Multiplayer Support for Corona SDK

Here at uDESIGN.me, we’re always busy with one project or another. When our time isn’t taken up by our flagship title `arc arcana`, we’re working on smaller projects such as our tactical RPG, pet simulator and other things; just to make sure there’s a bit of variety in our development process.

In the development of our tactical RPG, we realised that without multiplayer support – the game would be lacking that essential component of either co-operative play against the computer, or head to head combat against another player. So, with this in mind; we set out to develop a backend system and game class that could make this happen.

Well, after just a few days – we had a rough prototype working. Two players could play head to head in a turn based setting; with no lag noticeable and no performance issues that we’ve been able to discover.
The server was developed in Python and is able to respond to simple http.request calls from your game.

Currently, the storage backend utilizes SQLite; but we’re scaling this to work with BigDB and other similar database systems (for unlimited scaling of your game). Game logic is of course written in Lua (it’s a Corona system; what else would we use?).
So, we’ve managed to add in an essential component to Corona; making your development process even faster. It’s not ready for public testing yet, but we’re hoping to have an early access test out by the 1st week of February.

Our next step is to work on real-time (not turn based) multiplayer support, and support for more than two players (i.e: an MMO, or a tactical RPG with 4+ simultaneous players). Currently the system supports turn-based combat in either a head to head or co-operative setting. We’ll have support for more players than this and a rough implantation of real-time when we launch our testing phase.

Donators to the project and automatically entered in to the early access multiplayer test, which will include full assistance in modifying the server logic to suit your game. During beta testing, the server software will reside on our network; but at launch, we’re happy to provide you with custom tailored code to run your own infrastructure – however, we will also be offering a full hosted solution where the multiplayer server resides on our infrastructure (multiple scaling aws instances; so no capacity issues).

Beyond this, people who donate during this early access period; will receive a full copy of the game and server code at no charge when we release the product. The early access donation window starts today and ends on Feb 1st 2011. At this point, we’ll stop accepting donations and new people in to the early access test.

Interested parties can contact us on ryan@udesign.me with the subject heading “Corona Multiplayer Support”.

For those interested, we will be releasing this under a donationware model for the game and server-side code. We're still debating what to do in terms of pricing for utilizing our hosted infrastructure.

What i great news! You guys rock. Mail sent. Can't wait to test this solution :)

We've responded to all interested parties; and are now updating the code to take advantage of the new async HTTP features from the latest drop :).

We've decided to go with MongoDB for the database backend on the server side of things, we're running some tests with it and it seems to be running smooth.

Hi udesignme,
Thanks for updating. What is the advantage for you; using a MongoDB over a standard MySQL database? Also, how are you implementing the async http features?

Thanks in advance,

We decided to go with MongoDB as it's an infinitely scalable NoSQL style database with JSON style document access. This will save us from having to worry about MySQL resource usage and scaling. It'll allow us to deal with millions of rows effectively.

As for async; we're incorporating it for network calls where you want it to work in the background, such as posting scores and making a move in a turn-based game (so one player doesn't freeze up whilst waiting for sending or receiving a turn). It's useful since it allows you to continue executing code and offload the results to a listener.

The early access system will be going out to donators this weekend / early in the week! :)

Cool but does sound like pubnub or will it be different to that?

Cool. Can't wait to see it! Keep up the great work. To tell you the truth I'm a little concerned about lack of mySQL support. I have it running on my server and would want to run multi-user over it. Now I need to go & install MongoDB. One more thing to manage etc...

What happened to this library? Any news? I know life happens and all but it is now almost 3 months later with no word. Can the donators at least get a couple lines of explanation in their inbox? Was it all vaporware?

It is a good question. What happened to "this weekend / early in the week! :)" ?

I would like to hear an update on this as well. I (foolishly) donated to this project out of good faith and haven't heard anything since - it's like they've dropped off the face of the planet. This is the last reply I've received from them:

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from    Ryan @ Akisoft! ryan@akisoft.co.uk
date    Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 2:51 AM
subject Re: Corona Multiplayer Support
 
Hi Nick,
 
We're just in the midst of updating it to work with more DB systems amongst other performance hits.
 
