Free multiplayer API - smartfox competition?

[mixart]

Has anyone tried this new API from nonoba?

http://nonoba.com/developers/multiplayerapi/overview

And I was curious if anyone knows what socket/server technology they are using?

I love Smartfox and don't plan changing but curious about this API.

[mixart]

I thought this would be a pretty hot topic - guess I was wrong

[flarb]

Well I just scanned the page and I don't like how I have to host it using their clustering host solution.

I do wish SFS would finally release details on their clustering license.

[mixart]

Well I just scanned the page and I don't like how I have to host it using their clustering host solution.

But that's the whole point. You don't need hosting, you don't need your own server with access to install a socket server and it costs nothing. The other advantage of course us that you'll also have an instant audience for your application since it would get promoted by their community.

It's not for all projects, but if you're just into building fun games/apps it might be ideal.

[flarb]

What "community"? Do they even have one yet? I'd rather build my own. Usually these types of things are for companies to skim off the top of the advertising revenue of all the games that exist in the 'community'. Not to mention using game developers as a means to get users into their 'community' that they can market to. Your users are your most valuable asset....I'd be careful to whom I give them up to.

I have no idea what the restrictions are or the performance is for their clustering solution. I'd rather use Amazon. And SFS has been battle tested in at least one major product (Club Penguin) which was a big factor in my decision.

If I was just messing around with a hobby project it might be interesting.

[mixart]

I was just sharing something that was interesting that may suit many peoples needs. For some reason you seem offended that I'm sharing this with the SF community

As far as I know, it's the only free API of it's kind for multi-player flash games? I'm sure there are some people here that are open minded enough to want to check it out for their needs before dismissing it.

If I wanted a simple chat or even the old fridge magnet letters game, it might be perfect
http://nonoba.com/chris/fridge-magnets

[potmo]

I agree with some of the other posts. Its great to have a free servers solution that someone else hosts but if you want to go professional you have to have total control. And as someone else said. Its not a community and all its fancy technical functionality thats the real asset in a community. Its the users. The user is the ones thats worth the $$$'s. So hold em tight and dont let them go. But i guess its great for hobby projects.

[Lapo]

I do wish SFS would finally release details on their clustering license.

Our licensing scheme does not change in a cluster environment. So whether you run the server instances separately or in a cluster, through a Terracotta server, you always pay the same.

I would also like to add that we're going to make our licensing system more flexible in the future allowing dynamic assignment of IP addresses for environments such as Amazon or similar virtual-machine based systems.

To be more precise this can be already done right now, in fact we already have customers running SFS with the Amazon services. We're simply going to make it simpler, more streamlined and easy to implement.
We should release the new system in autumn 2008.