Multiplayer interaction

[menyo]

Hi,

I was wondering how i can make interactions that other users can pick up? How do i pass information to another user? For example:

1. Player A clicks on Player B's name in a window and chooses to attack this player.

2. Player B gets a message in his screen and chooses yes.

3. Server rolls dice on who may start ans passes this to both players.

4. First players chooses what he wants to do and clicks finish.

5. Other player gets a go to make his move.

- in short, if 1 user does something how can another user immediately see that?

I am using PHP, AJAX, Javascript and MySql. But i can't find anything on how to approach this. Maybe i'm using the wrong search terms so enlighten me on what functions i should use?

With my knowledge i can get this to work with AJAX requests. I would make a fight toggle for the player and ajax keeps queriing the server if that toggle has been set, if so that message would appear that he got challanged. Then for the turns the same, keep doing AJAX requests to see if the finished turn toggle is set.

Would this be the way to go? Or are there other sollutions that are more efficient, practical and better?

[menyo]

I have been reading some stuff about comet and long polling. So actually the method i discribe above seems to be long polling. And some people say comet is really good at it.

Anyone have experience with comet? And how much support for it is there on todays hosting providers? And above all? I can't seam to find anywhere how it works exactly but it looks like it's using the same method as a simple timeout loop that loads a php with a query in it.

[dglienna]

You could use AZURE Services, SQL, or Storage @ Microsoft.com

[PeejAvery]

If you're going to use JavaScript and PHP, then you'll have to do constant querying. The query will have to send attacks to the server and also check to see if it's being attacked.

Either way, there will be a slight lag if you're not using a direct connection...which client-side/server-side web apps are not capable of doing. You could try Flash or Java.