I see Red5 which looks nice but it really lacks documentation and since I'm new to using sockets it would be a hassle.
I'm wanting to make a flash chat with audio/video (though just text will work at first) and I enjoy ES but the cheapeast license is $700! I'm a solo developer so the cost is too high.
The main factor is just having good enough documentation for a new comer.
(I use the flash CS4 IDE if that matters)
SmartFoxServer is a good choice. I played around with it a few years ago with AS2, so might be work a look.
They offer a free lite version, but it does not support AS3. I think you need to get the basic plan for that. The pricing plans do look well priced though.
They have some nice documentation and plenty of example.
SmartFoxServer seems to be targeted at multi-player games, but it could be used for your needs.
EDIT*
Just found these Beta AS3 classes for SmartFoxServer. I haven't tried it out for my self though.
EDIT 2*
Another option would be to make your own. It's probably easier than you think if you have a few programming languages under your belt. Of course, this is the kinda thing that can suck your time away.
There are a bunch of tutorials out there for building your own socket server, and some are even specifically for flash. Here are some of the best:
Building a Flash socket server with
Java in five minutes
Python socket server for Flash
XML Sockets / Flash / PHP Based Chat App
Writing Socket Servers in PHP
Asynchronous Socket Programming in C#
I would definitely suggest using C# .net if you have Windows hosting. It would definitely be the simplest to build and would have the best performance. I would stay away from PHP for anything bigger than a chat app, but if that's all you have then go for it.
Try Union. IT's written by one of the best actionscript programmers out there, Colin Moock. The options seem affordable and it's well documented as well.
You can get a free flash socket policy server from https://fsps.rpath.org. I built this appliance for internal use at rPath where I work, but I also maintain it on our free rBuilder Online service. Just click on the Home tab, and download the type of appliance you want (ISO, vmware image, etc.). The Appliance is a full system image including the OS (in this case rPath Linux 2) plus the fsps application.
The policy service resides in the fsps package and runs on the standard Adobe port of 843. By default, it only opens up access to port 443 on the system (https). The policy file served up lives in /usr/share/fsps if you want to change it.
Related
I'm looking for a pub/sub messaging system to connect various applications I'm building, some of them will be iOS, other ones AIR/AS3 and maybe some openFrameworks.
I found out Faye and it looks like really interesting. I've found libraries to integrate it in all my apps/languages, so I'm trying it out.
Now, the problems are with the AS3 implementation. I've found this great library and it's kind of working, BUT I've some issues I can't understand. My main problem is that I can build clients, connect them to a node.js server and exchange information between them, but after a while they stop receiving information.
So I was wondering:
do anyone of you have experience with Faye and this library, and knows if this behaviour it's normal and if there's a way to prevent it? I've done some tests using some html browser clients and everything was ok, so it's definitely a flash library problem
do you know any other library to implement Faye in AS3/AIR? I was browsing a lot but I couldn't find anyone
Do you know any alternative pub/sub messaging system I could implement (easily) in as3?
Thank you
We've open sourced our implementation of AS3 Faye client recently. You can find it here.
It's been in prod for more than a year and was tested by millions of users, without issues so far. It's used in Flash Player Web and AIR Mobile applications.
Interfaces mimic JS client interfaces, so its setup is as easy as JS client setup. Plus one additional feature: multiple urls for reconnection fallbacks.
Give it a try!
I am attempting to convert my Unity3d game to flash but am experiencing trouble with comments. Because of the socket trouble, I am trying to use Json and Post, but I don't know where to start. I saw this
Java server- client socket communication
but it incorporates sockets.
This is for the user client, but I also need to redo the server side. I believe I need a web server to get the Json strings and return the appropriate response.
Am I doing this right, or is there something I am overlooking?
This may lessen the amount of work quite a bit if you are interested in using an API. Smartfox is an awesome Client API / Multiplayer server tool that can increase output time as well as allow you to implement efficiency code to improve server stability.
It works for both Unity3D and flash.
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
Addressing your main question I believe you would need a server to effectively use Json and be able to communicate to the clients however this is where smartfoxserver can come in handy. I have not had much experience in the flash multiplayer programming however smartfox is a great tool and I used it to make multiplayer programs in unity3d.
Hope this helps!
Mitch
Officially, BlazeDs can only be used "with Flex and AIR". This comment is puzzling in itself since Flex is a set of Actionscript development tools, while AIR is a "mode" in which Flash can operate.
Ultimately, I am starting a new project and I want to use BlazeDS for a Flash CS5.5 (or CS6)-based project. Is this possible? Has anyone used this combination in the past?
