Engines of Delight

[Podcast] Hanselminutes: Scaling The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land

matsaleh — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 04:46:08 +0000

Scott Hanselman talks with Next Games' CTO, Kalle Hiitola, about the server architecture of their newest game, The Walking Dead: No Man's Land. This is a great opportunity for those of us interested in game server development to learn from others' real-world experience.

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Pattern: Seamless World Game Server

matsaleh — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 05:15:51 +0000

Problem How do we create a game server that permits unlimited freedom of movement and game play on an expansive map with no apparent boundaries? Context We are developing the server for a massively multiplayer online game with a client-server architecture. The game design seeks to create an immersive play experience by enabling thousands of players to interact with … Continue reading Pattern: Seamless World Game Server →

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Pattern: Responsibility-Oriented Game Server

matsaleh — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 21:02:38 +0000

Problem How do we distribute core game play load across multiple processes in a way that supports flexible scaling and efficient allocation of computing resources? Context We are developing the server for a massively multiplayer online game with a distributed architecture. The game design seeks to create an immersive play experience by enabling thousands of players to interact … Continue reading Pattern: Responsibility-Oriented Game Server →

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Invest in your Development Environment

matsaleh — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 02:06:08 +0000

Software architecture is about the big picture of development. It’s also about identifying and managing engineering risk. The development team is at the nexus of these two concepts. The team is your greatest asset, and the greatest contributor to the success of any software architecture. The big picture revolves around the development team and its ability to create … Continue reading Invest in your Development Environment →

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[Presentation] Building Scalable Stateful Services

matsaleh — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 01:09:31 +0000

I was researching stateful distributed systems for an article today and found a post on High Scalability that was a perfect fit. It’s an unofficial transcript of a StrangeLoop 2015 talk by Caitie McCaffrey, Tech Lead for Observability at Twitter. I read the transcript first, then felt compelled to watch the presentation. Summary Caitie talks about solving problems that … Continue reading [Presentation] Building Scalable Stateful Services →

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Pattern: Map-Centric Game Server

matsaleh — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 02:02:30 +0000

Problem How do we distribute the load of running core game play functionality across multiple processes to support thousands of concurrent players? Context We are developing the server for a massively multiplayer online game with a client-server architecture. The game design seeks to create an immersive play experience by enabling thousands of players to interact with each other in a … Continue reading Pattern: Map-Centric Game Server →

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[Discussion] A Journey Into MMO Server Architecture

matsaleh — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 19:34:53 +0000

I discovered this post today while doing some research for another post I’m writing. It’s about the server architecture of the sci-fi MMO sandbox game, Face of Mankind: Fall of the Dominion, published by Nexeon Technologies. The post is a couple of years old, but I think the topics are still important. Sadly, the game was recently shut down. However, … Continue reading [Discussion] A Journey Into MMO Server Architecture →

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Know what to Build: The Server Loop

matsaleh — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 22:30:37 +0000

Developing the architecture for our game server requires making trade-offs. Knowing how to do this requires a general understanding of what kinds of things the server will do, and how much work is required.

We'll use the server loop as a conceptual model for this. The server loop is a variant of the classic game loop pattern, applied to server-side functionality. Because this is just a model, we'll ignore implementation details such as fixed or variable step sizes. Also, for now we'll assume our server is single-threaded and runs on a single core machine.

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Pattern: Client Side Load Balancing

matsaleh — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 02:25:52 +0000

Problem How do we ensure a balanced distribution of client connections across a set of connection servers in a distributed game server architecture? Context We are developing the server for a massively multiplayer online game with a client-server architecture. The game design seeks to create an immersive play experience by enabling thousands of players to connect simultaneously … Continue reading Pattern: Client Side Load Balancing →

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[Podcast] SE-Radio: Rebecca Parsons on Evolutionary Architecture

matsaleh — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 23:46:29 +0000

The concept of evolutionary architecture is a good fit for game server development. Game servers are complex enough to warrant a disciplined focus on building a good architecture. Yet, game development is very subjective, and making a great game is an exercise in evolution. The five principles of evolutionary architecture discussed in this podcast can help us in evolving a solid game server architecture. Podcast … Continue reading [Podcast] SE-Radio: Rebecca Parsons on Evolutionary Architecture →

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