Headless multiplayer game server

[Ron]

This might work, if the speed is there... First some background. I want to make multiplayer in which players can race each other without having to figure out what their ip address is (I would imagine the majority of players would not even know how to find out).

I then signed up for a virtual dedicated server account with static ip. The plan is to hard code this dedicated ip into the game. The problem was, this is a server without any real graphics capabilities, graphics card or monitor. When I try to run my game, it would kick out dx9 errors.

What seems to be working now is a program called swiftshader. It emulates dx9 and my game runs (of course very slowly because of the graphics). Next I will try to make a server side version of the game that just quarterbacks the data back and forth between players.... see how that turns out and hopefully the speed is workable.

[gekido]

We will be developing a proper console-based dedicated server for GameCore in the near future - it's required for one of the projects that we're working on, and will essentially be a 'null' renderer that you can assign for the engine, so instead of using opengl or directx, you simply assign the null renderer and the game will only use the console output of the application.

This will allow you to run gamecore games properly on dedicated server setups's similar to how most other engines provide.

The master server system that we have implemented will already work on this kind of a setup as it's purely a php / mysql application, so any kind of standard hosting account will be able to run the master-server side, but we definitely need a true dedicated server going forward.

[BigDaz]

On a related note when GameCore is available on other platforms will the different platforms be able to connect to eachother? Like macs and pcs playing together on the same server.

[gekido]

Yes you will be able to play across different platforms.  Our ideal near-term goal is to get a Linux dedicated server version as this is pretty crucial for any serious online game.  Getting the client to run on Mac is also a pretty high priority as well.

[hikmayan]

Cool,dedicated server version.....yeeeeessssss!.

[Ron]

This will be perfect! The DirectX emulation turned out to be a bust. Even on the server side of the program, loading a basically empty world it would only update about 3 times per second. That would work for the Chess example, but not at all for a racing or FPS game.