Totally newbie question (what is exactly photon?)

Forest

Well, first, my english is not very good, so probably that's the reason why I'm asking this. I have read some documentation of Photon, but I'm not sure what is it exaclty.

Is it a library to use on my game? Or... it is a kind of servers service to put my game on?

I mean, if it's only a library, why or how do you limit the currently connected users?
If you rent servers, which is the time period of payment for Photon licences?

Thanks, and sorry if it's silly

Tobias

Which language is your first then?

Photon is a software consisting of client and server. We provide SDKs for both and together they are a focused, professional but simple framework to build your games on top. Communication is handled and some (optonal) workflows for games are established.

We've got 2 flavors of this product:
You can buy a license to host the server somewhere yourself. It's a one time fee (currently indie developers pay only $399 and get a "Enterprise" license: unlimited concurrent users and servers for one game/product) and the license file allows more clients to connect to the running server.
Alternatively, with Exit Games Photon Cloud, you can "rent" a running server with a fixed server logic from us. We handle it and scale for the games running on it. Currently we're building this service, so it doesn't cost anything yet.

Forest

Ok thank you for the explanation . Do you have an estimated date of when Photon Cloud is going to cost?

(PD. I'm Mexican, we speak Spanish hehe)

Tobias

Subscriptions for the cloud will start around Q1 2012. Pricing is still unclear but maybe we will even have a free hosting for small projects.

Forest

maybe we will even have a free hosting for small projects

May be is not neccesary to say it, but it may be an excelent idea, because if small projects grow they will make money and you will have an good client. Looking for services like yours I found that other companies doesn't have free plans, and the cheapest is difficult to be paid by a small project, so you need to have a lot of money to take the risk of develop a multiplayer online game, so only big companies still getting bigger, and the small ones only watch.

So, if you make a free hosting it will be great! , thanks for your reply.

niceb

Hi,

How do I deploy my app to photon cloud? I couldn't found any document regarding to this issue.

Thanks,

Tobias

So far, we don't run custom game logic on the cloud, so you can't upload it.
If you need this, you would have to get the Photon Server SDK, work with the base applications "Lite Lobby" or "Loadbalancing" and then host this yourself.

We also don't host the games themselves, they can run anywhere provided they get access to the cloud in the web.