If you actually read the article you linked to, you'll soon find that it is absolutely okay to use BlazeDS with any technology that can communicate with a web socket - its message format (AMF3) is an open standard.
So yes, it can be used with Flash (or rather, pure ActionScript), but it is a little less convenient than with MXML, where everything is set up by the framework, because it takes more "under the hood" configuration to be able to run all the necessary parts for remoting. And you will still need the Flex SDK, of course - there's no getting around that.
Once you have the Flex SDK set up with your Flash IDE, you have to manually initialize the Flex remoting classes needed before you can access a BlazeDS service. There is a sample class that has all the required calls and some additional information in this blog post.
I have also written an extensive tutorial about getting RemoteObject wired up and working, as well as setting up a simple "Hello World" web service on my blog. The article series I wrote is intended for use with FDT and RobotLegs 2, but at least the first part (setting up a Java WAR project to deploy as web service) should be helpful to you, nonetheless.
Finally, I would recommend you rethink using Flash as your primary IDE - in my experience, it... well, frankly, it sucks (pardon my French) for anything but animations and setting up asset libraries. If you don't want to pay for a better IDE, you should consider using FlashDevelop (unless you're on a Mac - OS X is not supported). Or maybe give FDT a try - it is much, much more convenient for coding, even if you don't buy the Max license.
We are looking at building a GUI application having the following attributes -
* approx 100 screens
* approx 200 users
* interfaces with 8 different legacy applications (protocols tbd but we are assuming web services will be exposed)
* has a separate data store for storing authentication and authorisation info along with few other information.
We are trying to avoid spending any money on procurement of physical servers, application servers etc.So we thought instead of building a web application , we could develop a standalone GUI based application that could be deployed on users' desktops considering that the users are less and the access to this application is confined to our organisation.
We were thinking of Java Swing as one of the options to consider. Is it a good choice? Please advice on the other options that we need to think about. We thought MS products would involving licensing costs to buy the product hence we are looking at developing the application using some free software tools.
Thanks a lot!
Regards,
V
I really like Swing and have written many applications with it, but I'm not sure the argument that you will get a cheaper solution because you have to procure less physical servers is a good reason for it.
There are other ways to use computational capacity on the client side. For example you could use SmartGWT. With a browser based solution you get easy deployment and have no problems with client-server communications (i.e. no proxy hell). It's possible to get all of this solved with a standalone GUI, but it requires experience and time (== money).
I think a standalone GUI is a good idea if you need a "rich" user experience and tight integration with the native environment. Web apps are generally less snappy and not so well integrated. If it's just about editing data on a server, the standalone GUI does not really have any advantages.
I won't rehash what we talked about in the comments. It seems you are focused on java gui solutions. With that said there are alternatives for developing gui applications with free tools. Just to name a couple, you could develop your client with Adobe Flex or Adobe Air, use python, php or ruby and GTK, or develop a windows GUI app using c# if your target os is windows. Similar to Air, Microsoft Silverlight is an option. Java is not the only solution.
Many Java gui apps are written using swing. The major competitor to Swing has long been SWT which is used for eclipse and by IBM. Javafx is a newer/alternative platform Sun/Oracle is behind, you should also look at. To be complete, you should also take a look at qt jambi that lets you develop in java against the Qt framework.
I have been debating which Flash Socket Server to use for a virtual world (multiplayer game).
I want something that has a very abstract api and requires little to no server side programming.
From what I see only Smartfox and ES sort of cater to game development.
I'm open to any suggestions and if anyone knows which API is easier to learn (Smartfox or ES) don't be afraid to chime in :)
I'm currently developing a flex+smartfox mmo project.
my experience with smartfox is not so "easy", if you need some custom behaviours or some bandwidth saving protocols you just have to choose another way.
the great lack of smartfox is amf support, the data is not sent and received via a binary socket, everything is transfered as a string, so you can only imagine how bandwidth sucker the transfer is...
however the plus of smartfox is you can cluster it quite easily via terracotta and can you can implement your extensions in java, python and as3. further it supplies some ready to use functionalities such as chat rooms, friendlists, etc..
I have some experience with red5 too, it's a completely different approach, the main plus of working with it would be streaming assets such as mp3 or video to the clients, so if you need ambient sounds or something similar red5 or fms could be your choice.
however I don't have experience with electroserver nor union, so i can't say much on them.
Well, the easiest to program for would probably be Flash Media Server since you program the server in a variant of ActionScript.
I have experience with a bunch of them - FMS, ElectroServer, Union(used to be Unity), Red5, etc and I have to say that I really liked Union. Union's website has a bunch of good beginner tutorials as well.