Re: Migration to Nebulae

Thanks for the offer.

Here's my take on the pros and cons of Nebulae and SmartFox.
Feel free to 
refute any of it.

In Favor of Smart Fox
Admin Tools - Yes they look good, but I wouldn't simply
dismiss this as "eye 
candy". Flood control, server status stats, moderation
tools can be custom 
made in Nebulae, but this could potentially add additional
months to your 
development schedule. It will also need to be tested in a
live environment. 
Having these features out of the box saves time and money.
Very Extendable - As I mentioned before, I really like how
you have the 
option to choose either ActionScript, Python, or Java for
server scripting. 
You can also assign scripts to either the zone level or
group level. It 
easily supports multiple DB connections as well.
Strong remote control - Being able to start/stop serverside
scripts remotely 
without having to shutdown or restart the server I think is
fantastic. You 
wouldn't have to boot everybody to make a minor fix and can
easily debug a 
problem while staying connected. Seems like this would also
make it easier 
to work with multiple programmers.
Supported platform - Flash isn't going anywhere and also
looking at the 
release notes, Smart Fox has gotten some significant
features with their 
recent updates so I'd expect the trend to continue. The fact
that several 
major commercial multiplayer games use it is a good sign.

In Favor of Nebulae
Price - This is definitely Nebulae's big advantage. However,
if you have to 
spend time developing comparable Admin tools to Smart Fox,
then the cost 
advantage is lessened.
Compatible with SMUS - Works with all existing MU games with
little to no 
code changes. It also supports all the object and media
types such as 
proplists, image objects, and etc.
Supports UDP - Though I remember Nick Kang said he did some
speed tests and 
he didn't really see a noticeable advantage using UDP over
TCIP with the MU 
Xtra. So I'm not sure how big an advantage  this is.
Slimmer messages - I'll take Elia's word for it. ;) But it
doesn't appear 
the disparity is that huge. Plus there's other ways to save
bandwidth as 
well.

I already have a game up and running with Nebulae, and it's
running fine so 
I'm not going to change it. But I have some in-development
games that 
require a lot of server-side scripting and user
management/moderation. Even 
with some code rewrites, I'll save a ton of time using Smart
Fox (or 
something similar) because of it's flexibility and built-in
features. Having 
some Nebulae/MUS articles would certainly be beneficial but
I get the 
feeling that Tabuleiro is basically in maintenance mode with
the Nebulae 
server. It's not their fault, Macromedia killed SMUS and
Director/SW3D is on 
life support. I'm sure Tabuleiro can't invest too much on
new features or 
"eye candy" since Director has been MIA the last
several years. If you were 
to write any articles or share any code, I think it should
be along the 
lines of the things Troy and Gene mentioned. But it would be
better if 
Tabuleiro could keep evolving Nebulae more.

- Chris

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Elia Morling" <elia.listsgmail.com>
To: "Director - Shockwave - and Flash Game
Production" 
<dirgames-lnuttybar.drama.uga.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 12:54 AM
Subject: [dirGames-L] Migration to Nebulae

> I'm still convinced, for the time being, that Nebulae
is the best solution 
> in regards to pricing and slim messanging.
>
> Regarding the eye-candy that other srevers have, they
can be customly 
> built using Nebulae.
>
> I also see that there are a lot of considerations in
moving from SMUS to 
> supported and more extendable systems.
>
> I am therefore considering to share parts of my code
library (lingo and 
> java), as well as write some articles to aid those
looking to move to 
> Nebulae.
>
> My experience comes from the Tildruin project as well
as multiuser 
> solutions that I have built for clients.
>
> What I wonder is:
>
> 1) Is there an interest for this?
> 2) What code samples and articles would you be
interested in?
>
> Elia
> _______________________________________________
> dirGames-L mailing list  -  dirGames-Lnuttybar.drama.uga.edu
> http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dirgames
-l 

_______________________________________________
dirGames-L mailing list  -  dirGames-Lnuttybar.drama.uga.edu
http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dirgames
-l

Re: Migration to Nebulae

Thread: Re: Migration to Nebulae