Wow, I hadn’t seen that before. With such a requirement (or maybe just strict recommendation) that looks to alienate the majority of the indy projects currently being developed for Java. Perhaps that is taken out of context though or that has changed?
[quote]A server room is a huge barrier to entry for any small indie shop. Does JGN have such requirements?
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Not at all. JGN is extremely light-weight so you can make your games as bloated as you like.
JGN really adds very little weight on top of the NIO functionality of Java and attempts to smooth the development of networking through use of an OO approach to network versus the raw communication requirements that NIO puts on your shoulders. However, you can still do raw data packets even in the OO approach that JGN uses. Like I said, it’s designed to be flexible and cater to whatever the developer may want to accomplish, and as I’ve heard some crazy ideas I did my best when developing this framework to not make any assumptions on what the developer would want to do. Conversely, I did add extensions on top of the core functionality to simply common tasks though so you really get the best of both worlds.
That’s a valid point, but in my scenario, I’m developing a MMORPG game and I’ll be starting with a single server that I’m going to manage through a company like 1and1. The great thing here is that when I start to reach the limitations of the single server I can simply apply the image to another server and adjust my server space to universe allocation (meaning that specific areas of the universe are designated for specific servers but also provide fail-over to others). In addition, the system I’m developing takes into account that certain areas of space may at some times get a LOT more traffic than others, so the system I’ve been developing dynamically takes traffic into account and will adjust 3D space allocation accordingly (meaning that more than one server could share an area or that the area is reduced in size and allocates the trimmed space to other servers to decrease load until the traffic trims back). However, this is all just an extension to JGN and though it’s quite complicated to code, it’s still freakishly light-weight.
sunsett, you had mentioned earlier someone to do a game test with both darkstar and jgn to see how they compare. For our project, both solutions seem to be applicable and useable (although depending on a choice, I’d just to have to focus a little more work somewhere else). Since the comparison is also useful for me, instead of just the community, I’m interested in writing my game for both api’s in which case I could be able to give you the comparison you so desired. However, I must admit, my project wouldn’t be a simple test case in which case it might inadvertently favor one api over the other.
That sounds great. Feel free to post on the JGN forums if you have any questions as you go. I’m not too concerned about it being biased as the likelihood is that it would be in favor of JGN since it’s so darn easy to use.
that gives all kind of overhead, if you have 100 games running on that backend you can for the same price or cheaper have onsite ppl keeping it up redundancy in hardware etc. With that one server and growing you haven’t got redundancy nor someone to perform tasks 24. Also you don’t have up front costs. If after 3 months reality hits and your game isn’t catching on, etc. you have the cost of your server, setup cost for the rack, etc. And that all even less relevant if your like me, I like coding software engineering, NOT system administration. I’d pay extra not to be bothered with it. Perhaps I got the wrong impression but your making it sound like darkstars approach is bad or something while I see only plusses.
I wonder how darkstar handles isolation, can jeff shine some light on that.
Isolation in terms of what?, nodes being isolated from one another?, isolation of games? (SGS is also designed to host multiple games in one environment, again, for hosting services companies or larger studios who have already created 1 SGS back end), isolation of the client from the back end mid game?
[quote]Also you don’t have up front costs. If after 3 months reality hits and your game isn’t catching on, etc. you have the cost of your server, setup cost for the rack, etc. And that all even less relevant if your like me, I like coding software engineering, NOT system administration. I’d pay extra not to be bothered with it.
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Um … what are you talking about here? You don’t actually have to buy a server … there are hosting services that you can rent an entire server or u can buy a server and co-lo it. Its cheaper to just rent it initially. So if ur game doesn’t take off … u just cancel the service.
The Darkstar project requires someone that knows the system plus a room full of servers right. Its my thought that right now there are a lot less sys admins that are familiar with Darkstar which means that their prices are gonna be much higher then just doing a standard co-lo or rent … and the monthly cost for renting the extra servers is gonna be huge for indie devs.
Mr. Light, if you like Darkstar’s approach that’s great, but realize that JGN offers the same potential it just doesn’t force you into anything. You’re welcome to use JGN in any way you see fit. You can start out with hosting it through your home network and using DynDNS for all I care.
I was simply explaining the approach I’m using to get my game out there.
My statement was to simply state that the choice is yours. A big distinction that should be made between the two is Darkstar ultimately is out to make money. There’s nothing wrong with that and in many ways you get a lot of features you would otherwise not get, but JGN is a true open-source project. I will probably never make a dime off of it, but I’m developing because I need it for my own games and I see a need in the community for such a framework. If that need ever goes away I might be a little sad for all the work I’ve put into JGN, but I’ll happily switch to something better that I don’t have to maintain. I haven’t seen anything come close to the simplicity and power that JGN provides though, so until the next re-write of Darkstar is released I think I’m safe.
