[DISC/RANT]Why no support for peer to peer?

Ok, here it goes: why is there no support for peer to peer communication between flash movies?

I've probably seen a hundred posts where people hope for 3D support in flash. I'm not into 3D but I admit it would be hell of cool and people would do neat stuff with it. Still, Macromedia (and now probably Adobe) had their excuse:
"You see, Flash is for lightweight vector graphics [or RIA, or whatever crap term they call it now]. Director is for web applications and games."

If you've been using flash to make games, there's a good chance you've heard or read something along these lines. Then propbably someone says:
"Macromedia/Adobe has to keep the flash plugin light, there's no way they add 3D to flash. Use Director, IT has 3D." And the argument makes full circle, discussion over. If you're not on a flash related forum, someone might suggest Java.

Well, guess what Macromedia /Adobe. Director is crap. I've used Director and I tried hard to like it because of all the cool features it has: 3D, peer to peer, bitmap manipulation (had it years before flash did), fast script execution (probably still faster than AS3), no decompilers. Even with all that, Director is still crap. You don't have te believe me, just ask yourself - when was the last time you played a Director-made (shockwave) game? Or used a Director app? I'm willing to bet most regular internet users never even heard of Director.

Anyway, my purpose is not to bash Director or Java. My sore point with Adobe/Macomedia/whoever the hell develops/has developed/will develop FLASH is the following:

Wake up. People use Flash to make several types of things(this is not based on statistics, I'm pretty much pulling it out of my a*):

RIA/web application/shopping card reservation systems, etc. etc.
Maybe around 5% of all published flash content. Where it's done well, it's highly useful, and an advantage over html.

Flash banner/popup/popunder/popout/layover ads - moving/flashing/talking, hell of annoying ads Maybe about 5% of all flash content. Hell of annoying, esp. if sound is involved, there should be a mute option somewhere.

Cool effects/experiments
Around 8-9%. A lot of people do these. They are fun to do, educational, fun to watch what people come up with.

Fancy sites/intros/outros
Maybe about 15%. A lot of people do these. Some have amazing designs, nifty interfaces, cool effects. Thumbs up.

Delivery of videos
This is difficult to size up, because it's a huge portion of all flash content, yet it's essentially a wrapper for video files. I'm going to exculde videos, but as a user, I have to say it's the best internet video delivery option yet. Real player/Windows media player/etc. suck.

Games
Whatever figure adds up to a hundred. Lets see, around 65%. Again, I'm pulling these figures out of my ass but I'm trying not to be biased.

Chances are that, if you're a regular, computer using, internet using person, most of your time spent interacting with flash, you play games. Why is it then, that Adobe/previously Macromedia, won't make a single, tiny gesture towards flash game developers? Or even acknowledge that they exist? Like maybe in the manual, or you know, in the code examples, or on their site? Oh, wait, they do acknowledge that flash is used for games:

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Adobe® Flash® CS3 Professional software is the most advanced authoring environment for creating rich, interactive content for digital, web, and mobile platforms. Create interactive websites, rich media advertisements, instructional media, engaging presentations, games, and more.

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Ok then, can we *GASP* get some game related features in the next version? Like peer to peer connections? 3D? An obfuscator to protect our code? Am I stupid to ask for these things or is Adobe/Macromedia stupid for not realising that flash is a gaming platform more than anything else?

Although you have some points here; being rude does not make you look cooler. It doens't make me want to take you serious.

Besides, what are you trying to achieve with this post? Many ongoing useless discussions have been held about this topic. Offcourse most people would love to see 3D or P2P in Flash, but Macromedia and/or Adobe have their own reasons for not including it, and that's where this discussion should stops. I'm sure they're already aware of this.

your post doesn´t have that much of a direction or sense. Personally I dont see any usefull reason for p2p support in the flash player.

Hmmm, ok. I guess I see why Adobe didn't add those features, seeing as to how there's no demand for them even among game developers.

I dind´t say to give up the idea,- but I think regarding security its better to do it centralized like its done currently with php, asp, cgi,... together with flash.

