Does anyone here have experience with Lua Server Pages and BarracudaDrive server?

General (non-technical) Off-Topic
#1

I’m thinking about running a portion of my game on an application server. But programming it in Python or Django or something similar would take a lot of time, studying, and hard work. BUT today I came across a technology that is VERY interesting. It’s a Lua based server that can be both a web server and application server, and handle many other server-based tasks.

What interests me most is that I could just take the part of my game in question and use it in the server as is cause it’s all Lua. The technology is from a company called: RealTimeLogic. The technology is BarracudaDrive Web Server (there are both OSX and Windows versions):
http://barracudaserver.com/bd-intro.html
http://barracudaserver.com/products/BarracudaDrive/
http://BarracudaDrive.net

and Lua Server Pages:
http://barracudaserver.com/products/BarracudaDrive/LuaServerPages.lsp

There are also some good turtorial/examples using Lua to run games of an applications server: http://barracudaserver.com/products/FreeLspApps/index.lsp#install

Does anyone here have experience with Lua Server Pages and BarracudaDrive server? [import]uid: 295 topic_id: 1810 reply_id: 301810[/import]

#2

Funny enough stumbled across this today myself. Thing is though why would you want to host your own web server? As I read it thats what it allows you to do. I would rather have my server with a hosting company than relying on having it on my own box. LSP looks kinda interesting though. [import]uid: 7334 topic_id: 1810 reply_id: 5455[/import]

#3

The only reason I’d have a server on my own box is because no hosting company has what I want. Meaning, I don’t want to spend the time/effort required to learn PHP / .net / Python (done that) / Django (tried that).

I want to run my server on OS-X cause I know it and like the UNIX base. And I want to program my server in Lua (or at least Obj-C. If I can do it in Lua I only have to move the code from my game to the server. [import]uid: 295 topic_id: 1810 reply_id: 5460[/import]

#4

Looking at this a little more closely, are you talking about code injection <=> your game/server? If so, you would need to ensure that your game itself had a LUA compiler integrated into it (or would send valid LUA code to the server to be compiled). Wouldn’t it be simpler to have the server take your packets and interpret them and then send back the clients as needed?

I guess you could look at XServe hosting for a strong, reliable dedicated connection (I’m assuming you have a static IP address on your home machine unless you want to jump through a number of proxy issues) under OSX. You could look at any number of linux/BSD hosting companies with shell access. If you want to use Objective-C rather than C++, then you would most likely need an OSX server or at least a strong knowledge of gcc and Objective-C language support under linux/Windows/etc.

Maybe I’m just misunderstanding quite a lot here. That’s most likely the case. [import]uid: 7077 topic_id: 1810 reply_id: 5588[/import]

#5

Thanks for your help. I can tell that your are very advanced and over my head so I’m sorry for asking questions that may be stupid.

Anyway…

What I want to do ( and what I think the BarracudaDrive App Server with Lua Server Pages allows) is to have a Lua program running on the server. That Lua program is the AI for the second player. In my iPhone game client after player1 (the human player) makes a move, the client sends the game state to the server. The server hands the game state off to the Lua AI program which computes a move, hands it off to the server which transfers the move info back to the iPhone game client which updates the game state according to the AI’s move.

BTW. DaveMB. We got almost the same conversation on two threads. Let’s continue this on the following thread:

http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2010/08/16/what-tech-would-you-use-develop-backend-services [import]uid: 295 topic_id: 1810 reply_id: 5589[/import]