Hoping to get it out in the next few days :).
 
Thanks,
Ryan.

I have also donated and this are last words from uDESIGN.me sent to me at 25th of January

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Hi Piotr,   I’ve noted you down for access to the early beta test, we’re in the midst of updating the code to take advantage of the new async HTTP features in the latest Corona build at the moment J.   Thanks, Ryan.

I'm a bit confused, this was released quite a while ago and we've been in active contact with developers regarding their implementation. There's about thirty people/entities currently using it - so I'm not surprised some people have fallen through a gap somewhere.

Drop an email to ryan@udesign.me and we'll get this sorted for you - I rarely check these forums (I've only just seen the thread subscription for the posts today, didn't even see the older ones).

To nckmrtn however; if you feel we're "scam artists" and are going to throw those sorts of words around - I'd rather refund you and not have you deal with us (if this is what you prefer), it's much simpler in the long run :). You'll realize as you get in to business that stuff occasionally falls through the cracks; and it's usually for amounts much higher than what was donated.

Ryan, thanks for the update and I apologize if my post came off as calling you a scam artist.. I said 'if no update can be provided' but regardless it was a poor choice of wording on my part.

The reason I finally resorted to posting on here is because I have tried emailing several times but never received a response and saw that others were in the same boat.

Upon reviewing my emails to you they were sent to ryan@akisoft.co.uk which was your email at that time, but your email is now ryan@udesign.me - I think that might have been where I got lost in this.

I apologize again, I've been burned on stuff like this before in other communities and because of that I was all to quick to go on the offensive.

Great to see some closure to this topic.

My situation was that I sent my initial inquiry to ryan@udesign.me and received replies from ryan@akisoft.co.uk for a while and then after my lasy message which was about the PayPal transaction id I never heard back from Ryan. Either way its not the clients responsibility to know about email changes and track someone. It is only professional courtesy to stay on top of simple matters like this.

Anyways, I look forward to seeing this multi-user library for what its worth. Thank you.

Emails to the akisoft.co.uk domain still work perfectly fine, the issue is that I receive XXX emails per day that generally need my attention in some way, I occasionally miss some :(.

It's quite late here and I'm not on a machine with access to anything (new Vaio \o/), but will be contacting you all over the next couple of days to resolve this. Hope that's okay!

I think this is one of those "excuse worst than the fault" kind of situations. We all live and breath similar challenges. Its very insulting to offer as an excuse that you get hundreds of email per day and sometimes some fall through the cracks. If you can't cope with it then don't play. Good luck!

PS... Still waiting. Since February.

We have an in-house LUA project that has created to support smartfoxserver's game server.

:D Any of you need a library like it? Should we sell it?

Another week has passed, still haven't heard anything. Am I the only one who 'slipped through the cracks' this go around?

Nope. Same here. I emailed to the 'correct' address couple times and eventually got the following response :

"On the road at the moment. Will email when home later.

Thanks!"

This was 5 days ago. Must be a long drive...

I don't think I want to use this framework even if it turns out to be amazing really. Think about it. Next time you need support for a bug etc you may have to wait 6 months to get any response.

My family has come down with hand, foot and mouth disease - I didn't even know you could catch this. I'll be out of action for about a week or so, so if you want to wait, it'd be most appreciated - if you'd rather just have a refund, drop me an email to that effect and will handle when not so feeling like death.

Would love to get a hold of that LUA project :). I used SmartFoxServer in the past for one of my games (Flash game) and I really liked it. Easy to use and implement. If you wouldn't mind sharing it, throw me an e-mail at edgar@mirandabros.com :)

@edgar86m
Thanks. We are creating a test project. Stay tuned!!

@khanh.dq

If you need any help testing/building it let me know! Would be interested in helping.

@khanh.dq any update on the SmartFoxServer client code?

@ udesignme, hope you and your family are feeling better now. Please send the library code or issue a refund at your earliest convenience. Whichever way you'd prefer to go. Thanks

@khanh.dq any updates!? Would REALLY love to check it out!

@khanh.dq we are also very interested in a Smartfox LUA library

views:2536 update：2011/9/19 13:40:57