>I know this probably isnt the best forum.
>
>I'd like to try my hand at creating a real-time game.
>Maybe something like Checkers to start. By real time I
>mean that when a player moves, the other player sees
>it immediatly.
>
>Anyone have experience in this?

I don't, but I expect it's non-trivial. There are bound to be some Web articles/discussions about this but it's hard to separate from the huge world of online games like Half-Life etc. A Google of ["online game" design] came up with http://www.charlesriver.com/titles/onlinegame.html amongst other links.

I think you'll need to further refine what you mean by "real time". For something like a first-person shooter you need your real-time as "hard" as possible. Players of those games want to be able to see their enemies the millisecond they appear and they spend a lot of money on hot hardware and a fast Internet connection to achieve that. I believe the only way to support this level of high-performance "hard" real-time interactivity is to have all players connecting to a single server which contains the game image, which changes over time with inputs from all the users.

Games like Checkers, strategy games etc. typically don't need "hard" real-time. It doesn't really matter if a piece moves on your opponent's screen a second or two after you move it on yours. You need "soft" real-time for this. If you don't need to move too much information from one player to the other with each "move" then you could establish point-to-point connections without the need for a central server.
To handle the grunt work of communication between peers you might be able to piggyback on existing technology like Instant Messaging, which could well be "instant" enough for what you want to do.

My CAN$0.02