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T=Machine » 8 things to avoid when building an MMOG server A few years ago, I wrote an article for Develop magazine - “10 MMOs you don’t want to do”.
Here’s 8 things you really shouldn’t do but that might seem like a good idea if you’ve never made an MMOG before.
All these are examples of things that have been done on real MMO projects, usually MMORPGs.
1. use off-the-shelf middleware from the enterprise industry. It’s designed for completely different usage-patterns and cannot cope with MMO style usage. Equally, initially distrust anything from traditional Big Iron companies.
2. think that Grid Computing will somehow magically solve the problems. It won’t (c.f. previous point).
3. aim to code the server in a scripting language. You *can* run some scripts embedded in the server, but not the server itself - but even that can screw you when you’re trying to run thousands of scripts at once
4. assume that front-end load-balancing will solve any problems. It won’t, all it does is increase the efficiency of your cluster by a small amount. And it usually won’t provide you with failover, because most game designs will end up kicking you from your server if it dies, so the failover never gets used at that level.
5. ignore performance testing until mid-way through the project. If performance tests at 10% of the way through production say it’s slow, that means you’re in deep trouble - it does NOT mean that “we’ll come back and optimize it later”. Optimizing netcode and server code is NOT like traditional single-threaded local-only optimization: many of the things you’re dealing with (like LANs, and TCP/IP stacks) run orders of magnitude too slowly, so your optimization comes from imaginative system-architecture, not from optimizing small chunks of code at a time.
6. ignore billing concerns in your core game design. Non-free MMOG’s are entirely about billing, which means that you have to design it in, and build it in to the tech design from an early stage. Retrospectively adding billing hooks and billing information to existing server codebases is often about as easy and effective as retrospectively making your code secure. Just don’t go there.
7. hire an academic who specializes in networking, especially a PhD student (this gets done quite often). All this means is that they’ve obsessed with a very narrow slice of the many many problems, and generally they won’t know WTF to do about the rest of the problems. That’s no better than just promoting a general programmer to become “the new Server specialist”
8. innovate on both technology AND game design at the same time. Either do a traditional MMO so you can re-use all the existing common wisdom for design, and get to market (or at least a stable GDD) fast, and use the slack that buys you to focus on better tech, or use the most boring tech you can think of (instance lots; do lowest-hanging-fruit in your tech design) and innovate on the gameplay
9.
The Game Industry Salary Survey 2007 - GameCareerGuide.com #
The Game Industry Salary Survey 2007
[09.03.07]
- Jill Duffy
#
Seventy-three thousand dollars a year.
That's the number that got a little bit of buzz this year. It's the average salary of a game developer. But it's just a number, and it's nowhere near what entry-level candidates should vie for when sealing the deal of their first industry job; nor is it a perfect bar against which to measure game developer salaries regionally, since the cost of living varies drastically between states like California, Texas, and North Carolina.
Here, we take a more tailored look at the statistics in light of what someone new to the game industry would need to know by paring down the results of Game Developer's sixth annual salary survey.
An extended version of this article, including information about developers' average level of education, differences in pay by gender, and more, can be found in the April 2007 issue of Game Developer magazine, available for downloadable purchase for $3.95.
Fully Loaded Legal Windows at 0$ Cost » Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips Fully Loaded Legal Windows at 0$ Cost
8 November, 2006 | written by Aibek | 15 comments
Many of my friends once in a while ask me to format and reinstall their windows system. While reinstalling is not a big deal, getting all necessary programs afterwards is. So, I decided to dedicate this post to all-needed software tools for healthy and trouble free PC usage(i.e. antivirus, spyware removal, firewall, system maintenance tools, office software, media players and etc). Based on number of downloads and user reviews I have compiled list of best software tools available which are 100% free. The cool thing about this list is that most of these programs are the best available in their particular domain. You can actually have fully loaded legal system at 0$ cost. Here it goes…
Name
Description
Review / Download
Security
Antivir Personal Edition 6 Antivirus Program link (allmost 1 mil downloads withiin 5 month)
AVG Antivirus Free Edition 7 Antivirus Program link (over 11 mil downloads within 3 weeks)
ZoneAlarm 6 Firewall (protect your computer from hackers and prevent some programs connecting to the internet without your consent) link (over 40 mil downloads)
Spybot Search & Destroy 1.4 Spyware Removal Tool link (over 80 mil download)
Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 Spyware Removal Tool link (over 220 mil downloads)
Maintenance
SyncBack 3.2 Files Backup Tool link (over 50.000 downloads within 4 month)
CCleaner System Optimization Tool / Registry Cleaner link (allmost 1.8 mil downloads in 2 weeks)
RAM Booster 2 RAM Recovery Tool(speedup your computer by recovering RAM) link (3.2 mil downloads in 11 month)
Free RAM XP Pro RAM Recovery Tool link (4.4 mil downloads in 7 month)
Office/Documents
OpenOffice 2.0.4 Microsoft Office Alternative link (over 500 .000 downloads in 4 month)
Adobe Reader 7.0.8 View and Print Adobe PDF files link (over 30 mil downloads in 4 month)
Media (Play any Movies)
VLC Media Player These 2 players in combination with codec pack below will play almost any video file you may have. I am a big movie buff and it always worked for me link (approx 3.5 mil downloads in 6 month)
DivX Player 6.2.2 link (over 50 mil downloads in 5 month)
Advanced DVD Player DVD player link (more then 400.000 downloads in 3 weeks)
Avant DVD Player DVD player link (more then 400.000 downloads in 3 weeks)
Klite Codec Pack No more hunting for codecs. link (one of the best codec packs available)
Browsers & Internet Related
Mozilla Firefox 2.0 All belowed web browser link (more then 2mill downloads in 2 weeks)
Internet Explorer 7 New version of Microsoft’s IE browser. Much better then previous releases. (IE7 vs. Firefox 2 by CNET) link (more then 8 mil downloads within 3 weeks)
Flash Player 9 Needed for viewing flash animations on the websites link (more then 8.5 mil downloads in 4 month)
QuickTime 7.1.3 Most popular player used for viewing videos integrated into websites (ex; video blogs, trailers) link (more then 16 mil downloads in 2 month)
Other
WinRAR RAR archiver link (more then 40 mil downloads in 2 month)
Once you have all fundamentals, you can tweak and dress up your system even more with some of the desktop applications we reviewed before. Enjoy!
