My intent for creating this post is to gauge the interest for a new commercial friendly, authoritative game server for non-programmers wanting to create their own rpg/fps style multi-player games. Therefore, I give you a preview look at the ZeusGameSever, “The authoritative server for your commercial game!”. Much more than just a framework for writing the networking part of a game. I would like to deliver a fully functioning customizable game server (integrated with unity) that can be configured by non-programmers to work in many different situations and for many different types of games.
The main server might consist of the following features.
ZeusGameServer
Administrator’s Portal
Player’s Portal
Unity3d Integration
Telnet Integration
Help System
Chat System
Add-on Modules
MMORPG Skills
MMORPG Spells
MMORPG Combat
MMORPG Crafting
MMORPG Inventory
MMORPG Levels
MMORPG Map
MMORPG NPC
MMORPG Quests
FPS Leaderboard
FPS Campaign
FPS Kill System
The Administrator’s Portal
The administrator’s portal is intended to be the place where the game master can log in and configure the game server to their liking. The accounts settings page has questions pertaining to how accounts should be handled, if at all. The players settings page determines whether a player name is to be unique to the server and whether or not the player can change his own name. The chat settings page allows you to configure the various messages sent to the client, the colors associated with the messages and the available channels on which to send them.
The following screenshot shows 3 different unity clients and 2 putty clients connected to the server (very early prototype edition).
The following screenshots are taken from the administrators portal (very early prototype edition).
FPS modules are certainly possible and I think there would be a lot of overlap between an mmorpg and a fps game in so much as each might have accounts, players and chat, etc… I have not yet committed to any release date as I am trying to gauge the amount of interest in the community for this project. If I can get enough people interested to make it worthwhile then I can put together some kind of formal release plan.
I would be interested in this if it could be used for arena based rpg games or fps. So the inventory is scalable to fit game needs, also perhaps instead of making things like party and raid chat, try making it fully customization so you can make many forms of chat according to what you need. The more custom and clean this is, the better. I am very interested, however.
I would be interested in this if it could be used for arena based rpg games or fps.
Yes, the whole point of the server is to write it so that it can be used on many different types of games. I will be sure to include some fps modules in my next update.
also perhaps instead of making things like party and raid chat, try making it fully customization so you can make many forms of chat according to what you need
This I also like. I do like the idea of allowing people to create their own channels and name them as they will (as opposed to having a set of predefined ones). I will work on that this week.
The more custom and clean this is, the better.
I agree that the more customizable and clean we can make this, the better it is for everyone and the more different types of games it can be used on.
If this is done right, a person should be able to mix and match modules to get the type of game server that they need.
The current iteration of the server is using the highly asynchronous vert.x library to handle the the raw tcp and udp communications. For chat I am using an eventbus (hazelcast) and for sharing player data across instances I am using a datagrid (infinispan). It’s being designed to handle 512 players per instanced/area. Basically areas are spun up as needed. The number of areas you can spin up is directly related to your hardware. If, for example, you have an blade server with 8 blades in it, each with 4 cpu’s and 64gb of memory then its likely that such a server would be able to handle hundreds of instances and thus thousands of players. In order to get a nice ROI on such a server (one that costs $180,000 and $20,000 a year to host). You would need to be able to support at least 100,000 customer accounts. The feature set has not yet been settled on but I am sure that we will be able to hit these targets.
So, lets say I’m a 12 year old who wants to make an MMO, I have a unity scene with character prefabs etc. Can I just take this, slap it into my project and wham! MMO? I ask this because I have no idea.
So, lets say I’m a 12 year old who wants to make an MMO, I have a unity scene with
character prefabs etc. Can I just take this, slap it into my project and wham! MMO?
I ask this because I have no idea.
To some extent, what you say is exactly correct. Let’s assume a single-player 3d game.
Slap the ZeusGameServer.cs file unto your MainCamera.
Start the ZeusGameServer.exe.
Start unity and wham! you get mmo chat as depicted in the screenshots above.
So, what happens if the game is not exactly to your liking?
Well, you have two options.
If you don’t like how the server is configured, then you must log into the administrator’s portal and reconfigure it.
If you don’t like how the data is rendered in the ui, you can edit the ZeusGameServer.cs to make it fit your needs.