Another point is that most people on earth dont have broadband connection,- meaning that p2p is something they can´t afford. Flash itself however is very efficient stored & compressed - with p2p it could lead to an disadvantage

Saphua is right, heavy wording isn´t your friend if you want to be taken serious.
Regarding your actual requests, i think besides raising the player filesize the main reasoning for not adding peer to peer or similar features is security issues.
The flash player,even if free and widely seen as one of the web standards (even if no fully open one) relies on people downloading it. To grant that, even more important than filesize are security considerations.
Microsoft can add all sorts of unsecure holes into their software/custom languages,why? Cause much of it comes preinstalled with the best selling OS.
Flash VM not so,you have to download it and as long as that´s the case its extremely important that it gives "security experts" in companies as few arguments as possible which speak against its sandbox security concept, that easy.
(Even if as developer its annoying to me,too, of course that the sandbox gets narrowed down regularly,i´d sure like as much freedom as possible while not endangering security, i guess the adobe guys have a daily discussion on such topics,too).

Generally speaking i think you do better in asking for features on the adobe wish form:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/...?name=wishform
than here.

In addition to what's been posted above I think this:

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Flash banner/popup/popunder/popout/layover ads - moving/flashing/talking, hell of annoying ads Maybe about 5% of all flash content. Hell of annoying, esp. if sound is involved, there should be a mute option somewhere.

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...Is just plain wrong. For you average user advertising will make up the vast majority of their exposure to flash. And let's be honest, for the most part flash advertising is obnoxious, arrogant and unwanted. Like right this minute, for example, I have an intel ad on this very page slowing my machine down to a standstill, and my machine is pretty beefy, I'd hate to see how it affects others.

And that is why they won't add so many features to flash that would be so cool for games. Because advertisers will take advantage and abuse them, further tarnishing flash's reputation.

Rather then P2P, how about we get UDP support? That would benefit game developers more then straight P2P. Not to mention, the average user can't seem to grab their butt with both hands, how do you think they are going to handle opening firewall holes to support inbound connections to a flash player?

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Originally Posted by SaphuA

Offcourse most people would love to see 3D or P2P in Flash.

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How does this say there's no demand for 3D among gamedevelopers?

as a web developer, I would say over 90% of my clients look like a cat in water when I mention using flash.

flash has gotten the worst reputation out of anything I have ever seen when it comes to the end users response.

everytime I go to a comp store to buy upgrades, anytime I talk about flash with my php buddies, or mention flash to clients, they all give me the same old thing about how they hate downloads, the stupid intros, the ads, and the crappy sites.

so I do believe this is why adobe has kept it lightweight.

All they need is to release some bomb ass stuff and have it exploited in the worst way possible and further there bad rep.

I do agree on the 3d thing though, but I dont see the beef with director...... I started using director a few months back, and yes, its clunky, its old, but it is what it is, want to make 3d lightweight web based games... use director, just know your limits and except it for what it is, same as flash, you can make some pretty cool exe apps in flash, but dont compare it to c++ or .net productions

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You don't have te believe me, just ask yourself - when was the last time you played a Director-made (shockwave) game?

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I dont.Yesterday, in miniclip.com.HotRods,his latest game.
http://www.miniclip.com/games/hot-rods/en/

everfornever,i imagine some people are still biased against flash but yeah,i still feel the need to say something against it when a post shows flash in the worst light possible as it seems :D
Ads seem to be annoying to most people while others watch whole tv shows dedicated to nothing else than showing good or crazy tv ads in a row.
Others maybe don´t like intros or websites with animations going on.
Flash can be used for tons of things and sure its important to use it for the right thing for the right audience. Like for a presentation showrheel it can make sense to have it done with nifty animations whereas a site focussed on quick accessible information probably makes more sense if done without everything blinking,shining and moving around.
I think those who are generally against flash need to realize that there´s more done with flash than the ads,intros or animated pages they notice as flash content right away,probably lots of other content they actually appreciate is done using flash without them even noticing.
(Like some really cool web apps or heck,even just video playback in the browser is done way better with flash than with most other options).
html,javascript etc,all the stuff summed up as ajax now,things needed to do what´s hyped as ria or web 2.0 stuff,its a fact that lots of those things are just still done best with flash (or a combination of flash+js+html+some serverside language). Take javascript or html for example,you know how different that acts on two different browsers?
Try to do a cool indepth ria without flash and the result will probably suck in comparison and don´t act the same on various setups although you spent more ressources/time in dev.
I´m not throwing things there without reasoning,i worked at a web agency for over 3 years, we´ve made everything from a banner xchange system to screensavers,games,websites,animation productions and eclipse aswell as browser based cms and mailserver applications and there i´ve gone through the phase of having to argue for flash where it was the most sense making thing to use several times. My colleagues would just slowly and step by step accept flash wasn´t a kiddy scripter toy anymore but got a more and more mature language and you could do things in it which wouldn´t fly in some other web languages at all or don´t act the same accross systems at all.
People who are still heavilly and generally against flash should wake up and realize that in this day and age someone who has flash playback blocked in his browser probably has a similar crippled experience as if he had js turned off,its just used for that many things.
If your colleagues/clients are more the business oriented uninformed type maybe you should show them some well done flash rias for a change,let´s see with which other web technology they could achieve a similar experience.
You also talked about C++ and .NET. Well,net right now is so MS only i won´t talk about it and C++ is offline/at most on server running app only when talking about web things so again,a totally different thing.
I´d like it if the flash plugin was by default integrated into the OS/browser and set to auto upgrade or if there was a technology which could do the same without the need of plugin in some other way,its just a fact that there still is none.

