I not sure if this think has been suggested yet but here goes:
Why not offer a flash based package for game developpers to automate game saving. For example, i'd like to continue my Gem Craft save game from anywhere i play on ArmorGames. (Ex: Work, Home, Other friend's PC)
This would obviously force people to use ArmorGame accounts to save their progress and log back in when they play a game but it's little compare to the aspect of saving your game state and loading it from any computer out there. I can't even start thinking of losing my GemCraft game if i have to format my computer, i'd be crying :P
Obviously, users that do not log in should be able to save/load using cookies like all the games are currently doing.
I don't think it would be all that hard to accomplish and it would actually improve games played on ArmorGames. The only thing is to develop such a package. I'm not really much into flash programming but i can surely help do the PHP/MySQL side, security aspects and the package conception.
Pic 1 shows how a game could actually suggest the user where to save their state. Pic 2 shows the selector that gets called in loaded automatically inside the game on a layer and disapears when the user has selected the information.
The rest would be an actionscript package that you can load directly from Armor Games and you call the code by creating a class:
var SaveStateManager:AGSaveState = null; SaveStateManager = new AGSaveState("MyGameUniqueID", "MyGamePass" var UserDecision:Boolean = SaveStateManager.ShowAGStateSelector(); SaveStateManager.AddStateVariable("NameOfValue", "SerializedValueToSave" SaveStateManager.Save();
Loading would be similar but instead use the Object.Load() method, the rest is the exception handling of NoSaveStatesLeft when the user has too many games saved. Maybe the admins could actually automatically fallback to "save to cookies" but i don't think it's a good idea.
Another thing to think about is a save state manager that must be implemented in the user profiles.
No too much work, just need to actually pull it together!
I don't see why you people bother about lag... add one server dedicated to that and you are done. A server doesn't cost much to manage if you already have one and the hosting itself isn't all that expensive. If you can already afford one, you can usually afford at least one other, or else it means your company is running on a very tight budget...
The problem is, AG used to lag alot before site optimization commenced upon which many features were removed. Thus it doesn't lag now. But if the save feature is implemented, it could start lagging again which many members won't want.
The problem is, AG used to lag alot before site optimization commenced upon which many features were removed.
Not really. It lagged when I first came but then it stopped. Now it seems to be lagging because of the optimization.
The complex part is the discussion mechanism between the server and the flash.
And with Armorgames lagging it would mean you may have to wait up to 5-10 minutes even though the game has loaded to obtain your cookies. And there would have to be a connection with Armorgames and your computer to save your progress.
Take 80 000 players x 10 000 games x 250 k data max per player = 195 312 500 K or approximately 180 GIG of information...
But because there are only about 10,000 users who are active often, and they don't play all 2000 games here and most games don't have cookies larger than 15 KB, the number would shrink significantly. Plus, servers have around 1 Terabyte of space unless they are old.
Servers usually come with dual 120 or 160 GB Raid drives these days, they don't come with 1 terrabyte. That is for desktop stations. When you want more space, server provides link you to a fiberoptic storage device like a SAN where you can have hundreds of high rel. disks in one big array. But this is not something AG can afford although i'm not their budget manager.
In any case, iexpressed those figures in an excentric manner to actually be able to show the biggest possible numbers in a long time. I didn't know how many games actually used cookies or how many players are active on AG.
Finaly about the lag, you can simply ask for an additionnal server at the cost of 20$/month (Important to be another server because another domain such as cache.armorgames.com can be on the same server and that doesn't reduce lag) and that server has all accounts and manages login and savestate. So that way, another server is dedicated to handling the profile information, emails, security, preferences and savestates.
But because there are only about 10,000 users who are active often, and they don't play all 2000 games here and most games don't have cookies larger than 15 KB, the number would shrink significantly.
still you would need to define how much space each account can take up and set it up because you can't just say only 10,000 out of 200,000 can save
Not really. It lagged when I first came but then it stopped
used to be way laggier for all the time b4 the optimization
Optimization should make a site faster but not by removing features... I'm an experienced web developper, and trust me, if you need to optimize by removing features, something is either wrong in your coding or in your infrastructure.
Good news, infrastructure problems are only a problem of funds, if they can find a way to do some real money out of AG (not only publicities) then they can fix this problem by adding more servers to their infrastructure. (As long as it is built to support multi-server arch, which is not always the case sadly)
If the problem is in the coding, they just need to go bit by bit to fix everything and optimize. Sometimes it's the code, other times its the database.
