Thanks Cauê, for the insights and the compliment. The communication is already all in Flash, using RTMP with a Wowza server and some web services. Shockwave3D wraps Flash, so it's easy to develop pieces in Flash (like the Youtube component for example) and then include them in Shockwave3D.
My main concerns with Away3D are performance and coding headaches. Shockwave3D leverages DirectX9, so rendering is fairly quick and we're using low-poly models and very limited texturing for everything. We currently limit rooms to 20 people. I forget how many polygons the characters are, I think around 1,500 or so. From a coding standpoint Shockwave3D works like Unity or any 3D development environment does in terms of Z ordering, lighting, etc., although it's missing more advanced things like cast shadows and reflections. I'm seeing discussions of weird techniques in Away3D to do things like Z ordering and it's making me wonder how difficult it will be to do the basics of rendering the world. The only reason we're looking at Away3D is to move to an all-Flash application, and start to leverage Flex and Flash 10. (Flash support in Shockwave3D is still limited to Flash 8 and AS2). If Away3D can come close to matching the performance of Shockwave3D, and if we don't have to write arcane stuff for basic rendering, then it could be a winner! Robert On Dec 14, 7:39 pm, Cauê Waneck <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey, nice app you've got there! : ) > > Could you be a bit more specific? Is there a limit of connections in each > room? How many tris are there in each character? Is there more processing > involved in each game? I would configure a stub client to access youtube, > and handle the basic server communications you've got there (mic > broadcasting & receiving, chat, facebook connection...) and see how much > overhead will they bring. Does the server handle some kind of mixing right > now? If you haven't got much control of how many people will be in a room > simultaneously, you run the risk of having a cpu-killer at some point... > > Well, but with some smart coding, and keeping some secure limits in mind, > you shouldn't have much problem with running your application on > away3d/lite. The 3D part looks quite simple, but you will probably need to > restructure your server-side handling mostly because you will need to use > RTMP as the protocol to handle the audio+data exchange on flash. > > 2009/12/14 valeriuscrowe <[email protected]> > > > We're currently doing an MMO in Shockwave3D (http://apps.facebook.com/ > > digparty) and we're considering porting it to Flash. Away3D looks > > like the best candidate to me, especially Away3D Lite if it can do it. > > <b>My question is, is Away3D up to the task of running an MMO?</b> Is > > the performance good enough? Are we going to pull our hair out trying > > to write convoluted code to get the equivalent of what we can already > > do in Shockwave3D? Has anyone done this already? > > thanks, > > Robert
