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Development and Deployment of Multiplayer Online Games, Vol. III.

Server Arch, Fault Tolerance, Pre-Coding

'No Bugs' Hare

Want to write The Next Big Multiplayer Online Game? This series will help you to learn the ropes. Vol.III covers Server-Side Architecture (including Fault Tolerance) - as well as things you should do before starting coding.

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About

About

About the Book

What's the Big Idea?

The idea behind this book is to summarize the body of knowledge that already exists on multiplayer games but is not available in one single place. And quite a few of the issues discussed within this series (planned as three nine volumes ~300 pages each), while known in the industry, have not been published at all (except for maybe in discussion forums). 

Programming and deploying an MOG is a daunting task, and having a frame of reference is usually quite helpful — "hey, those guys have already tried this, and it worked for them."

Vol. I-III of the series are about MOG Architecture. In Vol. I and II, we discussed general issues (including Communication flows) and Client-Side Architecture respectively. By the end of Vol. III, we'll complete our discussion of the things related to architecting the Server-Side of your MOG, and this will conclude the ARCH part of the series. Vol. IV-VI will describe issues related to Programming, and Vol. VII-IX will be about Deployment and post-deployment tasks. 

Shameless Plug

The book has got endorsements from quite a few people known in the industry, including people from Amaya, Lloyds Bank, Lionhead Studios, BlueByte (Ubisoft Studio), Lightstreamer, Plarium, and (formerly) Zynga. For the endorsements themselves please see Kickstarter campaign.

And speaking of crowdfunding - the book has already been funded on Kickstarter and Indiegogo - with over 800 backers total (and counting). BTW, here on Leanpub there is a bundle which is exactly the same as an ongoing InDemand campaign on Indiegogo - $20 for Vol. I-III together with an early access (though on Indie there is also an option to pre-order paperback or even hardcover).

Since When Are Rabbits Programming??

I cannot speak for all of rabbitkind, but this particular hare has gone alongside my writings for quite a while now. He was born as "No MT Bugs" Hare in 2010, in an Overload article titled "Single-Threading: Back to the Future?"

Therefore, there is evidence that this particular rabbit has been programming at least since 2010. Yes, he has changed his appearance, but deep inside, he is still the very same bunny with a naïve idea of making programs less buggy. BTW, the character is created by Sergey Gordeev, a guy with many animation awards, known (among other things) for being a director of some of the Animated Mr. Bean series.

Who Is this Book For?

The book is intended for those intermediary developers who want to become senior ones, and for senior developers and up. I expect that the book will also be useful for decision-makers, from PMs all the way up to CEOs — so if you by any chance know one, please make sure to give her a link to this page ;-). 

On the other hand, if you are working on your first programming project, this book will probably be too difficult for you. There will be no explanation on what event-driven programming is all about, what's the difference is between optimistic locking and pessimistic locking, why you need a source control system, and so on. Instead, there will be discussions on how the concept of futures fits into event-driven programming, when the use of optimistic locking makes sense for games, and how to use source control in presence of unmergeable files. 

In the same spirit, the book is not intended to be a CD to copy-paste your sample MOG from. Instead, the book aims to help you write your own code that is tailored to your own needs, and tries to advise on the available choices at most of the junctions.

What's The Plan?

Vol. III is currently in "2nd beta", with 80% of the content I'm planning, already included. Still, there will be more explanations.

As I'm working with professional editors (and vast majority of them doesn't know anything but Word :-( ) - I keep and edit my manuscript as a bunch of Word .docx files (I throw myself at the mercy of the court, and assure that it is only because of dire circumstances beyond my control ). I'm using Word to export .docx to PDF, and some_VBA_scripts+Calibre to export to .MOBI and .EPUB. However, .EPUB generated by Calibre, doesn't pass checks here on LeanPub (though it seems to show ok on iBook and on Clearview). If you want .EPUB - drop me a line, I will e-mail it to you.

Please note that current formatting is quite ugly; it will improve after being professionally formatted; it is also expected to pass all the .EPUB validity checks.

Next steps:

  • The manuscript needs to be finalized; currently - Vol. III is about 80% text-complete.
  • The manuscript will be sent to the "line editor" (that's what that Kickstarter money was for :-)).
  • Then - it will be sent to the typesetter
  • Then - it will be finalized here on Leanpub (and rewards for Kickstarter and Indiegogo backers will be sent out too)
  • And finally, it will be published on Kindle (and on Amazon via CS). At this point, price of the book may go higher here on Leanpub (to match Kindle price).

