Kudos on Room infrastructure

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casperjeff
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Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby casperjeff » 13 Sep 2013, 11:43

I had intended to eschew the room architecture for my 'pre-game' stuff (initiating a game - waiting for other players, etc) and roll my own - but at the last minute I decided to see what the SmartFox Room and Game API had to offer. I must say I am stupid glad I did. Easily saved me days of effort (and eliminating my having to kludge my database with structures to house this data). I'm not too far in yet - (using game groups and subscriptions to manage game lists and such) but it is going swimmingly so far.
Kudos to the SmartFox team for their hard work in providing NOT just a network infrastructure, but a TRUE multi-player game engine that does a LOT of heavy lifting for the user (the login and signup api have also saved me countless headaches and hours)
Thanks for the awesome product....
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Lapo
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby Lapo » 13 Sep 2013, 11:45

Super, thanks :)
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Lapo
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby Lapo » 13 Sep 2013, 11:48

In a soon to be released version we're adding a new type of room, codename MMORoom, that will add new features to the Room infrastructure.
It will provide an Area-Of-Interest (AOI) based logic which is useful for MMOs.
This way thousands of players will be able to populate a single giant Room where events are only broadcast within the range that is defined by the User.

Cheers
Lapo

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grhwood
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby grhwood » 18 Sep 2013, 10:42

wow, this is what I definitely want - the MMORoom, do you have eta for this release ?

Thanks
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Lapo
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby Lapo » 18 Sep 2013, 10:57

We're creating the docs and finishing the 2nd example which is in realtime and a bit complex.
We also have the API for Flash and if final tests go well we should be able to ship the first release with Flash and Unity API in mid October.
Then we'll add support for the other clients.

Let's talk about it again at the beginning of October. I should be able to give you more details and maybe we'll be able to ship a preview release if you are interested. (This may depend on the client type you need)

Hope it helps
Lapo

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tichfuie
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby tichfuie » 19 Sep 2013, 15:28

Awesome news,

A few months back i had this AOI feature request posted on here
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=16161
and Lapo confirmed that they will add it to SFS in the future,

I am glad this is going to be a fact now and glad that my request helped expedite the feature, +1 for Unity client preview release since this is what i am planning to use atm

Cant wait to put my hands on this new release :-)
thank you Lapo for listening to the end user.

Cheers
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Lapo
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby Lapo » 16 Oct 2013, 10:23

UPDATE: A little update on the status of this new feature. I have a bad news and a good one.

Let's start with the "bad one": we are going to shift the release by 3-4 weeks, because, as we were developing, lots of ideas came up and we decided to add more advanced features to the new API

...And the Good news: we think it will be awesome! :mrgreen: Lots of goodies around the corner!

Cheers
Lapo

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tichfuie
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby tichfuie » 27 Oct 2013, 04:01

thanks for the update lapo,

so proly by mid nov?

Lapo wrote:..And the Good news: we think it will be awesome! :mrgreen: Lots of goodies around the corner!


any advancement on the new features? at least verbally?
tell us about them :) :-)
doodledevil
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby doodledevil » 27 Oct 2013, 04:52

Great news!
If any plan to share outline of feature? We are evaluating SFS2x for a mmo game (using C++ client API), and knowing a bit more about timeline, feature detail might be big help for us at this stage.
Even ready to evaluate feature at beta level if available.

-DD
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Lapo
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby Lapo » 27 Oct 2013, 11:55

Sure, here's a quick outline:

1)
We have introduced the concept of MMORoom a specialized type of Room for large virtual worlds, MMOs etc...
The idea is simple, the Room is configured with an AoI (Area of Interest) which represent 2D or 3D coordinates of "visibility" for each player in the Room. This in turn allows to restrict events and interactions between users based on their 2D/3D coordinates in the MMORoom. This in turn allows thousands of players in the same Room/Map without overloading clients with unnecessary events. Only local ones, within the configured AoI.

The standard SFS API will keep working as usual and automatically broadcast events within what we call a "Proximity List", so if you update your User Variables inside an MMORoom the update will go only to the Users falling within the AoI parameter.

This system works for both point-and-click interaction as well as for realtime games, we have introduced a number of fine tuning parameters to throttle the freqeuncy of updates behind the scenes and we're very happy with how it works. We' are now working on a pretty advanced action game demo that demonstrates real time interaction with very large maps and lots of players.

2)
Also we have added what we call MMOItems and MMOItemVariables. An MMOItem is non-player object inside the map with custom properties (variables) that can be used to define bonuses, collectable items, triggers, bullets etc...
They work with the same visibility mechanism and provide dynamic updates via the MMOItemVariables which extend the regular UserVariable objects in the API.

So... in a few lines that's the gist of it.
As regards beta testing / early release we are open to the possibility. The essential documentation is going to be ready in early November. At the moment we're finishing the AS3 and C# API (which cover Unity/Win8/Win8 Phone). The other platforms will follow a little bit later.

Hope it helps
Lapo

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doodledevil
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby doodledevil » 27 Oct 2013, 13:46

Thanks for quick response and sharing outline. This is something which we must be using for our game. Given the planned large maps & city areas, I think out of the box AoI will make a huge difference when it come to performance factor. As you mentioned that sometime early November, documentation for this feature could be available, can I safely expect C++ API to be available by early December?

-DD
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Lapo
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby Lapo » 28 Oct 2013, 08:42

We expect the release to be out before the end of November with AS3 and C# support. C++ should be out before the end of the year. If all goes well we'll be able to accelerate a bit.

Cheers.
Lapo

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doodledevil
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby doodledevil » 29 Oct 2013, 04:43

Cool. If before end of the year, we can get C++ client library then we can target that for our project. Eagerly waiting for this new feature..

-DD
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Lapo
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby Lapo » 29 Oct 2013, 07:33

doodledevil wrote:Cool. If before end of the year, we can get C++ client library then we can target that for our project. Eagerly waiting for this new feature..

-DD

Sure, I will keep you updated :)
Lapo

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Zanpher
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Re: Kudos on Room infrastructure

Postby Zanpher » 29 Oct 2013, 18:38

I am subscribing to this topic just to keep tabs. Is this a single AOI or could there be multiple AOIs per room?

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