Cheat Engine

Aviar³

Wondering if writing a simple server (preferably in C or C++) is cost effective. Particularly, might need to write up a simple server for a flash game (mostly recieves updates, only a bit of sending).

Particularly, Flash is shit for security, would need player actions to be sent to the server and it updates the player status (DB or object), then sends the new state back. This isn't as important for things like moving in the world, but it is for combat and shopping.

I'm looking at you on this one Slugsnack.

NotReallySureWhatGoesHere · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:26 pm Post subject:

I forgot what those "banned" games used as servers, but I remember reading on it and there's a free version. Maybe check that out, and I believe it's written in Java and supports Flash, Java, and whatever else.

If your game gets popular and has a continuous income, there's no need to worry about the cost. We're not MS licensing here Smile

Aviar³ · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:28 pm Post subject:

I think your are thinking SmartFox Server. Supposedly its good, but it limits consecutive connections. That and its Java.

NotReallySureWhatGoesHere · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:30 pm Post subject:

Slugsnack · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:32 pm Post subject:

sure it's cost effective (assuming you mean dev cost?!). in fact, i don't know what other option you have other than to handle everything on the client.

i wouldn't go with c/c++ unless you have a good reason to though. you pretty much kill the possibility of a really snappy client ui because you're using flash anyway. the latency of the connection + client ui responsiveness will make a far more noticeable difference.

by cost effective, i am assuming you mean the cost of you developing it as opposed to outsourcing it? if you are talking about server prices, then yes that can get really really expensive depending on how your plan works and how much you are sync'ing. if you sync every movement costs are gonna ramp up really fast.

if you're not expecting a lot of connections, you can always host on your own machine for now. what we are doing is using google app engine which allows a small free limit. quoting from a post i made in cef rpg section:

Aviar³ · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:38 pm Post subject:

Slugsnack · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:48 pm Post subject:

using different and higher level programming abstraction will not limit concurrent connections. on the other hand, it can make the implementation a hell of a lot easier. not only parsing stage, but also database persistence is significantly more simple. i would not consider the fact that features are available that you don't need a deterrent in this case. if you don't need such features, simply do not use them

for server, i would furthermore not worry about footprint especially if frontend is flash. why are you concerned about this? again, imo this is a case of premature optimisation which may come to bite you in the ass when you realise how much more difficult c implementation is compared to jsp or python implementation for example.

in regards to load balancing, some services will automatically provide this. for example, for our server, we will use google app engine which is highly scalable because it automatically load balances

Aviar³ · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:51 pm Post subject:

Slugsnack · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:55 pm Post subject:

if you are intending to scale so far, i am very doubtful that the first limit you will hit is number of concurrent connections. furthermore, connection limit is not an inherent problem to language, but more to the web server technology. for example, you can build php on top of lighttpd and it will be able to handle the same number of parallel connections as a c backend

Aviar³ · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:58 pm Post subject:

Slugsnack · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:58 pm Post subject:

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Aviar³ · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 1:01 pm Post subject:

Slugsnack · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 1:02 pm Post subject:

hard disk thrashing the shit out of itself or probably local IO will bottleneck from database access. those will degrade your performance far before connection limit. the only true solution to this is distributed server (e.g. LOAD BALANCING!!)

Aviar³ · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 1:05 pm Post subject:

potaters · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2012 12:40 am Post subject:

If this is about anything AE related, stop now. It's stupid and a waste of time. If it isn't, good. Also, you and Slugsnack are talking a lot about this as if you are making some huge/enterprise server. But step back to reality, you probably won't need to rent out servers in a data center, or get a powerful dedicated server. Furthermore, if you are programming it yourself for educational purposes, what do you mean development costs? I don't think your mom giving you soda and hot pockets counts.