Distributed Systems in Gaming PDF

Aisha Al-Aswad Distributed systems Distributed systems in gaming: Because massive multiplayer online games has became widely known and popular in t...

Aisha Al-Aswad Distributed systems Distributed systems in gaming: Because massive multiplayer online games has became widely known and popular in the last decade various of architectures are needed to make the best out of it and match the needs of the players all around the world with little to no mistakes. So here comes the distributed systems role. plenty of distributed systems types are used to make massive multiplayer online games as fast and noncomplex as possible. Here is the three main architectures are mostly used in Massive Multiplayer Online Games: 1) client-server architecture 2) multi-server architecture 3) Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architecture  An example of a distributed system in massive multiplayer online games Client-server architecture: The server in this architecture works as a central controller it holds all the copies of avatars and objects that needed in the game it connects with each client (gamer) and it maintains the global game state. All players updates and interactions happen on the server. The clients can fetch the necessary information about the global world from the server. This architecture is very simple to deploy, maintain and modify since the server is the only controller it’s also known for it’s Consistency. Multi-server architecture: expands the client-server architecture, usually because of large number of users. this architecture divides the global game world into several regions, and each  region works as one client-server architecture. It means that every server is responsible for its own set of clients and has its own global world. Each region connects with each other by communication among the servers, so the servers can exchange their own global world with each other and maintain the global game state consistent this architecture might be the best but very costly because each region need it’s server so it might cost times more than the client to server architecture. P2P architecture : It's used to improve scalability. Each peer works as both client and server, and it will handle some parts of the copies of avatars and objects, as well as maintains some parts of the global game state. This architecture can be highly scalable because the increased load will be distributed into various nodes and more resources will be introduced by adding new nodes it might be costly and it’s hard to back up the peers all at once but it’s flexibly and more fault tolerance because the data is not centralized so when one device stops working the others are not affected.  Other types : There might be other types of distributed systems that can be used in massive multiplayer online games for example you can combine two architecture such as p2p and client to server and you will have another type of distributed systems called “hybrid”. Massive multiplayer online games middleware: Distributed organized Information Terra Platform is a middleware used in massive multiplayer online games it’s a client-server architecture that works using 4 layers 1- Client layer 2- Proxy layer 3- Server layer 4- Data base layer In conclusion : massive multiplayer online games has various of concerns regarding the chosen architecture for their games since the players are increasing day by day and data is getting bigger day by day and this paper talked about various types of distributed systems that chosen in massive multiplayer online games and how each type works and the task it performs.