Norse Technologies Knowledge Base Free Knowledge Articles

One of our most important clients asked for an assessment of Adobe Flash multiplayer online game development and its viability.

Our researchers took a look at the current landscape of the MMO Flash world, and their findings may be of interest to anyone wanting to know how to create a multiplayer online Flash game. For the moment, though, let’s cut to the chase for those who don’t want to read too far; Making a multiplayer online game, for mass usage, is a huge undertaking with the potential to require significant amounts of money to get up-and-running… i.e. it is not a venture for the weekender or the kid who made one Flash animation and now wants to take on Club Penguin or the likes. If, however, you are a brave and tenacious soul, with a thirst for knowledge and huge challenges, and the ability to follow through on a project that does not pay a penny for years, then you might want to start with deciding on a server technology.

Servers for multiplayer online games using Flash are essentially XML socket servers. This means that it allows the gamer’s interface (i.e. client) to make socket connections, via the Internet network, into the server. You might want to look at ElectroServer 4, or if you know Microsoft C# (c-sharp) try this page: http://playerio.com/documentation/tutorials/building-flash-multiplayer-games-tutorial/

Beyond a server, you’ll need some very solid AcrionScript 3 and Flash animation skills.

If you just want to tinker, or get involved with making games with minimal effort, but still requiring some Flash skills, try spogg.com where you can can get help and documentation for getting started from day 1, and find an atmosphere of encouragement for the beginning multiplayer game developer who is leaning toward Adobe Flash as the medium.

Posted under Uncategorized

Sometimes in testing network settings and authentication ( for instance when setting up a Samba server and users on a CentOS, Ubuntu, or Feroda Linux system) I often find it useful to force my Windows PC client to “forget” the login username and password that it has on record, for the current session, so that I may login again with another username/password combo. Easily accomplished, this Windows trick works on all modern Microsoft operating systems.

The situation: You need to login again to a network share on a Windows file server, or a Linux server,  without rebooting the client computer.

The fix: Disconnect from the shares using the NET command.

1. Open a command prompt. (My favorite way is: Win-R, type cmd, press Enter)
2. Type NET USE * /DELETE
3. It will prompt you for verification, type Y and Enter.

That’s it! Enjoy, and may your login be forgotten!

Courtesy, Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308582

Posted under Microsoft, Network, Software, Windows

Many thanks to Jon Lee at jonlee.ca for this excellent procedure allowing for the automtic login of a session using SSH and puTTY.exe terminal emulator. You da man!

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From his site:

As many web developers can attest to, logging into your server through SSH (Secure Shell) is one of the more common day-to-day tasks (you can even use it as a secure tunnel for your traffic). It only makes sense to automate this process which in turn can save many many keystrokes.

This how-to is written with PuTTY and Windows in mind and requires several other tools that are available from PuTTY’s website. So from their download page, make sure you have these files:

• PuTTY (putty.exe)
• PuTTYgen (puttygen.exe)

Then to automate SSH login, do the following:

1. Run PuTTYgen.
2. Select SSH-2 DSA as the Type of Key to generate.
3. Click generate and move your mouse around to generate randomness.
4. Click “Save Private Key” and save it somewhere on your computer.
5. Copy the entire content inside the box to your clipboard (this is your generated public key).
6. Login to your SSH server.
7. Create the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys containing the generated public key (from step 3) on a single line.
8. Make this file readable (chmod 755).
9. Then open up PuTTY and navigate to Connection->Data and fill in the auto-login username.
10. Navigate to Connection->SSH->Auth and under Private-key, browse to the file you had saved earlier on your computer.

That’s it! Now you can try logging in to your SSH server and it should login automatically. If it works, make sure you save your session so you don’t have to repeat these steps every time!

Hopefully these steps work for everyone! Let me know if there are any problems.

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Had some problems with a CentOS5 server not accepting keys… found that this server was being finicky for some reason, and used this article on how to generate the keys on the Linux server, and then import the public key to the client Windows box. To make it automatically login simply do not enter any passphrase. This is probably a huge security risk or something like that, but if you’re using it on a secured LAN then perhaps it’s ok.

Posted under Linux, Network