Java or Flash for online games

[ehbgamer]

Hello,

Nice to see you all here again...

I'm wondering whether java or flash is better for multiplayer/singleplayer online games.
Actually, I like java (a real programming language), but if flash has better features in performance, game design or stability I'll go with flash.
Any recommended article? Or just let me know your opinions. :confused:

[Chris Evans]

Well what's your priority with your online game?

Are you looking for performance or user penetration? Java has better performance, but Flash has a far superior user penetration.

I would also suggest you looking into shockwave. Shockwave has better performance than Flash and a better user penetration than Java. It's a happy medium between the two if you can afford the cost of Director. I should also mention with Director you can easily create standalone versions for both Windows and Mac OSX.

[whisperstorm]

There are several online games that are large in scope that use flash:

http://www.battleon.com
http://www.dofus.com
http://www.twokingdoms.com/

There's also a great new platform for developing flash applications using xml that you might investigate:

http://www.laszlosystems.com

[princec]

For multiplayer you can't really beat Java though - incredible networking APIs are a doddle to use. My first Java program wasn't even Hello World - I wrote a multiuser chat client/server. Took about 10 minutes!

Java penetration is a catch-22 situation. If you require your games to use Java then the penetration level will increase by a little. If you don't then it will stay the same. It's pretty trivial to coax the user to install Java, and we mustn't forget here that it's already installed on OSX.

Here's a nifty game called Electroid (http://www.pixelmachine.co.uk/play.php) that I rather like - hopefully going to get it on my own site. I have a plan to put up a new applet every now and again to lure punters into installing Java.

Cas :)

[GBGames]

I would do Java, only because modern Flash and Shockwave support is lacking on Gnu/Linux. Of course, one of my goals is to make a game available for the platform, whereas most people would not mind ignoring it since it isn't a big money maker right now.

[ehbgamer]

My purpose is that a friend needs an online multiplayer pac man like game, I told him I can do it using java, he preferred using flash (I do not use flash), so I want to convince him to use java :D . Can I convince him? or flash is better and there is no way to convince him?
I have noticed that many sites like pogo.com, globalfun.com and popcap uses java (although pop cap seems to use a different method)

regards,

[princec]

In the end there's only one way to find out, and fortunately Pac-man is simple enough that it should be feasible: the good old A/B split - do both, and give half the visitors the applet and half the flashlet, and see if the end result is better. What actually is the purpose of the game on the site anyway?

Cas :)

[Sillysoft]

If you know java and not flash then I would say do it in java. Likewise, if you had flash experience but not java it would be the other way around. They can both do what you want, so use the one you know. It will take much less time this way, since you won't have to learn a new development environment.

[ehbgamer]

the good old A/B split - do both

do both! ... I think this will be a difficult and time consuming choice!

What actually is the purpose of the game on the site anyway?

It is a multiplayer online game, he needs to start a multiplayer online game site, so he needs to make the first game in the site.