Sure Adobe has to watch out what they add to the plugin featurewise to make its repuation better, not worse, but those who are totally and generally against flash content seem a bit backward minded in this day and age, a short discussion with em should show their lack of propper arguments and maybe open up their mind some.

Tell your uninformed friends that THE BIGGEST portal of the world, youtube, is only possible due to FLASH, and they will shut up.

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I´d like it if the flash plugin was by default integrated into the OS/browser ..

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isn´t that the case with windows since 98 or 2000?,- If I remember correctly win2k had the flashplayer (labeled as shockwave player) 4 or 5 pre installed.

AJAX is big crap imo. because most of it doesn´t even run in my modern & standard supporing opera browser - and the main reason for that is the worst internet browsing software on earth ms IE - because it does what it does best -> going own directions :p

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Originally Posted by renderhjs

isn´t that the case with windows since 98 or 2000?,- If I remember correctly win2k had the flashplayer (labeled as shockwave player) 4 or 5 pre installed.

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Yeah, win etc come with the flash plugin preinstalled but i´d also like it if the flash plugin was upgraded automatically as part of a windows (or other OS) auto upgrade.
I noticed that uninformed or bad informed people often block the pluginside/webpage side initiated update attempt while they have windows update turned on...(which is funny when thinking about beeing scared of updating a plugin while accepting to have to update the OS on regular base cause it has so many security holes..)

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Originally Posted by renderhjs

AJAX is big crap imo. because most of it doesn´t even run in my modern & standard supporing opera browser - and the main reason for that is the worst internet browsing software on earth ms IE - because it does what it does best -> going own directions :p

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Ajax is just a wording formed to sum up something that existed ages before the term,its nice in theory but as you said thanks to browsers handling html,css, js etc way different its only useful for certain limited things in reality.(Initially it was just a term to summarize js+xml based dynamically updating webpages but meanwhile its used as if it was the general ria/web 2.0 savior combo..)
You talked about IE and sure that has its very own issues, but its problematic with all browsers that they still haven´t achieved to settle for general standards which are then really adopted by all. (Sure there are standards for several things for years but adoption and same execution of them on different browsers still is far away). Its nice if some browser y is standards conform on some end but all other lack on that end and browser y lacks where the others have their strengths..

Yea you would not believe how many times a month I am at someone house/office, and a flash update pops up for one reason or another, and they immedietly say "no way, Im not downloading no crap" as though its some sort of virus there warding off.

But then less then ten minutes later there showing me these "cool" viedso they got off limewire, and other misc. porn sites.

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I noticed that uninformed or bad informed people often block the pluginside/webpage side initiated update attempt while they have windows update turned on...

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those are the ones who suddenly get IE7 installed as the default browser on the next boot,- or the malicious WGA tool that spies on users.
While I agree with the general idea I personally would avoid at all costs letting Applications or Os´s do whatever they want- I should be able to control the computer - not the oter way.

