[gameprogrammer] Re: Design tips for directory server backend for games

  • From: Jacob Briggs <nexussix@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2010 09:37:30 +1300

from http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/runtime.html

-------- 8< --------
An App Engine application cannot:
...
...
...
spawn a sub-process or thread. A web request to an application must be handled in a single process within a few seconds. Processes that take a very long time to respond are terminated to avoid overloading the web server.
-------- 8< --------

This would be my only concern, as it limits the sort of things you can do.

Jake

On 12/11/10 04:50, Kevin Jenkins wrote:
I'm trying to write a server directory backend for games that is pretty ambitious. I want to host it using http://code.google.com/appengine/ (Google app engine) so I don't have to pay monthly fees and can potentially scale it. I also want a web-based front end for the service so I can support multiple games, and can assign moderators to manage particular games. It would also have an SQL database storing the list of running games.

I've never done web programming before, and wanted to ask for advice before diving in so I don't end up doing a lot of useless work.

For the web interface, it's clear that I need a programming language of some sort. For example, I need to be able to login to the web interface as admin in order to manage the list of moderators and therefore show a different webpage based on who you are. What recommendations do you have? Is Java a server-side programming language I could use for this? Or Python? I know PHP can do it. Performance isn't too important for the web-interface, but if I can use a language close to C or C++ it would make it easier for me to write and learn. Are there other options?

From the C++ side I already know how to connect to either a service running TCP, or a http based web service (such as PHP). So I can send queries to the server, and they need to be processed fast. Should I even use google app engine for this, or can I process everything in PHP fast enough? For example, if I am processing thousands of requests a second, can a PHP based web host handle this? If I use java or python, would this be faster than PHP? And can I scale multiple instances of the application with google app engine all using the same database?

Hopefully someone here is knowledgeable about all this. Thanks in advance.


---------------------
To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html


Other related posts: