   [web] Best route for a web based game?
  Here's my problem. I have been thinking up a game, and I really want some aspects of the game to be animated and feel like an actual game (as opposed to 100% browser text based). I want to use Flash or something similar, however I see problems with using flash . Wouldn't the bandwidth cost rack up if I just had it on some page on my site? Does it really get downloaded each time the user visits? What about Java? Does that get downloaded each visit, too, or does that actually get saved somewhere on the user's computer?What I'm ultimately looking for is something that will not be too expensive bandwith wise yet has full functionality of something similar to a flash game. I do have a fair amount of bandwidth though - I have 10 TB of bandwidth for $15 a month.   
  Flash files can be quite small, when they use vector art - comparable with image files of the same kind of screen dimensions.   ;  I personally support Java.  I recently wrote a browser game in Java to promote another game I'm developing.  Within 2 or 3 days I had a workable game which can be seen here:http://www.rockettanks.webs.com/HoE/Minigameand the game itself (also in Java, but a stand-alone application) is here:http://www.hoedownload.tkGood luck!   ;  Well it seems flash is looking up now, both for its size and its ease of animation. However, which is more secure? If I have an online game with Flash, can it easily be hacked?   ;  As far as I know, yes. Just like any game you buy on CD/DVD can be hacked. There are obfuscators for Flash but I'm sure anyone dedicated will break that. Chances are, in a web game your artwork is more valuable than your code.   ;Quote: Well it seems flash is looking up now, both for its size and its ease of animation. However, which is more secure? If I have an online game with Flash, can it easily be hacked?Here’s the stance one has to take with anything given to the client. It is not secure. Using Java vs. Flash vs. C++ vs. anything else makes no difference. Obfuscation and the like can make it harder, but only as a hindrance, not a preventive measure. Take this attitude, and you are in a better position to write secure applications.Why does security matter? What would be the implications of a hacked game?;Quote:Original post by Ryan LepidiI really want some aspects of the game to be animated and feel like an actual game (as opposed to 100% browser text based).HTML + &#106avascript + PNG sprite-sheets.If you want to do animatied sprites on a html page, you can put an image tag inside a div tag. Use the div tag as a viewport / scissor rectangle so that only part of the image is shown at once, then offset the image to select which part is shown. This way you can do old-school sprites on plain HTML pages.   ;  Well I wanted to make a flash game were you could submit your score and put it in a database so I could kind of have a ladder, but that's pointless if people could just hack it and submit some outrageous maxed out score.What about other games? Like Yahoo games and Runescape? Are these more secure since they use a client-server model?And why exactly is flash insecure? Is it susceptible to things like memory editing (even though it's on a webpage, maybe it can be edited locally)? Or can it be decompiled all together?   ;  As far as I'm aware, you can decompile a SWF quite easily.Lots of games do have problems with bogus scores. Unless the server is the one calculating the score, it's hard to avoid, but you can do some simple checking based on knowing how your game works.   ;  My take on this, nothing against anyone who likes Ajax, but do yourself a favor and use Flash or Flex instead if that's the possible choices. (Which of those depends on the type of game to some degree, and your own current skillset.)Other than Ajax (a nightmare to maintain, and when things start getting complex) the only real competition with Flex/Flash in the rich client arena is Silverlight (not really ready yet, it probably locks you into MS technology, AND it's not on more than 93% of people's computers like Flash) and JavaFX (I've heard it's God awful and very far behind).It's true that if you design your rich client (Flash etc) in an insecure way, you could run into security issues, all the way up to the stupidest possible sin of hard coding passwords or something sensitive in your swf.  But &#106avascript/Ajax isn't any more secure and is definitely more fragile, not to mention inferior performance and inevitable browser compatibility issues. Even with the many 'frameworks' out there that will be updated every time Microsoft decides to change how IE works, do you really want to be updating your app who knows how often and at random?You could have a Java app server with as much of your logic as you'd like controlled by the server, or you could take advantage of having a rich client and offload some of that work onto the client workstations. I don't think a flash based client is very fundamentally different from a typical MMO client that also needs to strongly secure it's server data, so perhaps some research into how MMOs prevent cheating would be of use. It's the standard security vs performance balancing act.Oh - and a Flash swf isn't downloaded every time you access a site unless the user has some really crazy cache settings (none), you WANT it to download each time, or you're doing very frequent updates.  Also if you want to avoid bandwidth issues, you could always develop a Flex app running on Adobe's AIR runtime.  An analogy for Flex+AIR would be coding a Java Swing game (running in a Java VM)--only you get to keep whatever hair and sanity you have during development.   