rails.
Perl and mod_perl are old workhorses of the web, and Ruby on Rails is the latest greatest world-changing web framework, but both games make heavy use of shiny techniques like AJAX to minimize page loading and provide other features - Aethora has a built in chat, and uses the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries for a great tactical map and drag/drop inventories. WMD Tank Battle uses CSS Sprites and javascript vector graphics for silly 2d animation and a real-time “missile command” game.
There are others around too - Urban Dead is one of the most popular web games ever and it’s sporting the “.cgi” extension. Know any other good ones ? Please comment!
4 Responses to “2 Non-PHP PBBGs”
RavenBlack’s Vampires runs with a .pl extension (Perl?):
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl
By Molotov on Feb 25, 2008
I’m currently writing a client/server game with flash and javascript as the front end and using c++ to build the socket server. :D!
By Shaun on Mar 24, 2008
There’s also Hyperiums (sci-fi strategy game) which is known to be running with Java.
http://www.hyperiums.com
By Flowerpower on May 11, 2008
I am starting to build a pbbg using python and CherryPy.
So far so good - basic setup is done in 1 week.
Just need to get the boilerplate stuff done, then the game should come quickly.
I love all the refs on this site to dev stuff - most useful. Thank you a ton
By RB[0] on Jun 1, 2008