Many thanks. Learning what not to do was part of what I was hoping for.

BTW, other noobs can go here to see a relevant discussion with some simple code to set up a tinker toy server and client. The example uses Flex and Java.

Incidentally, it's ActionScript and Java - you can use ActionScript from Flash without using Flex. Personally I wouldn't bother with Flex, seeing as it is more suited to web development. Java is a reasonable choice for a server-side language though.

Using the asynchronous binary sockets added in Flash 8 is drop dead simple so quite honestly I wouldn't use anything but that. C# is an awesome language to use on the server, and you could also use RunUO (Ultima Online emulator) as a reference if you run into any difficulties. I have a Flash/Flex/C# graphic MUD project and it went quite well (haven't had time to work on it in for a little while), although I did have experience writing this type of game from work experience.

[Edited by - Saruman on December 2, 2006 5:51:41 PM]