@ everfornever: maybe your clients are the wrong target groups for flash,- for example there are some target groups who couldn´t even thing without flash like music bands, computer games, video broadcasting,... new media companies,...

yea unfortunelty most of my clients are realestate and heavy on seo, they want bare boned fast opening low graphic sites.

it's so funny to me because I swear every client I talk to honestly thinks there 90% target audience does not have any type of flash player installed, runs windows 95 and has dial up.

reason why it's so funny, because these clients of mine are trying to sell 350,000 condos and homes, and yet seem to think that the clients who will buy these homes have 12 year old computers and running them on dial up, do yo see the irony? I do, but they all think there clients are going to be old ladies in there 90's lugging around a green screen apple.

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Try to do a cool indepth ria without flash and the result will probably suck in comparison and don´t act the same on various setups although you spent more ressources/time in dev.

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While I agree with your post as a whole, I'm going to disagree with this line. I don't believe ANY of the google apps (gmail, maps, calendar, etc) are based on Flash and they are all superb examples of RIA in action. There are many other examples of excellent RIAs as well that don't use any Flash (Basecamp for instance).

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AJAX is big crap imo. because most of it doesn´t even run in my modern & standard supporing opera browser - and the main reason for that is the worst internet browsing software on earth ms IE - because it does what it does best -> going own directions

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So Opera can't run AJAX apps properly and it's Microsoft's fault? Sorry man, not only do I not buy it, I feel that your argument is based on flawed assumptions.

The technology that originally made AJAX work is an async. callback for an XML parser that Microsoft added years ago via VB Script (IE4 IIRC). Firefox has it's own version of this technology as well. You can complain about the browsers not following the standards of XHTML, CSS, ECMAScript, etc all day long and I'll whole-heartedly agree.

But don't complain about browers adding features above and beyond the W3C specs. If every appliction only evolved in lock-step with the standards, you would suck the innovation right out of the web. Microsoft adding support for VB Script to their browser isn't evil, it's innovative whether you approve or not. FireFox adding support for home-grown extensions is a great feature. It's not evil, it's innovative.

At this point, there isn't a spec for the engines behind AJAX, there is some work on it though. Until that work is completed you can stick with Opera and complain that it follows the specs perfectly but don't complain that it's everyone elses fault that it can't do AJAX. You should re-direct that energy to the developers of Opera instead and tell em to get their butt's in gear.

well,i have no clue if google corp decided against using flash/flex in parts of their apps cause they thought its not needed,or because they can do just as good without it,or because adobe is working together with yahoo group or for some other reason :)

Personally i think their apps are robust,could still be made nicer on some sides by also using flash and i still had some (even if tiny) inconsistencies when trying some of em with different browsers. Seeing it from another angle google corp probably has bigger budgets than most other companies so i don´t wonder they can pull in the time/effort to create ajax type apps which run pretty similar on different setups,it doesn´t argue against my argument though that its way more cost/time intensive to create some things in ajax alone than together with flash (while with flash the probabilty it runs same on different browsers is still way higher in most cases).
Besides all that, maybe i couldn´t make it that clear in my previous post,my intention was not to say only use flash and ignore all else,it was more that one should use each technology/language for parts where it makes most sense (which normally automatically means one has to combine several frontend/backend languages/technologies for web apps/websites)

Tomsamson: my post was simply refuting your comment that a RIA without flash would "probably suck" so I gave multiple examples of well-regarded RIA examples that don't use Flash.

Additionally, you are making a HUGE assumption that it takes longer to developer RIA apps using technologies other then Flash. This has neither been proven nor disproven. I really question how much more productive it is at times. The learning curve for Flash is pretty extensive in it's own right and while some things are very easy, Flash makes other things quite a bit harder (injecting dynamic content site-wide for instance, site templates are another good one).

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Originally Posted by webgeek

you are making a HUGE assumption that ..

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nay,it was no assumption,as i said i spoke about my own personal view and experience after working several years in a web agency. Your experience may vary/be different.
Also,sure,flash is better suited for some things than others,again,i didn´t say skip all other technologies/languages,i was more into arguing for using each for the part where it makes sense.
Somehow all flash developers i got to know were more open to using flash together with something else or not using flash where something else makes more sense than non flash developers are in some cases open to use flash where using flash makes more sense,that´s why i defended flash´s position some,that´s all :)
I just had such discussions often,in most cases with js developers who saw flash as the all evil thing but the next day moaned again that something (made with CSS/html/js only) looks way different in IE than FF :)

I still don't understand much about computers, may I ask a stupid question? :)

What kind of application would someone like to make when flash does support p2p?

