Online Board Game

Solar2D Game Networking
#1

Hello everyone,

I wonder if anyone can shed some light here on what would be the best approach.

I am currently designing a Board Game, very much like Ludo but with a few tweaks here and there.

What is the best way to handle this so it can be played by hundreds of players over the internet. It is turn based and there can be a few seconds delay, but don’t want to much of course.

Would PHP cut it? Polling for msgs?

I read about AppWarp, is this a viable solution.

Any other options comments are very welcome. I just want to know the best option then I’ll start to work.

PS: Game is for iOS, just in case this is important when you answer!

Thanks again.

#2

The Apple Gamekit might help you out. It’s on the Corona Marketplace, it’s free, and the documentation is detailed with examples.

It has a section " Turn-Based Game Commands"

Link:                       Apple GameKit                 

#3

Awesome I will take a close look at this.

Thanks Graham.

#4

Would this be achieveable with PHP. Polling server on intervals of 5-10 secs. Can this cope with 100’s of players?

Thanks

#5

It would a lot depend on your hosting provider and what kind of performance they have. I would recommend using a service like GameSparks. They have a plugin that works with Corona. Their service is a game server in the cloud based service.

Rob

#6

My back-end is custom PHP/MySQL.  I run on a single (decent spec) server and that processes almost 27GB per hour (about 100,000 requests per hour) … see graphic below

This costs me around $300 a year.  GameSparks for a similar BaaS would cost around $2k per month!  It all depends on your volume of traffic really.

Facebook uses PHP (well a bespoke branch of) so yes PHP is more than capable of scaling!

#7

I use GameSparks. For an Indy developer the first 100,000MAU are free then they charge you $0.01MAU above that. If I ever get to 100,000MAU I’ll worry about the cost.

#8

That really makes sense, besides if you go over and above 100,000 MAU’s, then that means that your game is actually doing extremely well. 100,000 monthly active users will in turn generate some decent exposure for your game so its win win.

Agramonte, is GameSparks easy to deal with. I know it has many features and it looks very promising, but at this moment in time I am just after sending messages. for example:

Handling dice roll messages

Allow players to chat

and the obvious matchmaking and disconnections.

Thanks for everyone’s time and input.

Regards

#9

Sorry, I just saw this.  A few disclaimers. I don’t work for GameSpark but they have offered to provide “non-material” support for my videos. (Read: help me with youtube videos but no money).

To me, GameSparks is extremely easy once you wrap your head around it. And yes it will support any type of messages, it does allow players to chat, matchmaking, groups, tournaments and disconnections. And even has a real-time server module. Also, they treat question in the forums as tickets so they get responded fairly quickly. They also troll these forums.

I am always around so if you ever need help I can help you in any way I can. Show you my crappy cloud code or even copy and send it to you.

To get the 100,000MAU you need to apply to their Indy program. It just an e-mail and they responded back to me in a day. 

https://www.gamesparks.com/indie-student-programme-faq/

#10

Hi all,

Thank you so much for the shout outs and recommendations! 

@ipodgames.pitto - Sorry for the delay in responding, I hope you’ve had a chance to look around GameSparks and have decided to give us a go!

For yourself, and anyone else who may come across this thread, I wanted to share some links that you may find useful for your project :slight_smile: GameSparks is completely free to evaluate and prototype so if you want you can test out our features beforehand completely free.

Below are some links that may be useful for you:

– 1v1 asynchronous Tic Tac Toe example for Corona. This tutorial will help you create a basic matchmaking game and give you a better understanding of the GameSparks Matchmaking system - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/game-engine-integrations/corona-1v1-asynchronous-match.html

– Our general multiplayer tutorials cover topics like achievement based challanges, matching players and score based matchmaking - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/multiplayer/

– Turning it up a notch, we have a great Heathstone example that can show you how to use the multiplayer features mentioned above - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/multiplayer/hearthstone-example/

– Sending chat messages between players is very easy to set up - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/social-features/setting-up-chat-messages.html

– For the dice roll messages, I assume you mean something along the lines of a push notification when it’s the players turn? Or “Your Friend Just Rolled A 6!!” This is covered here - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/social-features/

I hope that helps, and if you have any questions about the features above, or GameSparks in general, please do not hesitate to contact the support team via https://support.gamesparks.net/support/home we’d be happy to help in any way we can!

