HTML5 Canvas, 2nd Edition

This Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

There is much more you can do with ElectroServer than what we showed you in this chapter. Sending and receiving PublicMessage events can get you only so far when designing multiuser/multiplayer applications.

To start designing multiplayer applications seriously, you will need to delve into the extension and plug-in architecture of ElectroServer, as well as explore plug-in events, which are used to communicate to the server portion of an application. We suggest you check out http://www.electrotank.com/es5.html for more information about the socket server. You can also read ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds by Jobe Makar (New Riders). Even though it centers on Flash and an earlier version of ElectroServer, the architectural information about designing apps for a socket server is well worth your time. You can check out the current ElectroServer JavaScript Client API.

At the same time, ElectroServer can be used with technologies other than Canvas (such as Flash, iOS, and so on), so Canvas will be able to communicate with other socket servers via JavaScript and WebSockets. We chose to base this example on ElectroServer because it allowed us to create a full application for you to test and work through. Other libraries and tools are bound to appear very soon that can work with Canvas—for example, the SmartFox server, which now supports WebSockets and JavaScript without add-ons.