> Sam, how about creating two modes in which the game engine could be used--the ordinary single-player game, and a "tournament" mode that would allow players to pit their favorite teams agains one another?

Thought of it, and I'm in full agreement that if I did this, it would easily be the most addictive element of RinkWorks to date. My answer is only partly as you feared. It's "not at this time" rather than an outright "no."

To be honest, I've been dying to make a multiplayer game for a long time. For a long time I wanted to, but didn't know how. Then I learned how, several years ago, and somehow worked on other projects instead -- but I always had that in mind.

The web brings a whole new opportunity for multiplayer games. The problem is with the CGI interface I'm using for games at this time. It doesn't really lend itself to multiplayer interaction, because the CGI interface doesn't allow much of a mechanism for dealing with events. If you're looking at a CGI-generated page, there's no mechanism for allowing you to be notified when the other player has finished making his move. Likewise, there is no good way to have a timeout trigger code that deals with a situation where a player leaves, either voluntarily or through a network hiccup.

Other web-based technologies, however, permit this, and I'm interested in learning them. (I've been learning Java over the past few months.) I expect this CRPG to be the last CGI-based game on RinkWorks, unless I come up with something similar to the format of the Site Market Game, which has no real need for anything more powerful. After that, I'll probably take a break from games so I can solidify by handling of Java and learn some other more powerful web technologies.

After that, a multiplayer combat game using the characters from the CRPG is a very reasonable idea, and I'd be as or more excited about it than you.