Gaming websites are not like any e-commerce or video broadcasting websites that run on backend programming languages. However, compared to them all, these gaming sites are interactive in nature, where the results and the subsequent execution depend on the user’s commands.
PHP, or the hypertext preprocessor, is one such language popularly used by game developers to create these websites. But do you know what makes it unique from the other programming languages? Read ahead and explore the differences.
What is PHP?
PHP is a server-side scripting language (unlike a raw programming language) that can create static, dynamic, or web-based applications. The acronym PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, previously known as Personal Home Pages. You can only PHP scripts on a server having a pre-installed PHP language.
PHP pages are full of HTML with embedded code that performs something instead of a long list of commands to output HTML (like in C or Perl). The PHP code is wrapped in its unique start and end processing commands that enable you to switch between “PHP mode” and “normal mode.”
If you wonder what sets PHP apart from client-side scripting languages? The code for JavaScript is run on the server, which generates HTML and is then transmitted to the client. The client would then get the results of the script’s execution but would not be aware of the underlying code. You may even set up your webserver to use PHP to execute all of your HTML files, making it virtually impossible for users to access them.
Why do game designers favor it?
PHP is capable of handling all aspects of server-side scripting, also referred to as the backend logic of any website. PHP may, for example, receive data from forms, generate dynamic website content, send and receive data bytes from databases, create individual sessions, manage website cookies, and send emails, among other things.
PHP also includes a number of hash methods for encrypting user data, making it a secure and dependable server-side scripting language. These are only a few of PHP’s features that make it suited for usage as a server-side scripting language.
Designers find it simple and versatile to use
Because PHP interacts so well with the console, it’s very simple to create text-based games with it. However, according to Brian Wang and Markus Fischer, who were its first developers, PHP can now be used to develop graphical games. Naturally, creating text-based games is much easier, so that’s where we’ll start.
The adventure game is the most common sort of text-based game, in which all the users’ commands for input and its resulting feedback are provided through textual explanations. The beautiful thing about these games is that you can construct them fairly quickly and add new features as you go – NetHack, a text-based game for Unix operating system that has been recently developed, is the best example of this.
