As the gaming industry expands, traditional computing architecture cannot meet the demand for high-quality games from players. The rapid growth of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games and mobile games means that cloud services have more support responsibilities for games as back-end servers. Therefore, a reliable platform architecture is essential to ensure stable systems and business operations.
In this article, we will introduce the architecture of Alibaba snowcloud Solutions for MMO games applied to different scenarios.
Technical Challenges With MMO Games
High bandwidth and high packet volume
MMO games typically require real-time interactivity between players on the same screen. Therefore, a large amount of mobility and combat packets must be transferred between users in real-time.
In this case, MMO game servers generate a large number of communication packets when multiple players play together. Therefore, access layers of MMO game servers require high network bandwidth and high network packet throughput.
Restoration Of Permanent Resources
Mobile and web-based MMOs often experience a massive increase in traffic. As a result, game publishers need maximum protection and the use of game server resources to handle bad traffic. This is especially true for web page-based games.
High Computing Power Requirements
For snowcloud web games, playing seamlessly between users means game publishers need to increase the number of players in individual zones at the same time as much as possible. The maximum number of players in an individual zone at a time must usually be in the thousands. This feature can only be achieved with a high computing capacity of the server.
Multi-Region Support
MMO games usually connect users in different areas. Also, for mobile gaming scenarios, players often walk around. Therefore, game servers must be dynamically assigned to players to ensure smooth gameplay.
Product Construction
General reference architecture solution for MMO games
Alibaba Cloud’s comprehensive suite of products provides solutions for all gaming scenarios, including game downloads and updates, commercial game servers, game logic servers, game database servers, and game platforms. Game data operations for game operations and maintenance monitoring platforms. It can effectively improve O&M performance, improve service experiences, and reduce total operating costs. Alibaba Cloud’s gaming solution uses products such as Object Storage Service (OSS), Content Delivery Network (CDN), Flexible Computer Service (ECS), ApsaraDB for RDS, MaxCompute, and CloudMonitor.
MMO Game Architecture: Client Games
The following list counts the specific interactions of data in the data:
- The client connects to the gateway server to initiate the login request.
- Gateway server sends the login request to the login server.
- Login server initiates an identity verification query from the snowcloud server.
- The DC server accesses the game DB server to query data and return results.
If ID verification is successful, the login server keeps query data and returns account status data (character, level, attributes, last login view server, geolocation, and other information). It also synchronizes login status and information with the central server.
The center server is in charge of distributing information to the relevant sen server. At the same time, the player’s online notification is transmitted to the player’s friends and the player’s online status monitor (to control the connection again after the disconnection and disconnection expires).
After the gateway server receives authentication information, it establishes a connection to the sen server and the player successfully logs into the sen server.
If the player has public information to transfer, a request is sent to the central server. The central server handles the delivery of message packets.
The view server starts writing all user behavior in the log. At the same time, the query or data storage request of the relevant player is sent to the DC server.
Alibaba Cloud MMO Client’s Game Architecture Has The Following Features:
The gateway server is responsible for all network packet forwarding. In general, the load of the network is concentrat here, so it has high requirements for network performance.
Sen Server consists of game logic and is relatively dependent on CPU power and requires a certain level of network packet forwarding capabilities.
A single gaming zone serves more than 10,000 players. Logic Server typically distributes players based on scene maps. Large scales can be obtaine by dividing the lines.
The DC server player caches the data and writes it inconsistently in the database. This ensures that game clients can read and write data quickly. You have high availability requirements, so you should use the application layer to implement the data fault tolerance mechanism.
The logging server collects and processes all service behavior logs for an area. It definitely has high disk write performance۔ Typically, this function is implemente by grouping multiple servers.
MMO Game Architecture: Mobile Games
Alibaba Snowcloud MMO Mobile Game Architecture Has The Following Features:
Compared to client games, mobile games have less complex gameplay and shorter life cycles. With this feature in mind, along with the operator’s policies and resource economy model, mobile games adopt a relatively simple implementation architecture. However, a minority of MMO mobile games use client game implementation architecture.
Clients usually connect directly to the game server. For very few games a gateway is set up on the game server interface or the gateway and game server are deployed on the same machine. Mobile games rely relatively on the CPU power and network packet forwarding capabilities of individual servers. A single gaming area typically supports 1,000 to 5,000 players online.
A dedicated game database server can be applied to each game server, or a single game database server can be applied to multiple zones.
Architecture-specific application solution for MMO games
Flexible Scaling Up And Down For Access Layer Server Clusters
With auto-scaling, you can automatically scale your access layer server cluster up and down. This allows you to deal effectively with boot storms, increased traffic from war events, and other scenarios and ensures that your server cluster resources have sufficient load capacity. This solution also applies to login servers and other servers that require a flexible scale.
High Availability Of Game Downloads And Updates – Self-Made ECS Source Site
A multi-level download retry mechanism ensures the high availability of downloads and updates, reducing the proportion of players lost during this phase. By dividing the return source address and the direct external download address, this solution avoids the potential security risks of exposing addresses and the unavailability of server load balancers. You can use rsync + inotify to sync files on multiple Origin site servers in real-time.
High Availability Of Game Downloads And Updates – OSS Source Site
A multi-level download retry mechanism ensures the high availability of downloads and updates, reducing the proportion of players lost during this phase. By dividing the return source address and direct external download address, this solution prevents potential security threats from exposed addresses. By configuring OSS as a snowcloud original site and taking advantage of internet juneau ak OSS ‘automatic remote replication feature, you further improve the availability and performance of the original site.
Large Game File Download And Return To Foreign Source: OSS Source Site
By implementing the original sites in China and abroad, this solution ensures fast and stable return operations. OSS’s cross-region replication feature automatically synchronizes files from the original site. The URL push feature pushes large files to L2 nodes, speeds up the first download, and reduces the number of back-to-source requests.
Abstract
MMO games are always rec. A high degree of attention from the industry. From the days of physical IDCs to the days of today’s cloud platforms, MMO client games have evolved into mobile and web games, presenting developers with countless technical challenges and innovation opportunities.
Alibaba snowcloud provides advanced infrastructure and examples of high performance to meet the different CPU computing power needs of all gaming scenarios at t juneau alaska. As the gaming industry grows, Alibaba Cloud will continue to improve its services and technology, providing users with easier, more stable, and more comprehensive gaming solutions.
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