Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
WEBoggle – Ajax Multiplayer Boggle
In this post on the Ajax Magazine blog, there’s mention of WEBoggle, an Ajax-enabled web-based multiplayer game of Boggle.
WEBoggle is a web-based Multiplayer Boggle Game where you can play and have fun, but the website was already down this morning the second time I check it to write about it. The game is too much fun, and personaly I find it very addictive too.
When the timer starts, each player searches the assortment of letters for words of three letters or more (four or more on the 5×5 board). When you find a word, type it into the blank and press the ENTER key. Words are formed from adjoining letters. Letters must join in the proper sequence to spell a word. They may join horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, to the left, right, or up-and-down. No letter cube, however, may be used more than once within a single word.
The game is contsntly running, so anyone can connect at any time (no need to wait for other players) and there’s a running total on the sidebar of everyone else’s words for the previous round. There are also other boxes near the bottom of the screen with the “words only you found”, “words you missed”, and “words everyone missed” from the last round. The layout of the page is simple, and two types of games are offered – a 4 by 4 grid and a 5 x 5 grid. The backend is written with a combination of Perl and Ajax.
I’m pretty sceptical of Ajax for multiplayer games of this kind, purely because they make it trivial to cheat through the creation of bots. At least with Java applets there’s a non-trivial reverse engineering step required – Ajax games can be scripted with tools such as Greasemonkey in a way that is practically impossible to detect.
[...] WEBoggle – Ajax Multiplayer Boggle Holy cow! Time to brush up on my word power! Keywords: ajax, gaming, web2.0 Readership () | [...]
My new addiction!
Weboggle! I first head about it on Ajaxian. I read about it. Then I played it. Now, I’m addicted to it! I don’t know why really. It’s not that interesting or fun really. And I’m really bad at it. But, oh well. I’m an
This is an addictive game, but the cheaters spoil it the fun somewhat. It’s a great training program for your mind, and is a nice alternative to solitaire.
The problem with Weboggle is that words that are counted are not real words in many instances. They are often acronyms or variants of old english synonyms or abbreviations. You get the drift. Basically if you want to win and you don’t want to cheat, you have to memorize their “words”. Irritating, to say the least. I’ve sent comments but they never answer. sigh
Good job. I need this to add my site. and there are some cheaters on game.
hey guys,
the problem that faces weboggle is that the synchronization of rounds is based on a javascript timer, which often screws the game after some rounds and can easily be cheated.
I found another boggle website where they use http persistent requests to synchronize the round added with Ajax manipulations and i found it interesting.
PS: it is a french version of the game.
Nice concept, just too bad that the server sometimes gets overloaded due to its popularity. I decided to have a crack at creating a boggle game, it’s at http://uniauctions.com/boggle. This is an English version, if you can’t stand the French alternative mentioned elsewhere. It doesn’t pre-load the gameboard, which helps to prevent early cheaters.
I will add my site
Oyun oyna