For my school game project, I use an iPhone to move my hero thanks to the accelerometer. It can move to left/right, jump… and manage informations in a menu. To make the synchronization, I use the Union Platform.

There are several ways to realize a synchronization between a smartphone and a website using servers like : Flash Media Server, SmartFox Server, BlazeDS… I didn’t really try FMS because I use a mac and it can not runs on it. At first I wanted to put my game online using SmartFox, so I needed a Java server… but it’s really expensive ! However there was an alternative with the Google App Engine. We can have a free access to Java and Python server hosting by Google ! It seemed to be great, but SmartFox can’t be deploy on it whereas BlazeDS and GraniteDS can ! These 2 servers use the flex technology… it was a big problem to deal with because I use an old iPhone 2G. Even if today you can easily export flash with as3 for iPhone with Flash IDE or the new Flash Builder 4.5, exporting flex for iPhone is not easy : indeed, we need to use some Ant Tasks… and if your .ipa is well exported, it will not run on iPhone 2G. In fact with the new Air 2.6 you can’t export to old iPhone.

So these months have been really frustrating, until a friend informed me of the release of a new server : the Union Platform. It has been released by Colin Moock who wrote Essential ActionScript 3.0 book.

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