Not quite the usual question, but perhaps best for the "backend services" catagory, so here goes:
I am designing and programming a nice little turn based strategy game:
http://www.project-axis.net/
(website hosted with TCH, woohoo!)
Okay, so we were talking our forum about how to go about setting up multiplayer games and such. The simple way would be to have a small program on a computer somewhere act as the "master server" that lists games on the internet that are currently in play. When you start a server on your own, your game logs into the master server's list of current games. That's all the master server does. It's not like a "Quake III server". It doesn't play the game, it justs logs current games like any other database app. Then if you want to play the game as a regular client, your game checks for and returns a list of active servers to play on from off the master server
My question is, if i program this small and simple application for logging currently active servers (probably in C++ or just PHP/MySQL), can i host it on my regular account that i also host my webpage on? It needs to be on a computer that the whole world can access and is always on. In other words, my desktop is out :-) "but hey, i already pay for a hosted machine!"
The program would not consume very much resources. Especially if no one likes the game :-)