Creating a pacman-style game using Flash (AS3)

Question

Creating a pacman-style game using Flash (AS3). There are 3 players competing to eat the most dots. Right now when one player eats a dot, on that player's screen the dot goes away (but only for a second) and appears again in the screen. The other player playing, doesn't see that the dot went away and reappeared.

Using hitTestObject, when a player touches a dot, the dot should no longer be seen on the stage. I'm using shared object to create this multi-player game environment. I'm new in using SharedObject and also AS3.

            public function PlayerSelect()
                    {           
                        nc = new NetConnection();
                        nc.addEventListener(NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS, netStatusHandler);
                        nc.connect("rtmp://r92kq5ew6.rtmphost.com/g1");

                        select_screen.btn1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, select1);
                        select_screen.btn2.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, select2);
                        select_screen.btn3.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, select3);
                        for(var i=0; i<circ_num; i++) {
                            circle_ary[i] = new Circle(); //linkage in the library
                            circle_ary[i].x=0;
                            circle_ary[i].y=0;
                            stage.addChild(circle_ary[i]);
                        }

                    }

         public function netStatusHandler(event:NetStatusEvent):void
                {
                    trace("connected is: " + nc.connected );
                    trace("event.info.level: " + event.info.level);
                    trace("event.info.code: " + event.info.code);

                    switch (event.info.code)
                    {
                        case "NetConnection.Connect.Success":
                            trace("Congratulations! you're connected");
                            so = SharedObject.getRemote("ballPosition", nc.uri, false);
                            so.connect(nc);
                            so.addEventListener(SyncEvent.SYNC, syncHandler);
                            break;
                        case "NetConnection.Connect.Rejected":
                        case "NetConnection.Connect.Failed":
                            trace ("Oops! you weren't able to connect");
                            break;
                    }

                }

    private function stageInit():void
            {
                for(var i=0; i<circ_num; i++) {
                    pos_ary[i] = new Array();
                    pos_ary[i][0] = Math.random()*stage.stageWidth;
                    pos_ary[i][1] = Math.random()*stage.stageHeight;

                    so.setProperty("dots", pos_ary);
                }


            }

// update clients when the shared object changes
        private function syncHandler(event:SyncEvent):void
        {
            // when a sync event is fired
            // update the information for all clients

            //here we update states for all players
            for (var i:String in so.data) //run through all players in the data array
            {

                if (i == "dots")
                {
                    for(var j=0; j<circ_num; j++)
                    {
                        circle_ary[j].x = so.data["dots"][j][0];
                        circle_ary[j].y = so.data["dots"][j][1];
                        //pos_ary[j][0] = so.data["dots"][j][0];
                        //pos_ary[j][i] = so.data["dots"][j][i];
                    }
                }

                else if(player_ary[i] == undefined)
                        makePlayer(i);  //if the player does not exist we create it

                else if (i!=me) //we do not need to update our selves from the server, just everyone else
                {   
                    player_ary[i].x = so.data[i][0]; //here I am treating data like a 2d array
                    player_ary[i].y = so.data[i][1]; //where [i][0] is x poition data and 
                }                                    //[i][1] is y position data
            }
        }

// function eatCircle --------------------------------------------------------------
function eatCircle():void {
    for (var j:int = 0; j<circ_num; j++)
    {
        if (player_ary[me].hitTestObject(circle_ary[j]))
        {
            trace ("I ate the circle");
            circle_ary[j].y = -100;
            pos_ary[j][1] =-100;
            so.setProperty("dots", pos_ary);
        }


    }

}

Answer 1

Are all players trying to write there board to the gamestate. If so then when one player eats a dot and writes there map to the gamestate, then another player might not realise that the gamestate has changed and overwrite the map with there map. This would mean that the eaten dot would re-appear.