smartfoxserver.com

Hi!

Im working with Director and I dont know a lot of flash.
BUT I'd like to lern this SmartFox cos it really looks great and ive been searching for this for quite some while.

I Have some questions
*Have someone already done a API for director/shockwave or will I have to port the flash API to director myself?

*What will happen with the server with like 1000 simultaneus users? have anybody tested it?

*Will I have to buy one licence for each machine? My company got, i think, five game-servers around the world.

*How low ping times can you get if you run the client and the servern on the same machine or on the same loacl network?

Keep up the good work!

Hello and welcome

*Have someone already done a API for director/shockwave or will I have to port the flash API to director myself?

One of the strengths of SmartFoxServer is the high level Flash APIs provided. They allow to easily control the server and transfer complex data between clients within a few lines of code. A similar framework is available on the server side to extend its features and implement server side logic.

With the great integration between Director and Flash I would recommend to embed a Flash control that acts as a bridge between Director and the server instead of re-implementing the protocol natively in Lingo.
Also I think that the overhead of the Flash-Director communication is negligible.

*What will happen with the server with like 1000 simultaneus users? have anybody tested it?

Sure! We run tons of tests on our server and we have a page with benchmarks here -> http://www.smartfoxserver.com/products/benchmarks.htm

1000 clients can usually be handled by any machine running at least a 1.5ghz or higher CPU. Of course if your application uses very complex server side logic you might need a more powerful hardware.
The server also scales very well with multi cpu machines allowing to handle hordes of clients on a single instance.

Will I have to buy one licence for each machine? My company got, i think, five game-servers around the world.

Each license is valid for 1 IP address.
So if you have multiple machines you will need to buy more licenses.
We can provide discounts for 3 or more licenses, you can contact us directly for more infos.

How low ping times can you get if you run the client and the servern on the same machine or on the same loacl network?

The server adds almost no delay to the network lag unless it is extremely loaded.
It can literally process many thousand requests per second.

Some more questions:

*is it possible to have a cluster of computers running the same virual server or somehow connect them to eachother.

I mean can i have one compuer in the US and one in Spain with the same buddylist and the same users and so on?


*Is it possible to backup users and rooms in some easy way?

Nope. At the moment SmartFoxServer is not cluster-able so you can't have data replication among multiple instances. We have plans in this direction but not in the immediate future.

For the moment you can split your "virtual world" into regions or zones and handle them with multiple server instances running on multiple server machines.
You can share data across the entire virtual world by using a central database where all the instances connect to.

This is also a good solution to distribute the traffic load and avoid single point s of failure.

Someone on this forum is building a Smartfox / flash / Director bridge. He said it would be done in about 2 weeks.

thats cool i hope he'll let us know when hes ready (or she)

Sure, we'll keep you updated about the status of the Director API