EWF Multiplayer test

First things first, do not expect much gameplay from this project, it is not finished game, actually not even a game, it's more just like a kind of technical demo.

What is it about?

EWFClient is client app for something like "MMO game", but there is currently no game yet. In current state it's only chat with minecraft-style looking fox avatars (still better than nothing, right?) :p

So why should you try it? Well, I uploaded this project, since I would like to test my networking framework in more real-like environment, where people from all over the world may try to connect and "play" together. I tested it already locally, but that's not the same, especially when networking comes into play.

Some technical details

Even though from player perspective there is not much available yet (meeeh, only boring chat and standard account management, nothing new), behind curtains a lot of work is happening to make even such simple experience available.

My framework is following scalable architecture for networking game, so it try to make it easy to handle more players or expand game world when necessary.

How it works? There are few kinds of servers available, they all work together to make whole gameplay possible. Depending on needs you can handle same game world by one server or split it between multiple servers if you have a lot of players online.

If you will be able to enter game and play using provided client that means all servers seems to work fine together. In some more details that are:

• AuthServer - server providing users authentication, only authenticated users can connect with most of other servers
• GatewayServer - server providing connection between clients and other servers (in general there may be many such servers, currently for test purposes, I only have one gateway working, since anyway I don't expect huge traffic)
• RealmServer - server allowing to manage characters and supervisor for group of world shards (realms may help with load balancing giving access to the same world, but use separate host machines. Players using different realms will be able to use same characters, but won't be able to meet players from other realms)
• ShardServer - server actually handling gameplay. Such server may handle only part of the whole world. Framework allows changing shards in background allowing uninterrupted gameplay even when leaving/entering new region handled by different server.

That all is nice theory, but I want to test it in practice and check if it works, how it works and how many times server will crash :p

Current configuration

Currently for test purposes I prepared two test realms:

• LowEnd realm - should be available most of the time (except power outage or some unexpected issues with host). Hosted on pretty old hardware, low memory, slow CPU, do not expect the best experience, but well, should work I guess
• HighEnd realm - hosted on better hardware, a lot more memory, much faster CPU, not working all the time (I can't afford to have it running 24/7). You can check it availability sometimes. I think I can run it at weekends in most cases.

Summary

Ahh, with all that in mind, you can check it out and try to "play" maybe with some friends. My goal for this project is to collect feedback, experienced issues and test how networking part works.

I am mostly interested in technical part of this project, since there is no much gameplay and I haven't focused on gameplay at all, so in the game itself there are only some assets placed together to check my async loading of nearby objects.

Project future & ideas

I don't have in mind any particular way this project will go further, so if you find it interesting you can share your ideas for where I could go from what I have. I don't really believe in making any big MMO game, it's more like hobby project I find interesting, but maybe with some community I could make just some MO (multiplayer online, with lack of massive) project :3

You can submit your feedback/issues and ideas here or you can join community chat room on my own webpage (be aware that my webpage may be sometimes unavailable)

Controls

As mentioned already, there is no much gameplay yet, so also controls are pretty simple:

W/S/A/D - move character (I know character controller is bad, but I haven't focused on that yet)

Space - jump

Hold shift - walk instead of run

T - write in chat

Chat special commands:

By default send messages are local, that means only players close to you will see your message. The same rule is valid for whispering, but not for global chat messages.

/whisper <character name> <message>

Ex: "/whisper Woof Boop" - send direct message "Boop" to "Woof" character (if your character use spaces in name, then sorry, no whispering to your character I guess)

/global <message>

Ex: "/global Helmo" - send global message "Helmo". Global messages are visible to all players, even players in different world shards.

/party <message>

Ex: "/party Let's go" - send "Let's go" message to party members (currently no way to create party, so pretty useless)

/unstuck - reset character position to spawn position. Use when you stuck or fall underground for some reason