Working on a prototype for a Flash game that will use networking communication. It would be better to use Peer 2 Peer connection, since it will be a multiplayer game.
Has anyone used Stratus or tried to make a multiplayer game via the built in socket?
The game will be a turn based game, similar speed to poker but if I could get faster turns that would be great.
I am not sure flash allows P2P without Stratus (and v10+ only). But if you want to go socket route I suggest you give Red5 a shot http://osflash.org/red5 . I wrote a small how-to on installing it on ubuntu here: http://www.vga.hr/blog/?p=65 It's a bit old, but should still be valid. If I were to make a networked flash game today I'd weigh my options between RED5 and SmartfoxServer http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
For a turn based game you don't need the extra speed of peer to peer, and you want to use the server to do some cheat detection. Electroserver, player.io, smartfox and red5 will all do the job.
I think the real bottom line is this: Do you care that clients could easily hack the game experience?
If the answer is yes, develop on an authoritative server model. I'm a fan of ElectroServer.
ActionScript does have a socket class. It is XMLSocket. If you can support ActionScript 3.0, it has a better Socket class.
You might want to consider also BlazeDS, Union Platform and Firebase.
Even though Stratus seems to be a very efficient from data transfer efficiency point of view, it doesn't come without problems. As far as I understand, it works on top of the UDP layer (instead of TCP/IP), which could cause firewall related issues to some of your players. Furthermore, the technology seems to be at beta stage so I wouldn't build a commercial application on it yet (never tried, though, this is just an emotion based opinion).
