I am doing the networking for a MMO and I need to choose a server backend. Smartfox Server Pro / SFS 2X i more expensive, but it seems a bit easier. Photon is cheaper, but I have no idea where its APIs are. The only downside to Smartfox is that it seems like although it supports Unity, it just wouldn’t quite cut it for a MMO. Photon is supposedly more powerful, but like I said I have no ida where the APIs are. So can I please get some help/advice/whatever?
I am using smartfox after I’ve checked out all of them (electro server, smartfox and photon) - photon is quite nice but unfortunately it doesn’t work well with unix based system and I won’t use windows based servers for mmo type of games or games with huge traffic as they just cannot handle it effiecently. On the other side photon uses c# for scripting so you could stick to 1 language for client and server which is a good point for photon. The Support is nice with all of them - the standard support through their forums - or the premium paid support which is also offered.
If you going to develop a professional mmo type game you won’t have to worry about the prices at all - they are mostly similiar and you don’t have to pay anything during development as they have free max 100 CCU user licenses.
I’d suggest you to play with all of them and see yourself what suits you and your game best.
There is no general way to say use this or that.
For api you could check these docs:
Hey SudoHF,
Photon’s APIs are provided as Software Development Kits (SDK) on our download page. Registration is free and without obligation.
There is one package for the server and one per client platform. Get the Unity SDK as well as the Server SDK. Each zip file includes reference documentation for the classes and methods offered and there is the Developer Network page, where we provide more general guidance. Anything else, you can ask in the forum, of course.
at the moment photon is windows only afaik.
But from the news it looks like they’ve planned to get it running on unix using mono very soon
which is a very good way to move on. Photon is very powerful but windows isn’t
I’m not sure of the overall number of servers per OS really tells you a lot. Most will be web servers which can’t be compared with realtime gaming requirements.
Windows adds a small fee to the overall hosting costs, but Windows Server and the DotNet framework perform exceptionally well.
Yes, we plan a Unix port but can’t name any date yet. Because of this, there is no comparison for Photon’s “cost per player” on both systems yet.
We have been using Badumna with our upcoming MMORPG - Farland Online, were about to go into a pre-alpha test soon. I will put together a report on our statistics for pre-alpha if you are interested…
Or if you have any questions about it, We have been moving pretty far into development I can probably answer them based on my experiences.
Our MMO has alot of the base functionality you would expect from a client/server based mmo…
Serverside Database to hold live/persistent data, as well as the ability to offload extra calls to the server onto the cient while still being able to maintain security on what the client sends out.
Right now we support the ability to Login to the network with authentication, select, create, or delete a character… chat, private messages, friends lists, combat forumlas/transactions, and currently building inventory transactions.
I have alot of interesting innovations in development for our future with Badumna as it opens up a whole new element of possibilities stability.