Comments

All the comments are extremely welcome - and they DO help making the book better.

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Author

About the Author

'No Bugs' Hare

20 years ago (damn, I am getting old) I was a co-architect for an electronic stock exchange of a G20 country, and for all practical intents and purposes stock exchanges are just another game genre. The project was fun and, among other things, allowed for real-time trading over the cellphones of that time (those with 9600 baud connection).

A few years later, I became a chief software architect working for a start-up that quickly grew into a rather large online game with half a million simultaneous players that processed half a billion user transactions per day. The project taught me a damn lot about such different issues as scalability, DB physical layout, server farms, attackers and cheaters of all kinds, and bot fighting — just to name a few.

Since then, I have consulted and performed due diligence on several game-related projects. In addition, I've spent quite some time researching the field and discussing related problems and their respective solutions with people from the industry.

I feel that this puts me in quite a unique position of knowing not only one single game, but a bunch of them, and being able to summarize and generalize my real-world experiences. Oh, and I have been writing for industry journals (and am especially proud of articles in CUJ and C++ Report) since 1998, so the process of typing sentences is not something new for me either.

If you really want further details, you can dig them out of my LinkedIn page

Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter 8. Server-Side MOG Architecture

     In-Memory States and Multi-Player Games

           ‘No Bugs’ Rule of Thumb for Multiplayer Games

                 Good for Us (as developers)

                 Exception: Stock Exchanges

                 NOT applicable to Single-Player Games

           In-Memory Game World States: a Natural Fit for ‘No Bugs’ Rule of Thumb

           On Data Consistency

           In-Memory State Summary

     On Scalability and Load Balancing

           Scaling Up? No Way, Jose. Scaling Out!

           Load Balancing

                 Load Balancing of Stateful Objects. Two flavors of Load Balancing

     Deployment Architectures, Take 1

           Don't Do It: Naïve Game Deployment Architecture

           Semi-Naïve Deployment Architecture

           Web-Based Game Deployment Architecture

                 Web-Based Deployment Architecture (Web Stack): How It Works

                 Caching, More Caching, and Even More Caching

                 Taming DB Load: Write-Back Caches and In-Memory States

                 Write-Back Caches: When to Write Back?

                 Write-Back Caches: Locking

                       Optimistic Locking

                       Pessimistic Locking

                 Caches and Transactions

                 Web-Based Deployment Architecture: Reactors

                 Web Deployment Architecture: Scaling and Load Balancing

                 On Specific Web Servers

                 Web-Based Deployment Architecture: Merits

           Classical Game Deployment Architecture

                 Game Servers

                       Implementing Game Servers under Reactor-fest architecture

                             Minimal Reactor-fest

                                   Logic Reactor

                                         Reactors with External Interfaces

                                   Logic Factory

                             Full-Scale Reactor-fest

                                   TCP Sockets Reactors and TCP Accept Reactor

                                   UDP-related Reactors

                                   Websocket-related Reactors and HTTP-related Reactors (not shown)

                                   GPGPU Reactor (not shown)

                             Simplifications

                             Reactor-Fest Architecture on the Server Side: Flexibility and Deployment-Time/Run-Tim

                                   Threads and Processes

                                   Underlying Communication Protocol as an Implementation Detail

                                   Moving Game Worlds Around (at the cost of client reconnect)

                                   Online Upgrades with (Almost-)Zero Downtime

                                   On Importance of Flexibility

                 Classical Deployment Architecture: Scaling and Load Balancing

                       Scaling Game World Servers - Natural Linear Scalability (except for seamless MMOs)

                             MMOGs and Seamless Game World Servers

                             Moving Objects Around

                       Scaling Matchmaking Server

                       Scaling Other Game Servers

                       Regional Datacenters to Reduce Latencies

                       Load Balancing

                 Once again on hybrid Web-Based+Classical Architectures

                 Classical Game Deployment Architecture: Summary

           Enter Front-End Servers

                 Front-End Servers as Concentrators

                 Front-End Servers: Benefits

                 Front-End Servers: Drawbacks and Issues to Solve

                       Latencies and Latency Differences

                       Discussion on Scalability of Front-End Servers and Dealing with “N-squared”. Server Gro

