Doing server-communication the foxy way
Hi guys,
I am currently checking out some stuff for the server-side of our browser game. Right now, I am having a look at the so called SmartfoxServer (SFS in short), a “socket server for flash multi player games and applications”. Sounds interesting, so we decided to give it a try.
A good portion of the samples are written in ActionScript2 and only a few are in AS3 which makes it a bit difficult for me since we are using AS3, but fortunately I found these tutorials that deal with SFS and AS3. I already started reading them and I am going to continue this within the next few days.
I am still a bit in a struggle with some Flash and Flex SDK stuff, but here is what I can already say about the SFS:
- simple and clear server configuration using a config.xml file
- foolproof API: you can get started within minutes and there are event functions for every kind of stuff
- detailed documentation
- extending the protocol is very easy by writing your own socalled “server-extensions”
- zones and rooms are already implemented. These are necessary if you want to run multiple instances of your game on one server (zones) or if you want to split your gameworld into different locations (rooms)
- FREE trial version of the SFS pro! The only limitation is that only 20 users may connect. Enough to test it though.
As soon as I am done with the tutorials, I will try to encapsule one part of our demo and feed the game with content from the server instead of pre-generated local content.
I am not aware about the performance at the moment. You may have a look at the benchmark whitepaper or wait until we run performance tests on our own.
I will keep you up to date and tell you my opinion regarding the SFS while getting more into detail the next days.
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[...] and ran our first successful tests with the Smartfox Server, which Joerg lately introduced in his blog post. Sure there is always room for improvement, but currently there are no impediments in [...]