PHP
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The wiki is now hosted by GameDev.NET at wiki.gamedev.net. All gpwiki.org content has been moved to the new server. However, the GPWiki forums are still active! Come say hello. PHP is a programming language targeting website programming. It's an equilavent of Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP). PHP was first written in 1995 by Rasmus Lerdorf who named it "Personal Home Page Tools". PHP has come a long way meanwhile. If you want to read more about the history of PHP, have a look here. Right now PHP is at version 5.2 and it can run with a webserver like Apache, or stand alone. It will run on Linux variants and also on Windows. PHP has a large collection of functions. You can connect to mySQL databases, use graphics libraries, make socket connections, use the file system, etc. PHP comes with a complete function reference online including quite some code examples. The English online manual can be found here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/. There are various version of the manual available, some are downloadable. PHP can also be used for web game development. There are many games online that have been programmed with PHP. These games aren't real-time games, but (most of the time) browser games. A random example is Mutant Freaks of Nature, which is a web-based RPG set in a dystopian future. PHP can make quite decent online games using the included graphics libraries (player stats?), the database connections (game information, player login info, etc.) and of course the HTML output. There is also a PHP language compiler for the .NET platform (currently in beta stage), named Phalanger. Since it's also able to use existing classes and assemblies, such as for example managed DirectX or Tao, and compiles into native machine code on execution, it might be suitable for game development outside browsers. Links
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