Laurent Sigal

Hi Rayj! I think Plynd would totally fit your needs in this case! It will provide you with all the game creation flow, so you will only have to take it from there (i.e. game is created with 4 players in it). Also it provides you with the context, so you will know who is the player logged in. In order to store, all you will have to do is maintain a "state" object, where you describe the hand of each player at any given time. The only subtlety would be to hide the cards of other players for a given player, but this is perfectly covered by the framework too: you will have to create server function for that - see how it works at http://blog.plynd.com/Part-V-Put-the-update-logic-server-side/ And of course, it is just an abstraction around backend, so it works perfectly with any game engine framework, e.g. Pixi.js :-) I highly encourage you to read http://blog.plynd.com/Creating-a-fully-multiplayer-TicTacToe-on-Plynd/ if you want to have a first idea of how it works. Let me know if you have questions

Hi HTML5 devs! I just released a tutorial on how to build a fully multiplayer game on Plynd I've been contributing to this forum a few times, especially in this topic: http://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/9324-thoughts-on-final-design-for-nobackend-cross-device-platform-for-turn-based-games/ Plynd allows to build multiplayer games as easily as solo games: ​No backend required: We provide the infrastructure! You can save and retrieve all the data that you need about your game without any server to set up. Even better, you can register some javascript functions to be run server-side.Full multiplayer environment: We provide the coding-expensive experience of setting up a multiplayer game: Authentication flow, invitation, matching, notifications, chat, and more are there automatically for your players to enjoy.The tutorial covers everything that's needed in order to build such a game. It is very detailed, but pretty fast to take. I'd love to have your feedback on it, and I'm available on this forum, or at laurent@plynd.com, to answer any question you might have regarding this tuto or whatever else :-) Also, if you have any suggestion as to where to showcase this tutorial in order to get some readers, I'd love to take them :-) Thank you very much! Demo video.mov

@IamThatGuy Thanks a lot for the feedback. I actually wanted to showcase the page http://developers.plynd.com instead. I think its content is more interesting for people in this forum @aurelien974 indeed pretty cool to see you here too!

Hello guys, This is a very long message but there's obviously a lot of things to say about it :-) At http://developers.plynd.com I think we have built an offering that you could probably be really interested about. In a few words: @Austin, I really like what Clay.io has built for developers, and I think we should talk if you're interested => laurent@plynd.com. @Avenger no war, I remember your game of Backgammon that I found really good. We can actually offer you the ability to host it in a turn-based (asynchronous) fashion. Given that the game is already implemented, I honestly think it would not take you more than a day to make it available using Plynd (you'd just have to call the few functions from the js SDK to have the game saved at the proper stages). @Red Spark, I think we should also talk. We've had an ambitious game made on Plynd recently => http://territories.plynd.com and I think it would really suit your needs as well (host on web and automatic port to mobile, facebook integration). @All, to see how that comes together, you can have a look at our connect4 demo: https://github.com/Plynd/connect4 Now let's go into a little bit more of details. This thread is very interesting because most of the things said here were the starting point for our startup, Plynd, more than a year ago. To summarize: - multiplayer games are very good at keeping users, because the interactions with others make them come back often. - they are very popular nowadays among users (agreed with you Austin, "with Friends" suite has accustomed people to this type of play) However, they are really tricky to put in place: a- need servers, scalability, network knowledge b- need very good integration with social networks so that there is a communication channel between the game and the users. Turn-based implies games spread across many user sessions (and potentially the user might play them from different devices), and there needs to be a way to notify the user to come back to take his turn. c- need a lot of user experience before and around the game : way to match people, invite friends, game lobby with who's turn it is.. All and all, to do the simplest game (think Connect 4) you end up having to program for MONTHS while the actual game could be made in just a few days (if not hours, depending on how polished you want the interface to be). => The topic of easing the making of HTML5 multiplayer games is still really poorly addressed So here is the offering from Plynd - our mission is to help HTML5 devs to be able to build asynchronous games very easily. - it is completely free. The plan is to share revenues on the audience of your game. More precisely: - you will not need servers. We handle that. - Given a very simple configuration, we provide you with the user experience coming around your game (think auth, invitation, game lobby, social integration). - We provide a very simple API, available through our javascript SDK * handles realtime connection between players. even if asynchronous, people might want to be playing them in realtime * handles the saving and fetching of all the game state that you require * lets you work entirely in javascript * lets you use whatever game engine you like to make your game * allows to have a few functions you write run onto our servers (simply upload a server.js file with the functions to be run server-side in it) * (to come shortly, in a matter of months) the portage of your game into a standalone iOs and Android app. In a few words: - you have the skeleton of your multiplayer game available online, testable with your friends, and connected in realtime after just minutes of configuration!! Thanks for reading down to here :-), immensely interested in all the feedback you can have about it!

@Ali, you're making a great point here, yes there will be a guaranty of service. Otherwise, you're right, there's a too big dependency to rely on. As of gamooga, it is really an abstraction of the realtime logic, with the nice touch that they allow to upload the backend instead of having to deploy own servers (which is similar to what I am proposing). However, this is very generic so they have nothing specific for games (neither realtime or turn based).

Just to clarify, I am not proposing a solution where there is a "special client". In the specs that I outlined, server.js is run in a server. Simply you don't have to set it up, and the javascript there is in essence run exactly the same way as it would be if it was on the browser. i.e. the function someFunction that you define in server.js can be called from client.js simply with Bridge.someFunction().

