Basic Server Requirements Options

[Mole]

This topic is here to discuss basic requirements of our game server. These requirements can pertain to pretty much any operation or aspect of the server.

We already have a pretty good idea of how we want our server to work, but someone may have some good ideas that aren't captured yet and we want to make sure we get those.

This thread will be open until March 18 for general discussion and idea gathering. After that time we'll stop collecting ideas for incorporation into version 1 of our game server.

[courseB]

would this include game objects 'items' and how they are stored/transfered around on the server?

[silmaril]

That would not be a requirement. Actually I am not quite sure what fits here, but I am sure something does :)

[oom]

I think it should be a requirement of your game server to support polling of information (status & DB) from an outside source, say PW webpage, for gathering and analysis of statistical information.

Pretty sure you already got that one but what the heck :) Any block diagrams out there to take a look at?

Cheers,
OOM

[silmaril]

Pretty sure you already got that one but what the heck :) Any block diagrams out there to take a look at?

Out there, no. In here where the development takes place, yes :)

We chose to keep the developmet itself internal. Requirements will be gathered publicly on these forums, but how they are implemented is a confidential deal. At least until (if) the source code is released under an open source license.

[Jerky]

Like Mole said, you probably already have thought of all this:
seperate databases for things (items, players, mobs, npcs) or at least seperated values for such.

If lots of customization is going to be allowed (like your name on everything you ever created, or the cutomized logos, clothing, colors or whatever) the databases would be better prepared ahead of time for such things.

How about resource sharing? Obviously this will be spanned accross multiple processors/harddrives etc. Things need to be placed so as to utilize things to the utmost (without over-burdening anything). We need to be frugle (as of now anyway :)) Ie. the computer worrying about player movement or one zone, might have a lot of bandwidth taken up, but still plenty of free ram, so what can we put there to use the ram but not the bandwidth? (that was only an exapmle to show what I mean and is probably not even valid) Get what I mean? I am sure you guys have a lot of this stuff ironed out, or at least a better idea than me, but it can't hurt to say something :).

[Mole]

- the ability to support tens of thousands of users in out game with no shards. This is something that Wish had and they were starting to pull it off. I think that it is something that we should shoot for. We *might* not be able to do it, but we should try.

- one seamless world.

- a "good" network/server load balancing algorithm. A suggestion might be to use a quad-tree based load balancing solution.

[Pashta]

The world being seamless, yes. I would be perfectly fine with dungeons being loaded, however. I think that would be great and nobody would mind taking a minute to go into a deep, dark dungeon.