[quote]Darkstar’s approach that’s great, but realize that JGN offers the same potential
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Oh come on… I really hope that was only very poor wording?
The two really can’t be compared. It’s like: what is better: a FPS shooter or a MMORPG
Both parties can endlessly show their strong points, point eachother at the weak points or react to misinformation by stating their own thing luckily doesn’t have this ‘awful requirement’.
The only fair comparison is that Darkstar is aimed at the heavy blah blah blah blah blah blah
Riven, obviously you know a lot about performance tuning and things of that nature. I’m curious as to where you picked that knowledge up. Was it from specialized courses at college, or from trolling through the internet?
As far as I understand the information on the community page, project darkstar offers hosting services, so while a standard rental server might be cheaper in the short run, utilizing the darkstar services might be much cheaper in the long (total cost of ownership). If you are unsure about your game, you could also use the development SDK to host the game for the start and move on to the hosting services once it proves lucrative. Having said that, I still haven’t decided which library to use for my game, but I will definately have a closer look at both, hoping to find some development cost shortcuts in darkstar.
I wasn’t able to find any pricing information on Darkstar’s site (where I expected it to be I found blank pages), can you give a link or post that information here? Also, what kind of term do they offer? I’m assuming it’s not a month-to-month kind of deal?
I mentioned in a previous post my decision to go with someone like 1and1.com. The benefit there is that I don’t own the hardware, I don’t have to worry about any of that hassle. I do get a server that I have root access to and can run my game from (I’m referring to the managed server deals) for $100/month ($50 for the first three months). I have to set up a 2 year deal, but even if my game goes belly-up it’s not like that server is useless to me (my assumption is that Darkstar’s hosting options are specific to game hosting?). I have a server that I can host files, run a Battlefield 2 server (I often consider that one), set up another game, or put my personal home page on. I can do whatever I like with the server (apart from take it home…they don’t seem to be willing to let me do that).
I don’t want to make assumptions though about Darkstar. I’ve been out of the loop for a while on it now though, so I’m genuinely curious to know how they deal with these things.
By the way, because of all the kick-back I’ve gotten and the recent discussion about JGN here, I’ve set up a web site for JGN (http://javagn.org) and it’s running Trac. This will help with bug management and such. I haven’t really had the time to set it all up yet, but for those of you who keep harassing me that JGN needs a web site…I’m working on it.
For those of you not familiar with Trac, it’s a very nice Wiki/Bug Tracking/SVN tracking site. It can work directly with Mylyn (for those of you using Eclipse) and is extremely powerful. I use it with one of my other projects (http://www.jseamless.org - http://trac.jseamless.org) and absolutely love the simplicity and power it provides.
My bad, Isolation of games (so horizontally?). (I disregarded the others because those problems are not unique with respect to Darkstar’s approach.) I’m thinking stuff like badly behaving app’s, memoryObject leaks, runaway code, etc.
And as Sun wants Darkstar to get a foothold, there will undoubtedly be discounts.
Your right you can rent(or lease), most of the time your stuck on a fixed minimum amount of time your need to rent. Which is probably around those 3 months, so that doesn’t really have an impact. However since they do have to clean that server before use there are setup costs. It might just be putting an image on there but it’s still takes more time then deploying a ‘webapp’(darkstar apps should become as easy to deploy). also for the control you need to rent a whole box, Well there is shared virtual hosting too.
The cost for extra servers is irrelevant for the dev’s, as they don’t rent boxes, U’s, or Amperes. They rent processing power.(Darkstar is server agnostic, The network is the computer, etc). What I tried to point out is that the cost will be the same or less as normal (because it takes less man-hours.) as normal hosting but you get redundancy for free. because you end up with renting part of the processing power of the backend vs renting a single box or part of a single box.
sunsett, I wasn’t trying to say that darkstar is necessary better I was just pointing out that your arguments against darkstar didn’t make a impact on this side of the screen.
I though there was a program that allowed free hosting if you signed up early.
Sun offered the playground, but there were a very limited number of places, and those that got them tended to already have something they could show.
As I understand it, the idea is that the playground is almost like a Sun sponsored incubator. Once you’re project is developed and becomes successful, you sort out your own hosting, and they can move another project on to the playground and help you get it up and running. They get hosting experience, which helps them develop that business, and also helps with getting issues in SGS sorted, and you get free hosting whilst you are developing.
That said, I suspect that all of the project on there right now, are commercial developments, but that’s just speculation.
