   Flash Multiplayer abilities
  I am thinking of making a multiplayer card game which will be played from the browser.Every player will join a game (8 player maximum) and they will duel. So I chose Macromedia Flash for the making since I'd like to get familiar with that. My question regards the multiplayer abilities of Flash. Are there any multiplayer features or do I have to use something else like &#106avascript or something? I am at the beginning of all this so I'd like any hint you could give me.Thanks in advance.   
  Real-time Browserbased Games will always be hard to develope. In general there are only a few of development tools you can use: Flash, Java Applets(not &#106avascript), Shockwave, ???. From these three, Java and Shockwave are the most capable of doing graphics. Java however, is very badly integrated into most of the browsers (it takes a second or two to load and unload, but while gaming, it does it's job). Flash is very fast when it comes to loading and unload into the browser, but it's slow when it comes to data handling and rendering to screen. Therefore, it's not capable of doing 3D games in. (One good 2D multiplayer game in flash is Battalion, on urbansquall.com)In your situation, I think it's the best to use Java Applets (because you want 8 players simultaneous playing), but this will force you to learn a bit of Java. I don't think it's a loss but it might actually kill your interest in the project though.   