                       Game-Server-to-Front-End-Server Affinity

                 Front-End Servers: Implementation

                       Front-End Servers: Reactor-fest Implementation

                             Routing&Data Reactors

                             Routing&Data Factories

                             Routing&Data Reactors in Game Servers and Clients

                 Client Load Balancing

                       DNS Round-Robin

                       Client-Side Random Balancing

                             Client-Side Random Balancing: a Law of Large Numbers, and comparison with DNS Round-R

                       Server-Side Load Balancer Appliances

                       Load Balancing Summary

                       Front-End Servers as a kinda-CDN

                       Front-End Servers + Game Servers as a kinda-CDN

                 Front-End Servers Summary

     DB Server

           DB Server API

           Meanwhile, at the King’s Castle… Implementing DB Server

                 Multi-Connection Basics

                 Multi-Connection DB Server implemented as DB Reactor

                 Single-connection DB Server as DB Reactor

                 Implementing DB Server: Bottom Line

           DB Server Summary

     MOG Server-Side. Eternal Linux-vs-Windows Debate

           New Generation Chooses Cross-Platform! Well, at least it SHOULD...

           Eternal Windows-vs-Linux Debate

                 Open-Source

                 Stability/Reliability

                 Security

                 Network Processing

                 Other Technical Differences (scheduler, IPC, file access, etc)

                 C++ Compilers

                 Is it Enough to Decide?

                 Free as in “Free Beer”

                       TCO wars

                       On ISPs and Windows-vs-Linux Cost

                 Time To Market: Familiarity to your Developers

                 It is All about Money (

                 DB Server Considerations

                 Mixed Bags

                 Linux-vs-Windows: Time to Decide

                             Things to Keep in Mind: Windows

                             Things to Keep in Mind: Linux

                             Things to Keep in Mind: Reactors

     MOG Server-Side. Programming Languages

           Going Cross-Platform

                 Cross-platform C++

                 Cross-platform Languages

                       Pros (compared to C++)

                       Cons (compared to C++)

                       Personal Preferences and Reactors

                 Scripting Languages

                 On Programming Languages as Such

                 Which Language is the Best? Or On Horses for Courses

                       On Programming Languages and Reactors

                       Supporting Multiple languages/compilers/JITs: Is It Worth the Trouble?

                       Supporting Different Programming Languages within the Same Project

                       Inter-Language Equivalence Testing: Yet Another Reactor Replay Benefit

Chapter 9. Fault Tolerance

     Failure Modes & Effects

           Communication Failures

           Game Server Failures

                 Containment of Game World server failures

                 Server Fault Tolerance: King is Dead, Long Live the King!

                       Clusters: HA, not FT

                       Fault-Tolerant Servers: Damn Expensive

                       Fault-Tolerant VMs

                             Virtual Lockstep: Not Available Anymore?

                             Checkpoint-Based Fault Tolerance: Latencies and Even More Latencies (

                       DIY Fault-Tolerance in Reactor-fest architectures

                             DIY Virtual Lockstep

                             DIY N+1 Reactor-based Redundancy

                             DIY Fault Tolerance – Connections and IPs

                             DIY Fault Tolerance – What to Use

                             DIY Fault Tolerance in case of Almost-Determinism

           DB Server Failures

                 It’s All about Numbers – and Nothing Else

                 Adding Fault Tolerance Can Make Your Numbers Worse

                 Exception – Stock Exchanges

                 /Implementing Fault Tolerance for DBs

           Fault Tolerance – Failure Detection

Chapter 10. Pre-Coding Checklist: Things Everybody Hates, but Everybody Needs Them Too. From So

     Source Control

           Git

                 Git and unmergeable files

                 Git and 3rd-party Libraries

                 Git Flow

                 Protecting your Code

                       Reducing Chances: Firewalls & Antiviruses

                       Mitigating Impact from Compromises

     Continuous Integration

     3rd-party Libraries: Licensing

     Development Process

     Issue Tracking System

           Issue Tracking: No Bypassing Allowed

     Coding Guidelines

           Naming Conventions

           Project Peculiarities

           Per-Subproject Guidelines

           Enforcement and Static Analysis Tools

Contributor

About the Contributors

Sergey Gordeev

Sergey Gordeev (currently from gagltd.eu) is an animator with a dozen of awards from different festivals. He is most known for his work as a director of Animated Mr Bean series.

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