What would work best...

[ImEurasian]

The general game concept is two factions fighting against each other, on a map, and hopefully with the right code, the map is dynamic, and the frontlines change daily. What programming language would be best suited for this?

[raestlyn]

The one you know best. I'm pretty sure you can do that in every language.

[dsheroh]

Any language suitable for web-based programming would be suitable for what you described.  That may change if you stipulate additional requirements, but probably not.  They really are all roughly equivalent in terms of their capabilities.

Personally, I use Perl for most of my projects.  The majority of the other people around here would use PHP - it is by far the most common web programming language out there today.  Python and Ruby are still relatively small compared to the amount of Perl and PHP already out there, but they're both growing quickly and very popular choices for new projects.  C#/VB.NET/ASP.NET are out there in the Microsoft world, but I don't run in those circles, so I really don't know how widely-used those languages are in comparison to Perl/PHP/Python/Ruby.  While you could do it in Java, that language tends to be used more for industrial-strength "enterprise" development, so it doesn't show up much in indy web games.

Also, regardless of what programming language you use for the back-end code, you'll need to use (X)HTML and CSS to create the output pages for browsers to display, plus Javascript if you want to have any real-time interactions (e.g., live tracking of player health, chat systems, etc.) or any but the most basic visual effects (e.g., buttons lighting up when clicked).  It would also be possible to do all the front-end/user interface stuff using Flash, but that's not particularly common outside of more action-oriented games.

[shoespeak]

Well if you did it in Java, you wouldn't need to do XHTML/CSS either if you designed it as an applet (you know like runescape)

[gnoh]

ick don't do that, people generally don't like java applets.    If you happen to already know java you could always use GWT.

[ImEurasian]

So is there a way to like connect the JavaScript and PHP?

[shoespeak]

The javascript runs on the client machine from the browser. You can generate javascript with PHP, just like you can generate HTML. You could write a javascript front end that gets data from the PHP.

[ImEurasian]

The javascript runs on the client machine from the browser. You can generate javascript with PHP, just like you can generate HTML. You could write a javascript front end that gets data from the PHP.

Exactly what I was wondering, thanks, I'll google that up.

[dsheroh]

You could write a javascript front end that gets data from the PHP.

Exactly what I was wondering, thanks, I'll google that up.

Note that the most common version of using "a javascript front end that gets data from the PHP" is AJAX, so you'd probably do well to google for it under that name.

[shoespeak]

Oh yeah, thats the word I was lookin for

[ImEurasian]

So is AJAX javascript or is it different?

[Chris]

So is AJAX javascript or is it different?

AJAX = Asynchronous JavaScript XML

I don't think anyone uses XML part for browsergames and the rest is just plain JS with one or two functions to make communicating with server more convenient

[raestlyn]

codestryke posted an article about the subject some time ago.