One could create instant messaging or file sharing applications and generally anything where collaboration/networking of several machines is wanted (with the advantage that the "performance" (bandwith,proccessing power,storage capabilities etc) of the network raises as the amount of machines taking part raises (contrary to what happens in client/server model)

P2P is used in all the file sharing networks. In this case, I assume it would be used for Flash games generally. Basically client A starts a game and client B connects to client A's flash player. This direct connection allows for faster data transfer as it doesn't involve an intermediate server. Basically, one of the clients is running as the server for the game as well as a client.

Aha, I see.

multiplayer-games ...
I'd rather have 3d-support first in that case :)

- Dang 10 minute edit, this was part of my last post but I took too long to post the edit.

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(with the advantage that the "performance" of the network raises as the amount of machines taking part raises (contrary to what happens in client/server model)

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This isn't necessarily true. For instance, if there are three players you can design it three ways:

P2P Everyone connected to everything
a <--> b
a <--> c
b <--> c

Client-server
server <--> a
server <--> b
server <--> c

P2P distributed
a <--> b
b <--> c

In the first case everyone is interconnected, if "b" does something that "a" and "c" needs to see, it will be forced to send a message to both "a" and "c" directly. That's two outbound messages from the client.

In the second case "a", "b", and "c" are connected to the server. If "b" needs to send a message to "a" and "c" then it just sends it to the server who then sends it on to "c" and internally routes to "a". This involved an extra hop to get to "a", and "c" BUT the client originating the message sent only one update. Additionally, it's a consistent single extra hop. No routing needed beyond the initial delivery.

In the third case, P2P network style, "a" is connected to "b", and "b" is connected to "c". For "a" to send a message to "c" it needs to route through "b". This means that there is an unnecessary hop AND "b" is wasting bandwidth for something it doesn't even care about. Ultimately this is very ineffecient as the number of hops between clients grows.

-=-=-

The first model seems good but becomes impractical very quickly. You can only have so many connections before there are issues. Additionally, you might be broadcasting a single message many times to reach everyone needed thus burning your own bandwidth. Finally, in the "everyone to everything" model there are practical issues. If this was a game, which machine controls the "game state"? And how do you prevent cheaters, they could modify their client to give them unfair advantages. I didn't make either of those problems up, both have been seen in commercial games.

The third model is how you initially search a file sharing network, which is why it takes so long to get results back from something like e-mule. Then, when you start transfering data, you fall into the first model where a direct connection between clients is established. This is fast because there are the fewest number of hops. Additionally as there is no centralized server, it can't be shut down easily (remember Napster in the old days?).

In general the client-server produces the least amount of "waste" bandwidth as the client sends only what it must and the server sends only what has to be sent to each client. No one gets messages they don't need or care about (unlike the routing in P2P). Security is easy as well, the server can be hardened and validate messages to prevent hacking. There is a reason this model is used for almost all multiplayer games. The down-side is that the server has to have the capacity to support the entire network (both bandwidth and CPU/memory, etc).

SO... Back to the quote... P2P (either distributed or everyone to everything) provides the highest amount of overall bandwidth as you are sharing everyone elses. It can also provide the worst latency (by a huge margin) due to the number of hops. So performance might or might not be better depending on what you are doing. In generally, true P2P doesn't buy much in most cases. It's excellent for file sharing and instant messaging (although it's not used for IM all the time either, many are client-server) but not for a lot of other things.

I can see where P2P may be useful, but it seems that it would add a lot of complexity as well as making it incredibly difficult to prevent hacking.

Webgeek: Interesting post :)

Since we're talking hypothetically "if" flash had p2p, here's what I concluded would be the ideal setup based on what you've posted above:

Regardless of what method you chose to distribute actual game data, you need a server side app, if only to connect clients to each other, keep track of games and perhaps provide centralized statistic gathering.

Once a game starts one client is chosen to act as the server. All other players connect to this one player who broadcasts all relevant information to everyone. To choose who acts as the server in game, the central server would do some checks (eg: have each client ping everyone, then choose the client best average latency)

The game would also need to be able to select a new client to act as a server on the fly. So say the client who's acting as server drops out, loses the game or too many clients report that it's latency is too high the central server can broadcast to each client who the new server is, whom they reconnect with and continue with the game.

