Beginner's help - purchasing ElectroServer

[lenny]

Hi all,

I've just started to get in to flash game design, bought your book Jobe, and set up a little site to host my little games (http://www.swishstudios.tk) nothing to brag about yet.. :s

Basically, I do not have the funds to buy a licence for the ElectroServer unlimited users, or 50 people really, and especially as I am not intending on making any money out of it, it seems a very expensive hobby..

If I were to buy a hosting plan, such as one from http://www.webgamehost.com/, that will only give me the 20 users won't it?

Is there another way to do perform the task of multiplayer games?

Does the Flash Communication Server perform these tasks?


Many thanks,

lenny xxxx

[peterblaze]

Hi Lenny,

If I were to buy a hosting plan, such as one from www.webgamehost.com/, that will only give me the 20 users won't it?
Webgamehost, as all providers gives You only basic features at the starter level. You can always do "upgrades", but there is no explanation what does it mean (You may ask by sending email: support@webgamehost.com with subject: "Info request"). I think You can have ES account on webgamehost for more than 20 users but for more money.

BTW:
Can Jobe or Mike explain btw how ISP can upgrade account user licence for hosted ES account from basic free 20 user to commercial licensed account? ISP providers must have some kind of licence for hosting ES to do that


Is there another way to do perform the task of multiplayer games? Another popular method for multiuser games is 'pooling', which means that You don't use socket connection (like ES does) but server side based scripts (like asp, php or cgi based script) to send information to users upon their requests. Becouse it's based on normal http based connections beetwen users and server its very little efficient, harder to script and maintain, but still possible. It has a lot of drawbacks when You compare it with socket connections: one big is that server host can't send infomation directly to one particular user (eg. private message from another user) but must wait until that user connect to server next time during 'pooling'.

Does the Flash Communication Server perform these tasks?Yes, Flash CommServer performs multiuser tasks and socket connections and has more advanced features than ES (like video and sound realtime streaming) but costs much more (circa $4000 at starting level).

BTW: You site is OK for me, but one tip: check urls in 'links' section and delete spaces on the end of urls. When somebody click Your link he/she will see something like "www.your.com/%20" (tested on iE6),
ADDED: OK, wrong url is only in image link: link2mark.gif,

hth,
peter

[lenny]

but costs much more (circa $4000 at starting level).

http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&event=displayProduct&categoryPath=/Software/Server/StandAlones/FlashCommPer

Is this what you meant?

I'll download the trial.. :rolleyes:

[peterblaze]

Hi Lenny,
I must be terrible tired when I wrote $4000, (it's retail price in my local currency Polish Zloty).
Sorry for trouble,
Peter

[lenny]

ah ok :) np

only thing is, i cant find any tutorials on making muliplayer facilities in games :sad:

if i read through the book of Jobe's, even though it's all ES based, will it allow me to use the knowledge in FlashComm? or is is very different..

[peterblaze]

Hi Lenny,
Here's a link for mulitplayer game in FlashComm:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flashcom/articles/minesweeper.html
You find more tuts on search engines or FlashComm dedicated users pages.

My answer to Your last question is 'Yes'. I think Jobe book is excellent recource for any gamemaker no matter if You programe games in Action Script, Java, especially for ElectroServer or for other server based solution. But Jobe book isn't about how to write multiplayer server logic or about server programming.

It's only my opinion but I've noticed that serious users of any kind of multilplayer socket server (like Electroserver) usually use two tools for build advanced multiplayer site: one tool is a xmlsocket based server (like ES) for game running and FlashComm for delivering rich media: audio and video or for using Camera and Microphone object in Flash Player.

And finally I think I was right when pointed price of FlashComm to be around 4000. FlashComm comes in three editions: developer, personal and professional. Their are different in user capacity, bandwidth capacity, and other features. Yeah, You will get personal edition for only a few hundred bucks but professional editon starts at $4,500

Peter