Multiplayer Mahem

I collected my car this morning and paid the hefty bill. Turns out I had a corroded exhaust and needed new front brakes. I didn't know anything about the exhaust - I assumed it would be particularly noisy or smoky or something but hey, what do I know about cars? The brakes don't seem particularly different although the handbrake has been adjusted so that I don't have to pull it up so far to prevent the car moving. I fear it may have been more than a little bit abused on the hills of Sheffield so it's good to know my car isn't going to be rolling off and causing damage during the night.

I've wasted another day today playing with flash trying to work out a way to get my blackjack game to work. I've got a single player version pretty much sorted now and the next hurdle is getting it to work with more than one player. The biggest challenge is ensuring that each screen sees their own hand and not that of their opponent which would rather defeat the object of the game.

I'm hoping that this API for multiplayer flash games will give me some functions I can use with just a small amount of modification. If not then this may be a little bit complex for me at the moment. That said, I didn't know any PHP this time last year and I still managed to create a pretty complicated website with a database backend and this year I've pretty much conquered the basics of javascript and JQuery. I can't see it being of much use in the future though which is what is currently holding me back from going all out and learning it I think. Many people are saying that flash is dead now and that HTML5 is the future. That may be the case but I don't think it's quite there yet in terms of multiplayer games. I've seen a couple of basic single player games and they have been described as revolutionary. If it were possible then I would be at the forefront of the technology - and with that in mind, I'm almost certain it isn't possible. I'm never the first to do anything - in the top percentage of the population of the world... perhaps. But never first.