This obviously wouldn't work for some game types, especially anything realtime where a low latency will provide advantage since the server client will essentially have 0 latency. For turnbased games, or realtime instances where latency isn't an issue this setup would ideal.

Of course, you've still got the problem of the flash player and how incredibly easy it would be for the server to cheat... Not a great deal you could do about that though I guess.

yeah, good post webgeek, i´m way less a mp gaming guy than you are,it was interesting to hear in which cases p2p could act worse.
Speaking in general it seems to me like the best setup could be a mix of the upsides of both client/server and p2p,like there would be a server to init and maintain global things,also broadcast things when something has to be broadcasted to all or to unspecified client(s) but once everything is set up and its about communication between two set clients one would switch to something like p2p :)
I didn´t even think about using p2p for mp gaming but now i´m curious, webgeek,would that be a setup you´d think would be good suited for mp gaming? (besides the point parts of it are not supported with flash player :) )

Honestly, it depends very much on the game itself. Most MP games are client-server. All MMOs are that way and anything like Battle Net or the various services like that are client-server. Quake and the associated FPS games are client-server as well.

I know some of the RTS games used to be client-server but one client acted as the server for everyone. I'm not sure if they still do this though because there were issues with "patched" clients that would show the whole map and all your opponents moves as long as you were running the server on your machine.

So in general, even with P2P available, almost all games are client-server. At the minimum one of the clients will be running the server interally.

i see,well,still interesting,i think there could be some shift towards a more mixed integration of both in the future :)
Anyway, for the meantime i´m fine with what flash allows regarding mp gaming right now, looking forward to actually max that out with a fitting project before asking for p2p or a mixed combo setup :)

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Originally Posted by tomsamson

My colleagues would just slowly and step by step accept flash wasn´t a kiddy scripter toy anymore but got a more and more mature language and you could do things in it which wouldn´t fly in some other web languages at all or don´t act the same accross systems at all.
People who are still heavilly and generally against flash should wake up and realize that in this day and age someone who has flash playback blocked in his browser probably has a similar crippled experience as if he had js turned off,its just used for that many things.

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This is what I was talking about. Flash is mature and stable now, new versions of the player and the IDE come out every so often and are quickly adopted. It is like a lightweight java now. It's a quality product and people know that. Why not add a feature or two every now and then instead of worrying about exploits and whatnot. People can choose whether to download it or not. I don't think people are going to snub it just because it can connect to computers other than the site it came from or because the plugin/player is 5 megs instead of 2.

i still think one has to differentiate between adding filesize of plugin raising features and ones which besides that probably also add security exploits.
Personally i´m for getting 3d or generally speaking hardware acceleration features added to speed up the display/rendering side,cause the worst thing that could happen (which i think adobe could avoid pretty well) would be unstable playback performance on different system setups.
Reducing restrictions of the security sandbox on the other hand can have much more/bigger downsides (which can cause constant damage to hardware/software in indirect manner) so i think its good adobe is careful on that end (i wouldn´t like it if the audience of the flash plugin decreases dramatically cause it gets known it has a big security issue which won´t get resolved)

It's time to resuscitate this thread because P2P will be supported very soon by FP10 + Stratus

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Stratus

( thx to Tony for his post on mochiads forums
https://www.mochiads.com/community/f...ke-me-a-server )

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Originally Posted by Sietjp

It's time to resuscitate this thread because P2P will be supported very soon by FP10 + Stratus

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Stratus

( thx to Tony for his post on mochiads forums
https://www.mochiads.com/community/f...ke-me-a-server )

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Wow.... both P2P and UDP! My question though, is what happens after the beta ends? They didn't mention anything about that in their FAQ. Is it going to be an expensive service we have to pay for? Are we going to have Stratus available to use on our own servers?

Perhaps I am misunderstanding the idea behind Stratus but it is not piece of software you can install on your own server. Its a service provided by Adobe that your swf can connect to and is probably running something like Adobe Media Server which could be set up in your own server too, only its overpriced and so complicated that only people who understand how it works and how to set it up properly are the part of Adobe development team.

There has been no mentioning of prices. Knowing Adobe, I would not be surprised if the service would end up being free in US, costing hefty sums in Europe and blocking every user from other parts of the world like Russia or China because of security problems.