I know how to develop a single-player game, but nothing about multiplayer games.

[SpiritedBox]

I have some experience with single player...

I have coded from an empty notepad page a few games already. Simple ones, though (mainly text-based). For example, choose-your-own-adventure, puzzle games with time-limit (like solving random math equations, memorizing set of arrows) and something similar to text-based RPG like the often advertised Torn City, BiteFight, etc. But they're all single-player. 

I know HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and lately have been using a little bit of jQuery, slowly learning it.

 

But I know absolutely nothing about anything concerning coding multiplayer.

I'm not familiar with a lot of terms (I have no idea what are websockets, API or anything like that). And although I have some pretty surface-level, basic knowledge about what a server is (from playing multiplayer games myself), I don't know anything about coding the server, hosting it, using it or anything like that.

Right now I'm not even looking for making an action MP game. I would be happy if I could just make a game where inside of it you could see other player's progress and maybe do something like "Press a button to give 10 of your gold to him", etc.

 

I have tried reading this article (http://www.buildnewgames.com/real-time-multiplayer/) but barely understood anything that was said in it. I'm confident that it's a good article. But I just can't absorb the information inside of it.

 

I was wondering if I could receive any help with how I should begin learning, first steps, easy and good guides, etc. So far I've learned everything I know about the coding by simply doing it and googling things like "How do I make document text change with JavaScript?" and everything always worked out fine. It was fun, simple and gave me good experience. 

But right now I'm stuck. I can't find any good articles, guides on this topic that I can understand. And it's not that I don't understand English, It's just that I can't seem to understand topic without getting lost. I get a new question after like every sentence, that, if it's not answered, doesn't allow me to understand anything that's said afterwards.

 

One really big questions that I have had for a long while but can't find a direct answer:

Does it actually cost money to make a multiplayer game and have it work? Can my game's server be hosted without paying money or must all MP game developers pay money so their servers would be online and working?

 

Other than that... Please, I need some help, I am absolutely lost in all of this and can't find my way. Thank-you!

[Sebi]

Start simple!

 

When someone asks me how to create a multiplayer game, the first thing I tell them is to code something very basic like a simple chat app.

 

Start with nodejs and socket.io and follow some simple tutorials.

http://nodejs.org/

http://socket.io/ 

 

As soon as your simple chat is working, add more things to it.

Let users login and register at your chat. This is what you will doing with your game later on too.

Add different chat rooms. These will later be your different maps.

Send chat messages back and forth. This is what you will be doing with all user commands later on.

 

It really comes down to the same behaviour.

You send data to the server and you receive data from the server. That is multiplayer, no magic involved.

 

As soon as you understand the basics, move on to more advanced techniques.

 

It doesn't really cost money to create multiplayer games. But the time spend on that game could be used in an other job where you could actually earn money

But if you have faith in your game and you really want to create it, then go ahead. Ofcourse you will have to pay for your webserver(s).

But you can care about that later,

[SpiritedBox]

Thank-you! But I seem to be running into some problems with installing socket.io and I can't find an answer on it anywhere.

I used nodejs.org to Install the NodeJS on my C:/Program Files but when i try using the command "npm install socket.io" i get a message:

 

So then I heard that I should use cmd, so I tried that, too:

 

And when that didn't work also, I lead the cmd to my nodejs directory but got an Error:

[SpiritedBox]

Help, please? I cannot get further than this.

[1-800-STAR-WARS]

You need to add npm/node to your system path: http://www.hacksparrow.com/install-node-js-and-npm-on-windows.html

 

Alternatively there should be an entry in your start menu under the Node folder called 'Node.js command prompt' which will automatically have the path set for that instance of cmd only.