Comments on: Opera Unite – “Platform” For Games?

By: Juuso

Juuso — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:40:38 +0000

It’s pretty interesting thing, but who knows how it goes. Thanks Ian for the link.

Maybe for some sort of “casual-social games” this type of approach could work. Maybe we would need to think games bit differently than from the “download & play” point-of-view?

By: Steven Egan

Steven Egan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:19:23 +0000

I could see this as a LAN game variation. Since those computer games set up a “host” and so on. While I’m not so sure about how great an idea it is, I could see this as a hobbyist method for non-real-time games. Turn based games, indirect competition games and more could be done with low bandwidth consumption. In essence, some people want to create games but don’t have the resources to do all the stuff to set up a game server.

BTW first thing to pop into my head for this was Mario Party, Second was DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) and Third was Warcraft Party.

While I understand the first two comments, I don’t think that’s the end of the matter. If I could do it through Firefox, I’d probably create something like that, but I would really want a good connection.

By: karma

karma — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:45:50 +0000

Seems to me like it’s a great idea. Making your own web page has always been reliant on your ISP homepage space or setting up servers/buying services. Now people can run small scale pages from anywhere, with minimum hassle and knowhow. As for Firefox being standard browser, it just isnt cutting it right now for some small details important to me like scaling of pixel art, unlike opera which does it properly.

By: null

null — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:26:56 +0000

“your users are being proxied through Opera and then sending and retrieving over your internet connection”
Nope, thats a last resort used only if your router does not support UPnP. Other than that you use the Opera servers just as dynamic DNS resolver, the actual connection is P2P.
“Plus, with the overhead of learning to configure and run this service… if you’re actually doing something you want to make available to people for more than a day or two”
Ha, have you already tried to configure the service yourself? Damn, my grandma did that in two freaking minutes! And of course, the whole point is not to have the services running 24/7 thats why centralized servers are, but again, thats your choice.

And regarding to your last remark, as I said my grandma was able to share her pictures in a breeze and I’m pretty sure that she don’t have a #$@#$ idea of what a web server is, much less the knowledge to configure one.

@Lumooja always a pleasure to hear an educated opinion

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:59:39 +0000

Firefox is the standard browser. There’s no need for other browsers, no matter what they can do. If you want a Web Server, then get one, you can’t do that with random PCs and web browsers like Opera claims.

By: phu

phu — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:30:47 +0000

Yikes. While it’s an interesting idea, this isn’t something I’d use… your uptime depends on your PC -and- Opera’s servers, your users are being proxied through Opera and then sending and retrieving over your internet connection (bandwidth and transfer limits become a problem here), your available machine power is hampered by running everything through Opera as well as running Opera itself (and a GUI if you’re running a Linux OS), and if you’re running Windows you’re probably offering up yet another way for virii to get to you.

Plus, with the overhead of learning to configure and run this service… if you’re actually doing something you want to make available to people for more than a day or two, it’d be a lot more beneficial to just go ahead and learn to run a web server on your machine. Even on Windows there’s XAMPP, and poking the appropriate holes in your firewall really isn’t that hard (and probably is something that someone making content available over the web should learn).

By: Ian Phillips

Ian Phillips — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:18:50 +0000

Nope, definitely not; and here’s why in a (long, detailed) nutshell http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/06/16/thoughts-on-opera-unite/

Read, especially, the section covering the EULA for Unite, it’s highlighted in yellow so you can skim down to if if you’re impatient.

Oh, and hope you have a great time on your midsummer trip!