I'm once again thinking about writing a web-based space trading/combat game (I don't like to say a web-based version of Eve as that's a big job, but that's what it would be modelled on). I did make some progress with this the last time I started, with a database structure to contain regions of space containing solar systems, which in turn contained planets. There was a hyperspace system to jump from one region to the next, and you could fly from one planet to the next, land on planets, buy and sell goods , refuel, send/received messages to/from other players. It was quite good!
The game was written in PHP, with the frontend being basic HTML - nothing fancy as I want the game to be accessible from as many devices and browsers as possible. Unfortunately, PHP was also the downfall of the game. Because it only updated when the page refreshed, I could find no way to notify the user of new messages unless they did something which refreshed the page. Also I couldn't think of any way of implementing combat in real time if the page doesn't update automatically. It would also be difficult to implement things like being intercepted during travel.
So I'm hoping there is a language out there which can do what I want. I need the backend to be able to force the web page to refresh in case something happens in the background (user gets contacted/attacked/whatever, or a move is made during combat). But the frontend should still be basically plain HTML to make sure it works in any browser.
Is there any way to accomplish what I want?
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moto