Thanks for your answer, it is very interesting. Could you just dive deeper into why it would only benefit me? At the moment I don't even really see how I could benefit from it at all myself (but that's a whole different discussion). Based on conversations I've had, and games I've seen. Although I clearly do not put into question that some people love backend (it'd be pretty weird coming from me), I noticed that the ones who have the game design skills are not necessarily the ones who have the backend skills. Think of all the games you've seen where you have a popup asking what your name is. This is to circumvent the need to implement all the authentication logic. but it means the game is not really playable in its intended way. In particular, how would you be able to go back to one of your games later in such a case? I also know that some people would agree their games only make it to localhost. It might not apply to you, which does not mean it is not true. It used to be true for me, did not know how to setup an API server. Parse probably shows that I was not the only one in this case. Haha, I suspect this is being intentionally bitter :-) But yeah, creating a Connect-4 is simple, finishing the framework so that a Connect-4 game nicely fits into it and that it could apply to other games later is a bit harder. The important part here is that you do not need to set up an infrastructure at all to host a multiplayer game. And that you do not have to focus on all the authentication/creation flow. You basically have nothing more to do in order to get your multiplayer game working than you would for its single player version.

Hey guys, tldr: I'd love to know if any of you would be interested in a noBackend solution for turn based games. For you (as a game dev) that would mean just program 2 files for a game: client.js (all the game design) and server.js (the game logic, so that cheats are prevented) and upload them, and you would have your game online, with all the multiplayer functionality (login, invitation flow, game creation, notifications, chat) for free. These are not words in the air, most of the pieces are technically coded already. Longer version: After having spent an important time looking around, it seems that nowadays, making a multiplayer game cannot go without having to set up a backend and some kind of infra. More importantly, most games that I have seen that supposedly offer a multiplayer functionality, are actually lacking most of the important features to do so. In particular, it seems almost impossible to play with friends in any of them. And in a way, it totally makes sense: When you are an indie developer, what you're mostly interested in is designing a great game, not dealing with all the stuff that has to go around it. And the sad part is that some great games never make it online because of these barriers. I have been working on a game (adaptation of Risk) for a long time - can be found at http://plynd.com ; already mentionned in an earlier post on this forum. And as a matter of fact, all the extra stuff (what I call the beyond-the-game experience) really interests me, as I am a backend engineer originally. And all the work that I've done for Risk has no reason not to serve other people. Therefore I am turning this game into a platform, and these are the specs: - All the identity and game management flow is taken care of by the platform (think of : "you've been invited by .. to play" or "it is your turn") - The backend is provided to store your game state (think plain json) - The realtime and notification flow is for free => This would basically always set you up in a situation where n players have joined your game. Which means that, as a game developer you can just focus on 2 things: - implement all the game design within one client.js file. It is run in the browser of the user. nothing new there. - implement all the game logic that you do not want to run on the client side in server.js. This is where the game state should be updated (to react to players' events). This will run on our servers and you will have a seamless bridge to call these functions from the client.js file. This is not completely implemented yet, I am working hard to make it happen with a friend of mine. But we have technically proven all the pieces required to make it work. We are now working on making a very basic Connect-4 so people can see how it would really all work together. Note: the game would be available everywhere (iOS, Android, web) within dedicated apps (but that's HTML5, so you were expecting it right?) So (finally) comes the questions: would you see that as interesting? Would you use it? What would be your potential concerns? Aside from the technical aspect (that we are pretty confident about) do you think we are completely off somewhere? Thank you very much for reading this very long post! Laurent

awesome for 13k

Also very interested in the question here.

It does not seem to work anymore.

Hey joerrey, So are you planning on using your own backend? Where do you want to host your game ultimately? on some platform website or do you want to make your own website/app for it? socket.io is def interesting. ruby can be good if you want to preserve yourself from coding authentication stuff and other things like this.

It really depends what you are trying to do. Are you willing to have your own backend infrastructure? Do you want to handle authentication for your players? I am not sure I totally agree with the fact that non-realtime is trivial, there is still a lot of work to do in order to get to the situation where a game is setup between several persons. I'd be really interested in your needs actually because I am working on something that could solve your problems, but again the excat scope is interesting :-)

PS: the article is very interesting indeed! Because I have been working on a turn-based game, I used a different kind of architecture, but the article was really worth reading.

Also, I'd be very interested to hear from somebody that would have coded a game for Kik or equivalent :-)

Hey Jul, thanks for your reply! And please let me know if I'm not using the forum properly or if I could post this question somewhere else. I am new here, and after having looked for a while, could not find a similar topic already existing. Socket.io is interesting, and I am actually using it. But it does not solve the issue of authentication in itself, which is very important if you want to have a game that you can play from several devices seamlessly. Huge disclaimer: I have been developing an adaptation of Risk - can be found here http://armsrace.co ; and my friend with who I've been working has posted about it on I had to do a lot of things to fill my needs, and I am now thinking that this would be very valuable for other developers as well, which is why I asked this question. In fact, most of the development was involving things around the game and not the game itself (set up the realtime & cross-device architecture) and I believe I could now make it something like a platform. I'd love to have other developers feedback on what they currently use now, and if I could build something that would fulfill more their needs. Thanks Laurent

Yo guys, I thought I'd throw a question in here : so how would you guys go about building a multiplayer game? And what if you want to port it over to multiple devices? Would you see any framework doing that? Other than being hosted within Kik or one of their competitors? If you have experience with any, would you mind sharing about it? Thanks a lot!