Clare

#11

The Apple Gamekit might help you out. It’s on the Corona Marketplace, it’s free, and the documentation is detailed with examples.

It has a section " Turn-Based Game Commands"

Link:                       Apple GameKit                 

#12

Awesome I will take a close look at this.

Thanks Graham.

#13

Would this be achieveable with PHP. Polling server on intervals of 5-10 secs. Can this cope with 100’s of players?

Thanks

#14

It would a lot depend on your hosting provider and what kind of performance they have. I would recommend using a service like GameSparks. They have a plugin that works with Corona. Their service is a game server in the cloud based service.

Rob

#15

My back-end is custom PHP/MySQL.  I run on a single (decent spec) server and that processes almost 27GB per hour (about 100,000 requests per hour) … see graphic below

This costs me around $300 a year.  GameSparks for a similar BaaS would cost around $2k per month!  It all depends on your volume of traffic really.

Facebook uses PHP (well a bespoke branch of) so yes PHP is more than capable of scaling!

#16

I use GameSparks. For an Indy developer the first 100,000MAU are free then they charge you $0.01MAU above that. If I ever get to 100,000MAU I’ll worry about the cost.

#17

That really makes sense, besides if you go over and above 100,000 MAU’s, then that means that your game is actually doing extremely well. 100,000 monthly active users will in turn generate some decent exposure for your game so its win win.

Agramonte, is GameSparks easy to deal with. I know it has many features and it looks very promising, but at this moment in time I am just after sending messages. for example:

Handling dice roll messages

Allow players to chat

and the obvious matchmaking and disconnections.

Thanks for everyone’s time and input.

Regards

#18

Sorry, I just saw this.  A few disclaimers. I don’t work for GameSpark but they have offered to provide “non-material” support for my videos. (Read: help me with youtube videos but no money).

To me, GameSparks is extremely easy once you wrap your head around it. And yes it will support any type of messages, it does allow players to chat, matchmaking, groups, tournaments and disconnections. And even has a real-time server module. Also, they treat question in the forums as tickets so they get responded fairly quickly. They also troll these forums.

I am always around so if you ever need help I can help you in any way I can. Show you my crappy cloud code or even copy and send it to you.

To get the 100,000MAU you need to apply to their Indy program. It just an e-mail and they responded back to me in a day. 

https://www.gamesparks.com/indie-student-programme-faq/

#19

Hi all,

Thank you so much for the shout outs and recommendations! 

@ipodgames.pitto - Sorry for the delay in responding, I hope you’ve had a chance to look around GameSparks and have decided to give us a go!

For yourself, and anyone else who may come across this thread, I wanted to share some links that you may find useful for your project :slight_smile: GameSparks is completely free to evaluate and prototype so if you want you can test out our features beforehand completely free.

Below are some links that may be useful for you:

– 1v1 asynchronous Tic Tac Toe example for Corona. This tutorial will help you create a basic matchmaking game and give you a better understanding of the GameSparks Matchmaking system - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/game-engine-integrations/corona-1v1-asynchronous-match.html

– Our general multiplayer tutorials cover topics like achievement based challanges, matching players and score based matchmaking - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/multiplayer/

– Turning it up a notch, we have a great Heathstone example that can show you how to use the multiplayer features mentioned above - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/multiplayer/hearthstone-example/

– Sending chat messages between players is very easy to set up - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/social-features/setting-up-chat-messages.html

– For the dice roll messages, I assume you mean something along the lines of a push notification when it’s the players turn? Or “Your Friend Just Rolled A 6!!” This is covered here - https://docs.gamesparks.com/tutorials/social-features/

I hope that helps, and if you have any questions about the features above, or GameSparks in general, please do not hesitate to contact the support team via https://support.gamesparks.net/support/home we’d be happy to help in any way we can!

Clare