I have an iPhone game (Combination), and in the next version I would like to set up a server, where users (via the app) can submit which levels they have completed, and see how other users are doing. At this point I don't intend that users will need usernames and passwords, just a simple submit data, get back data.
I know very little about server-based language and databases, but I've heard lots of horrible things that can happen if you get it wrong. What would be the best system to design a simple, lightweight, secure database in?
How about having a look at Onyx Online or OpenFeint?
Onxy Online is from the makers of Trism, and they say, "the XBox Live Arcade ecosystem brought to the iPhone". I wrote this kind of system into Trism as a case study, and it's been a complete success. Since Trism launched in July, we've been hard at work adapting this online code for use in any iPhone game, and the results are stunning. What we're going to do is allow any developer to insert the Onyx code into their game, which will instantly enable online scoring, achievements, leaderboards, and customized forums."
OpenFeint is from the developers of Aurora Feint. From the press release:
"OpenFeint allows any iPhone game to add player profiles, buddy lists, walls, newsfeeds and real-time chat rooms allowing the game to build a real community around itself with ZERO operations overhead and minimal development time. OpenFeint consists of a server and a client. The OpenFeint Server is fully compatible with Google’s OpenSocial REST API and will be accessible through the OpenFeint client code library and sample UI code from Aurora Feint Inc. Indie developers do not have to operate the servers, which will be hosted Aurora Feint’s data center.
In a first for iPhone games, iPhone game developers will have the ability to reduce over 2 months of development work to 1 day, and completely eliminate back-end server operations, while offering their players an extensive set of customizable social and community building features:
Profiles: Players can upload an avatar photo or take one with their iPhone camera.
Walls: Each player gets a wall where other players can leave comments and view wall-to-wall conversations
Asynchronous Real Time Chat Rooms for meeting other players, sharing tips, strategies and experiences within each game community
Buddy List: Players can friend other players within their community or across the iPhone gaming community
Newsfeeds: Players can keep in touch with all of their friends’ activities (wall comments, actions in games, befriending people)
Global Community Chat Rooms for players to discuss recommendations, tips, and reviews of other games on the iPhone"
Have you used Java/C#/Perl/Python any other "server side language?" Are you going to be hosting the server-side yourself, or are you looking at hosting companies? Your decision might come down to how you intend to host your server-side stuff, and what capabilites your hosting company offers or what you are comfortable with.
Java or C# are really powerful server-side languages, but hosting these can take a little more work (and money?).
Java might be a good starting point, because you can setup Tomcat yourself and try hosting some web-services. MySQL is a good database to start with, but there are even more lightweight database alternatives. There might be a bit of a learning curve with any of these.
Have you heard of ICE touch? ICE is a middleware for network communication and has a basic persistence support. It supports every major platform:
iPhone as a client
Android as a client
Objective-C Mac OS X as client/server
C++ Linux as client/server
Java [any OS] as client/server
C#/C++, Windows .NET (with Silverlight) and native as client/server
I evaluated it some time ago and was surprised about its maturity, good documentation and example code. They name Skype as one of their customers.
As a start I would recommend to have a look at their example chat application. You can run a Java server, connect with your iPhone, your G1 and your Silverlight client and have a chat. Pretty impressive interoperabilty!
Here comes the drawback: GPL (you cannot link against it without being GPL yourself) or commercial (individual pricing).
I would also recommend you to use an online database service such as Viravis , DabbleDB or Zoho Creator. Almost all of these kinds of services have required integration capability to work with such a client as Web, Desktop, Windows Mobile or IPhone.
Java/Javascript is the defacto combo for most developers because of the Java support for every platform. Java Script has more than a few "issues"
The rest of the herd uses .NET (with its attendant 100MB run time bloatware that changes every 9 months)
php,pearl,ruby etc are good for server side, but if you want to use code, the best solution is probably C/C++ (or similar) and CGI/FastCGI.
This allows you to write communication algos once and use them on both ends. Any encryption/compresssion sim same.
