   Game development server rental?
  Does anyone know of a service in which I could rent a game server for a monthly fee but not designed for a specific game?I'm looking for a host with a pre-made generic game network server application, perhaps even with a database, that I could configure remotely and then program my clients to connect to it using an SDK or library or even a spec sheet to go by.   
  I'm not even sure what you mean by "generic network server application".   ;  I just bought some Dreamhost hosting and ssh in to manage my game server. Then again, Unix is my native environment, so YMMV.I doubt you'll find a server with a 'generic game database' attached as that's a pretty niche request. A generic game database is kind of sort of impossible as every game has scads of different data.   ;  I don't think its too far fetched.  Look at something like Kaillera.  It's pretty much exactly what I'm talking about but it was designed for emulators. Most games have very similar things that the server keeps track of.  What I mean by generic is that you could define this "different" data where it applies.   ;  You want what is called a "dedicated server", which is exactly what it sounds like - a machine hooked up to the internet that you can do pretty much whatever you want with. There are many places that offer such a service, but one of the least expensive that I know of is 15 Minute Servers.Another route is "colocation", where you basically rent space at a datacenter so you can hook up your own machine to a 10MBps or 100MBps connection. I haven't found a place that lets you do that inexpensively, though. They all want you to rent a whole rack for TONS of money (or will let you rent only a few U of space at a price 95% of the cost of the whole rack).For low-scale stuff, you could also probably get away with just buying an SSH account somewhere that will let you have 2 background processes (one being MySQL and the other your game).Note that all these options only provide you with a place to run your custom program so it can talk to the world - if you want a premade game framework of any kind, you'll have to get that separately.   ;  15 minute's cheapest one is 70 bucks a month which is not too bad.  There are some local places where I live that offer co-location for about 50 or so.  I've looked into those options but in that case I'd either have to write a server application or use something that works with a specific engine like Torque and TNL.  I was hoping that there was something already written that wasn't designed to work with a specific game engine.  You could remotely administer it and it would keep track of different variables that you define for each player and globals that apply to the game as a whole.Your client would send different commands to the server during the game that would alter these variables and the updates would be sent to the clients, or perhaps alter values in the database.  Sort of like a webserver with a scripting language and a database but for real-time applications.  Maybe something like this should be written.;  In regards to colocation, these guys where right beside us at the GDC (neither I nor GameDev is endorsing them at this time, just mentioning their name)They where promoting their game server targeted co-location and dedicated hosting packages under the "Latency Kills" slogan.   ;Quote:Original post by Chaduke[...]There are some local places where I live that offer co-location for about 50 or so.[...]Where did you find out about them? I never did find a good resource on such info, so the only ones I've found are big-name ones like ThePlanet and smaller places that people personally reccomend.To add to the problem, most sites don't list prices, which destroys the "I'll use what I can afford" approach. I guess I could make 15-20 quote requests, but from the way many companies are hostile to even basic inqueries (beyond direct "how much may I pay you?" requests), I don't think they'd like that much.Quote:[...]I was hoping that there was something already written that wasn't designed to work with a specific game engine.  You could remotely administer it and it would keep track of different variables that you define for each player and globals that apply to the game as a whole.[...]Where could you put such code that a game wouldn't have to be coded specifically to load it? Are you looking for a memory editor with a built-in telnet server? Any other way the game will have to know about the program and be programmed to work with it. A common option is scripting files that can be reloaded any time, then you just edit the script and upload it then tell the game to reload that file.Note that I didn't say part of the engine, though - you can plug any scripting language into any engine as long as the languages they're programmed in are compatable, and a scripting language is basically what you're looking for (to have the game execute commands based on your text). Alternately, you're looking for a database server that allows remote access that the game uses to store it's information, and again you can add that to any engine. MySQL is a free database server you could use, but make sure to read the license.What would a game server be if it didn't include game logic? Sounds like a software router that sends the packets it receives to localhostQuote:Original post by Michalson[...]They where promoting their game server targeted co-location and dedicated hosting packages under the "Latency Kills" slogan.Interesting that they don't have a Dallas, Tx location. Everything I've seen indicates that is one of the most popular server locations   ;  I found out about the local co-lo thing from the yellow pages or something a few years back.  At the time I was researching web hosts but the applcation I was running required more than just a web server so I was considering hosting it on my own box.  I didn't want to take care of the server in my house and I had trouble getting a good hi-bandwidth connection for a decent price as well, so thats when I started looking into co-lo.Quote:Where could you put such code that a game wouldn't have to be coded specifically to load it? Are you looking for a memory editor with a built-in telnet server? Any other way the game will have to know about the program and be programmed to work with it. A common option is scripting files that can be reloaded any time, then you just edit the script and upload it then tell the game to reload that file.Note that I didn't say part of the engine, though - you can plug any scripting language into any engine as long as the languages they're programmed in are compatable, and a scripting language is basically what you're looking for (to have the game execute commands based on your text). Alternately, you're looking for a database server that allows remote access that the game uses to store it's information, and again you can add that to any engine. MySQL is a free database server you could use, but make sure to read the license.Ok, maybe we have a misunderstanding here.   The game would be coded specifically to send messages to the server application that I'm renting.  Imagine an application that combines a network library like Raknet, and database like SQLite, and a built-in webserver.  I would pay a company that has this application running on it a fee of say 20-30$ a month.  I could log into the application as an administrator using my browser.  The built-in webserver would allow me to administer the database and setup different variables that the application would keep track of in real time, specifically variables that apply to the players who are connected such as x,y,z location, health, score, etc. I would then program my client to send network messages to the server application in the form of commands and values, similar to the way web services work.  The server would in turn make changes to the database if necessary, and then send messages back to the connected clients based on the current state of the game.  I suppose the majority of game logic would be handled by the client, based on the information it receives from the server. Think of any modern FPS or even RTS type games.  The server is not really doing much more than keeping track of what each player is doing at a specific time and letting the rest of the clients know about it.  The clients themselves are calculating everything else.;  Actually, FPS servers do all the calculations and clients at most duplicate the calculates to eliminate the appearance of lag (so you press forward and your view moves forward, but until the server gets the move packet and verifies it, you're still on your last trajectory). The only thing an FPS server skips is rendering the graphics and playing the sounds (unless it's a listen server, in which case it's both a client and a server).FPS servers generally run on machines dedicated to the task, but a single machine can run many instances of the server software.If you want a web-based interface, you could just run apache on the same machine and write CGI scripts that send info to the game server and generate forms from game data for you to adjust.RTS games are pretty much all client-to-client, which means that every client acts as their own server and talks directly to all other clients in the same game. If you're looking for something like battle.net that lets players chat with eachother, form lobbies to gather people for a game, and launch the game for a group, all you need is an IRC server (or you could make something using webchat-style scripts in either &#106avascript or php/perl/etc).If you just want to store high scores or other not-needed-during-gameplay settings, you could just use a standard webservice running MySQL and PHP, then write a few scripts to allow very specific submissions (to prevent flooding, submission of random 1GB files, etc) and specific queries ('get character info for account name X w/ password Y', 'get top 100 high scores', 'get rank for account name X', etc) and use HTTP to have your game communicate with the server.   