July 30, 2006, 03:34:19 pm 
Playable in Firefox and IE by several people at once, I thought I had better stop bratwurstming the Programming forums with Game idea info.
I'll keep that thread for AJAX and programming issues:
http://www.shiningsource.net/forum/index.php?topic=542.0
This one I'll keep a log of character updates, game updates and so on.
First of all, I'd like to welcome anyone who hasn't heard of Shining Ajax to visit it here:
http://www.bad.net.nz/shining/
It takes 2 minutes to sign up and then you can play with anyone else who happens around. During development since there will be few players(maybe no one for you to play with!) I will be setting weekly times to try to get people to play it, you will find any of those announcements in General Blah.
Basically as it stands the game uses a javascript engine with an xmlhttprequest to gather information from the database every second.
The game at this stage gives you 5 set characters (axman, swordsman, assassin, mage, archer) to battle the enemy who has the same characters.
There are 2 turn modes, Alternating(your turn, my turn, your turn, my turn) and Shining(like shining force.. when a character dies, it skips that players turn).
Attacks are very simple at this point and is attack-defense=damage (with a random +/-1 change on damage).
Here is a screenshot as the game is today:
The game also currently includes a chat system that is universal throughout the lobby and games.
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Future desires
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What I would really like is to get the same thing running in flash so that I can make battle information appear on the screen just like in shining force, and generally make it safer(for more browsers) and less connection/cpu intensive.
Secondly, I would like to create 20 unique characters and a slightly larger map, with obstructions. Then the 2 players choose 8 characters each (you pick 1, I pick 1, you pick 1, I pick 1) and the teams start at opposite corners of the map.
Characters would at that point have vastly different abilities and traits. Flying, damaging multiple units at once, healing etc. This would be the point of creating such a mode.
Finally I would like to create a ranking system to see which players have done what(victories, losses, streak, etc), allow you to replay your battles, and see the chat from the game in fast forward etc.