OK, i know about the client server model - have been reading a few articles about it, but at the moment I don’t really want to run an unreal server. However - i do have an el-cheapo PHP/Mysql server (5 dollars a month, yay for poor developers!).
The thing is i wanna put loads of computer terminals in my levels and you would be able to access some pseudo internet on these. Kinda works fine, but no matter how much work i put into my AI it is never that convincing - so i had this brilliant idea. If people could post messages and hack other real humans terminals in the game that would be so much more fun. But just to keep a few variables and text strings i feel the unreal server would be overkill - would be much more lightweight (and cheaper. yeah!) to just use my existing php mysql as a backend. And of course i could easily add more funny stuff on the fly - won’t need to distribute a new offline installer for my game every time i come up with a few new witty gags.
Sooooo - is networking possible via something else but a dedicated unreal server? Some cheap http GET would already be sufficient. Other solutions welcome.
