Online game: Macromedia Flash or Microsoft Silverlight and why? [closed]

Question

Which technology stack is best for the creation of a two dimensional MMORPG and why?

This question is loaded, so which are the major factors would you consider for development in such a domain?

Answer 1

I develop Flash for a living, so my answer should be taken with a grain of salt. I reccomend Flash for the following reasons:

1. Size of install base. I don't have numbers for Silverlight but Flash 9 (the latest non-alpha revision) is over 90%.
2. Air alows you to deploy to a desktop on multiple platforms with minor changes to your online code. This again increases your potential market.
3. Size of community. Flash has been around much longer and there is a huge community developing libraries for most anything you want from animation to 3d to physics. Think of the hundreds (or thousands) of Flash games you have encountered. You will have the leverage of greater experience if you go with Flash. I searched for Flash MMORPG tutorial on google and there are a bunch of results to get you started right now.
4. Performance of the Flash player is equal to or greater than Silverlight on tests. (see Bubblemark and GuiMark).

A little while ago I did a simple comparison that I suggest you do as well. Find the best silverlight examples that you can. Then find the best Flash examples that you can. When you compare those to one another I think the best platform becomes obvious.

Answer 2

Ok so Tim called me out on this one, it's a tough question. I wouldn't do something that massive in Flash unless I was using someone else's engine to do the heavy lifting, I couldn't imagine writing all that myself. Of course, in Silverlight it would be a massive undertaking as well.

Let me start by discussing James' points about why he would choose Flash.

1.Size of install base. I don't have numbers for Silverlight but Flash 9 (the latest non-alpha revision) is over 90%.

I don't really think this is an issue, if people want to play your MMO they will take the 20 seconds to install what they need.

2.Air alows you to deploy to a desktop on multiple platforms with minor changes to your online code. This again increases your potential market.

Agreed, I'd like to see Silverlight be able to run standalone. Of course I don't see why you would want an MMO inside the browser anyway, so I can't argue that one too much.

3.Size of community. Flash has been around much longer and there is a huge community developing libraries for most anything you want from animation to 3d to physics. Think of the hundreds (or thousands) of Flash games you have encountered. You will have the leverage of greater experience if you go with Flash. I searched for Flash MMORPG tutorial on google and there are a bunch of results to get you started right now.

Yes, Flash definitely has more third party stuff right now that could help.

4.Performance of the Flash player is equal to or greater than Silverlight on tests. (see Bubblemark and GuiMark).

GuiMark is an odd test because of all of the text resizing it does, if you remove that Silverlight is faster, and how often are you resizing a TextBlock that needs to recalculate wrapping?

One concern I would have is protecting the data stream going back and forth between either client and the server, this is a major issue and probably even more important for an MMO because someone could develop a robot that understands the data and could subvert the game dynamics.

I see questions all of the time on the XNA forums about people wanting to create an MMO and I just need to ask if you really have a grasp for how much effort it would take to really build an MMO.

Finally, a lot of the tougher code is on the server anyway, if you get that right the client technology doesn't matter as much but I personally think that Visual Studio is a much more productive environment especially when debugging, and if your server was using .NET then you would be able to debug both client and server in a single session.

The one area where I think Flash has an advantage is on the graphics side of things and if you wanted to do some bitmap effects for lighting, spells, etc. then Flash has the superior capabilities right now.