[gameprogrammer] Re: Design tips for directory server backend for games
- From: Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2010 08:55:51 -0800
oh, and if you are worried about the security of having game clients
talk http to your server, https is your friend. I rolled my own
security on the first web integration i did, and am using https on the
second, and the second was much easier to implement, and is much more
secure.
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Heya Kevin,
>
> Chiming in as a person with 5 years web application dev experience
> (online stores, budget and asset tracking for school districts) and 5
> years console game dev experience, including integrating 2 commercial
> (sold in store) games with a web back end for user generated content
> sharing, stats logging, etc.
>
> For the back end I would use PHP. it should work just fine.
>
> For the C++ side, instead of using sockets to talk to the web service,
> why not use libcurl? It's a mature, MIT licensed library that already
> has all the finer details of the HTTP protocol worked out and is well
> tested.
>
> You might also be interested in doing some research into "cloud
> computing". I'm sure you've heard that buzzword before, probably used
> by total tools who program VB and think they are the best coders in
> the world (lol) but it could seriously be a good fit for your needs.
>
> Here's a good place to start:
>
> http://aws.amazon.com/
>
> Basically you can put your web code up there and it's hosted by
> amazon. It's extremely redundant so there is no single point of
> failure unlike if you had a single 2u rack mounted server in a data
> center. It's also easily scaled up and down (dynamically in real time
> i believe) as your needs increase and decrease.
>
> Amazon gives you a year for free, and i'm not sure if there are any
> practical limits to their offer, but when you do start paying, you pay
> only for how much cpu / bandwidth / etc was used.
>
> PS- I very much recommend starting with PHP server side for numerous
> reasons, but, even though i don't really recommend it, there is
> something called fast CGI where you can write c++ code for a web
> server. Of course, if you go that route, there are new dangers you
> hit such as having a server that is capable of leaking memory, having
> concurrency issues, being much more likely to crash, and having more
> subtle issues like that. It's not that i'm not a fan of c++ trying to
> push managed languages in general, but for this situation, php server
> side really should be fast enough and will really make your life a lot
> easier. IMO it really just is one of the best tools for this job.
> Another option beyond fast CGI is writing your own apache module, and
> then your c++ is written write where the rubber meets the road, but
> again, i don't recommend going that route either. But, i think you
> should at least be aware of their existence :P
>
> Also, to help minimize server load, for things that make sense (such
> as slower changing data, but not necessarily server lists since you
> want those to ) you should have clients cache data from the server
> client side for a short period of time so that if people jump from
> menu to menu and each menu has a different message from the server on
> it for instance, that they don't keep hitting the server for the same
> text they got just a couple seconds ago.
>
> Good luck!
>
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 7:50 AM, Kevin Jenkins
> <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxx> 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.
>>
>
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