Related
I live in an area where net access is mobile or nothing. While I can occasionally get access by tethering a mobile to that network, it isn't often connected, and when it isn't connected, no local device will function on its own, no matter which protocol it uses. Why isn't there any kind of server/cloud resiliency built in where devices can communicate in a peer fashion like Apple's Bonjour (Rendezvous? I can't remember)? If I have an Echo device, I should be able to switch it on through an Alexa interface. I'm OK without speech processing which requires interpretation of commands through an AWS or Google or Apple or whatever cloud, but being able to locally control a switch seems as though the interface could be smart enough to route locally. I guess I may have just answered my question. It seems as though routes could be internally stored so as to not to definitely require a server. Can you imagine shipping a colony to Mars and all the IoT devices stop working? If you ask me, they should not require a branch variation or special programming in order to function.
From the experience of having sat down and built a few, there are a some key reasons why viable IoT gadget products for the general market typically end up having to have a cloud-mediated mode, no matter what was envisioned when the design effort originally commenced:
General consumers (at least think) they want the option to control things when outside the home
Often even at home, a mobile phone may be on the mobile network not wifi, meaning that even if the user is physically inside their home, in network terms, they are not.
Firmware updates, dynamic content, etc are easier when they don't have to be relayed through a mobile phone or PC, especially a mobile that might sometimes have to jump networks partway through the process.
Ironically, having once set out to build an IoT product that could work entirely offline, the further the project progressed, the more and more difficulties that approach presented for general users, and the more the cloud path that was added as an option, started to look preferable in terms of how things should work all the time so that it could become the exclusive focus of development efforts.
My conclusion is that it's very hard to build an offline IoT gadget. Not only the developer, but also the users and marketing people need to understand and accept what sorts of difficulties and limitations that can mean.
So where does it happen? In the situations where the "users" are the "developers" - eg. open source. If you look around a bit, you'll find plenty of gadgets either built form scratch, or more commonly reverse engineered so they can run a custom firmware. Want a local RESTful API? Done! Want could relay via MQTT over SSL to your own broker? Done!
When you control the code, you control the mode.
But with products for the general market, most customers want things to work, not a lengthy technical explanation of why the details of their network setup mean they cannot.
I am in little bit confusion because of my less understanding about CouchDB. Let me explain in simple words. I am developing an iphone app for which my client may ask for android version. I am using CouchDB as data storage for this application.
We designed a backend from where admin can setup/update information. ALL updated information should be replicated to all iphone device. When I say replicate from server to device I does not mean replication from one iphone device to another. Means source of updated always will be server.
My client also wants that most of the functionality if possible should work offline. To make some of the functionality offline client asked me to use CouchDB and TouchDB(on iphone) which will be synch up automatically.
According to me CouchDB is not designed to serve this purpose but designed for replication which is required for distributed computing where source of data is not one server but multiple.
Using CouchDB/TouchDB I am facing lot of issues. One of the big issue is my logic and UI implementation are together built on my xcode. If tomorrow I want to develop Android application then again I have to implement same logic in android syntax. Change in logic needs update both versions. More frustrating if client wants to develop windows and BB version tomorrow.
To avoid this I can suggest my client we should use 3-tier architecture where we will built one middle ware and we will keep our logic there. Only work we need to develop at app level is fetch data from middle ware via WebService and present UI.
But before suggesting to my client I want to confirm my idea from expertise. I might be wrong as I do not well knowledge about CouchDB and maybe CouchDb is only designed for offline/online setup.
Please waiting to here from expertise.
I'm working on something similar right now, so I can share what I've found.
We're using BigCouch (a fork of CouchDB managed by Cloudant that provides a cluster of Couch machines) to store our data and then using TouchDB for iOS to replicate data down to mobile devices.
We've been able to get TouchDB working with BigCouch, but it hasn't been without a few bumps in the road. TouchDB takes advantage of the existing replication functionality built into CouchDB and handles it well.
From my experience TouchDB also works very well in offline mode. The replication will pick up where it left off when the device went offline. You can also configure Touch to do pushes, pulls - or both, so that's nice.
The real issue is when you want to move to Android. The TouchDB Java port is in a sorry state right now. It exists, but it's not ready for production. In fact I saw on Twitter just this week that they're trying to hire someone to take over the project.
Even if the Java port of TouchDB was ready for production, you're right, you'd have to re-write the code for Android. Then again this would be the case no matter what technology you use.
I want to create a playstation home style multiplayer game for iphone. How can I implement multiplayer in my project? Also, how can I give players a chance to chat? How can I let them create their own avatars to interact? I am a one man developer, with no access to servers. Maybe I can use iPhone game centre???
If you're looking for some kind of platform to build on, there is a product called SmartFoxServer:
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
I have not used it, but it claims to provide a client API for native Obj-C or Unity3D. It allows for chat features.
If you want to roll your own, I recommend getting started with NodeJS:
http://nodejs.org/
GameCenter does not provide any kind of backend for multiplayer networking, at least not in the way you are implying. If you intend to build a networked multiplayer game over the internet, you most likely need some kind of backend.
Slicehost is a good way of getting a server like NodeJS running quickly and cheaply:
http://www.slicehost.com/
Don't forget that GameKit in iOS allows multiple devices to find each other locally (via Bluetooth or local Wifi) and create sessions. This might be a good starting point for your game. Here's some info on GameKit:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html
I think this would usually be done with webservice interaction against a server. You may be able to develop a webservice and pay a small fee to have it hosted by a web provider, or to use your own machine as (an unreliable) server while proving the concept.
Or you could just use Nextpeer - http://www.nextpeer.com
It makes adding online tournaments to your game real simple.
You can look at Gamooga (http://www.gamooga.com/).
Its a realtime communication platform for multiplayer games so you dont need to worry about building and deploying your own multiplayer servers. You can upload your own server side scripts onto Gamooga's cluster which receive and process your clients' messages. You can use Gamooga's iOS API with in your app to send messages from the client side to your server side scripts. You can download the SDK and look at the demos to start off.
There is a free plan of Gamooga platform too that you can make use of to start with.
Disclosure: I am founder of Gamooga, replying only since its relevant to the question.
I want to make an iPhone app and an application (server) which runs on a PC with Windows. Is there any easy way to do this on the client side (the iPhone), like a library or something?
Looking on Google I found cocoaasyncsocket and xmppframework, but the last commits were done some time ago and before I start my project I want to know if there are other (better) possibilities out there
One option would be to run a web server on the PC, with a set of REST-based services. This approach gives you lots of options for implementation on the server-side, and you'll have lots of possible frameworks to choose from on the client-side as well. One framework you could use on the iPhone is ASIHTTPRequest.
There are lots of advantages to using a web-based approach. There are HTTP frameworks built for almost every device and platform, so if you ever want to interact with the server from the web, an Android device, etc., there will be many tools to help you do that. There are also lots of great tools out there for debugging HTTP interactions.
You could also use a SOAP-based API, but in my opinion SOAP tends to be more complicated than its worth.
I have a card game on the iphone and I really would like to take it to the next step by allowing players to interact with each other in real-time environment.
My questions:
Do I need a web server ?
Is there a third party specifically for iphone multiplayer games that I can use to host the game?
I would probably need a database - what is the best solution?
Should Apple push notifications be considered ?
First off, I have never done one myself, but I imagine that any massively multi-player game would entail some sort of central server to hold statistics (wins/losses), rankings, game table information, etc.
I imagine some sort of remote service providing server is required. A web server would certainly fit the bill and would most likely be the most logical solution, but certainly not your only choice.
Hosting of this service depends on the service you choose. If you're going the java route there are several places to look. Google's app engine, a straight up java web provider, amazon's cloud, etc. So many choices.
There are several open-source databases that would fit nicely with java. Postgres would come recommended by me. There are certainly others and other commercial options.
The server you use is bound to how fast the interactions with players need to be. The problem with HTTP would be that it's hard to have push notifications and it's also probably too heavy, depending on the type of game.
If it's in real time, but doesn't have a lot of interaction I'd probably use XMPP for the actual gameplay. If it's something where latency is more important, like a FPS or plataformer (actually any action game really) you'll probably need to roll your own protocol (and server obviously).
For the matchmaking a web server is enough.
Yes, you need a server for a traditional MMO, since an MMO is defined as a game where arbitrarily many people connect to each other. If you require people to be in the same vicinity, you can have an "ordinary" multiplayer game over the phones' wifi.
Doubtful. MMO servers require a lot of custom code. There are servers for high scores and such for more traditional games, however.
For your central database, this is entirely a question of preference. It sounds like cost is important to you, though, so I would go with MySQL since it's a free solution (and I think it's very nice to work with).
That depends on what gameplay will entail. If you're talking about a real-time game (like EverQuest or something), push notifications will probably not be helpful. If you're talking about something like Mafia Wars (is that the proper name of the Facebook one?), maybe.
I'd recommend looking at Parallel Kingdom, which is an existing MMO for the iPhone, iPod Touc and Android.