Topic1: Load balancing & Scaling about noahgameframe

[tachen]

https://doc.photonengine.com/en-us/onpremise/current/applications/loadbalancing/application

[ketoo]

@tachen Great! If the players just playing in a room like LOL or DOTA2, it looks like easier to implement.

From the docs of Photon:

The Master server handling all the Game Server Peers and the Game Server reporting Game States to the Master, which game server will be assigned depending on their workload. If the clients want to connect to the game server must get a Game Server address from the Master,

The disadvantages of Photon are that the Master Server just only one instance when running, it's a single point; the Game Server handling Client Peers no any proxy/gate to route the incoming traffic.

By the way, it's hard to design a game like WOW if we use lobby mode on the Game Server. Any suggestions for this?

[tachen]

Photon also have a MMO server!

https://doc.photonengine.com/en-us/onpremise/current/applications/mmo/mmo-concept

[ketoo]

@tachen The calculation of which items fall into which interest areas that is the AOI management. The AOI management is a useful module in MMO world, but interest management is not the same meaning as scaling.

Regarding the game like LOL or DOTA2, you can create multiple rooms, it's easy to add new game server instance at run-time if your load increases.

Regarding the MMO game like WOW, if too many players located in the same scene like a town in the real world, it's hard to hold on by one server instance, which is the reason we would t design the scaling module.

The interest management can make sure the clients receive the events that originate from regions within their view distance only, this optimization can improve the performance in crowded areas, but it doesn't mean it enhancing the scalability.

Yes, we must have a region management to improve the performance, so, I think that we hold the regions by different server instance for MMO game is a good way to expand the load ability. Managing the interest is the key to success, however, how to manage the regions and keep its data correct is a hard job when adding some new instances for scaling.

As far as I know that the "Big World" engine now supporting this feature, but it's hard to know the details of its mechanism.