Here it is, another year, and another project for me. What am I doing this time? Programming a game. Online. Multiple users. Ah. That sounds like a lot of hard work. And if there's one thing I hate it's hard work. On the other side of the spoon the one thing I love is work, so it's not all bad. But, I am not going to reveal the intricacies of the game yet. I'm not giving you lot all my ideas. No way. Instead I am going to discuss the technologies I am using to make it. In particular, a specific set I am using, which I am calling WGP.
WGP:
It stands for Web Game Programming. And it refers to a simple, quick and easy way to create online, multi-user games, using standard technologies that most website coders know already. It is a combination of XHTML, JavaScript, CSS and PHP. I will explain each technology in turn and how it is used in the game.
XHTML:
eXtensible Hyper-Text Markkup Language is the newest version of the standard HTML language which has been used for years to code web pages. It is simply HTML, written in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) which is becoming the new standard. But as XML isn't fully supported yet, I will use the older technolgy. This is simply to produce the pages and to markup the text.
JavaScript:
This is used to produce the functionality and the interactivity. It is how we go from room to room (yes, they won't be seperate XHTML pages, they will be individual divides within an overall XHTML page). This will also control interacting with NPCs (Non Player Characters) and objects, quests, etc.
CSS:
Cascading Style Sheets will be used to style the pages, and in a more innovative way. It will be used in conjunction with JavaScript. The code I am using creates a toggleDisplay function, but without a certain bit of CSS, all the content would be displayed at the start. We need a 'display: none;' line in the CSS for certain 'div' elements to get around this problem.
PHP
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is the final technology used. It is utilised to store user data and statistics for their characters. This means that there is less time spent communicating with an external computer, thus speeding the game up.

Useful Links:
I am going to be writing my own introduction to each language in due course, in the meantime these links will be of use:
XHTML: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/
JavaScript: www.javascript.com ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/js/
CSS: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/css/
PHP: http://www.php.net ¦ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP ¦ http://www.w3schools.com/php/

http://www.hotscripts.com/ - good general programming site.
http://www.csszengarden.com/ - another good css website.

Note: I am not responsible for the content of external sites, or any damage they might do to your computer.