Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by BoorishBears 3490 days ago
> Something like that could be packaged as Massively Multiplayer Online As A Service

That already exists, see Photon Engine's multiple PaaS options https://www.photonengine.com

Different ones have different APIs tuned for different types of gameplay and or Unity3D integration (by mimicking Unity's original networking programming API).

I've implemented them for an MMO I freelanced for a while back and it was pretty painless.
1 comments
stcredzero 3490 days ago
So Photon is operating a farm of servers that are running game loops, which can have pure functions injected into them? (Also, the per message pricing!)
link
BoorishBears 3489 days ago
No, Photon is doing "Massively Multiplayer Online As A Service" (did you even read their page?).

And actually they are running game loops, but you can't inject code into them unless you run their software on-premise, or use a separate system I recall them mentioning that offered server-side scripts that got injected in their loops.

And cost per message make perfect sense because of the networking model, which is fully message based. Paying per message is paying for bandwidth + cpu usage as a single combined rate.

link
stcredzero 3489 days ago
No, Photon is doing "Massively Multiplayer Online As A Service" (did you even read their page?).

And actually they are running game loops, but you can't inject code into them unless you run their software on-premise

So you are seemingly contradicting yourself. 1st you said that "they are doing that." Now you are saying they are also doing "Massively Multiplayer Online As A Service" -- but in a quite different way than what I specified. So yes, I did read what you posted. Apparently you only carelessly read mine.

link
BoorishBears 3488 days ago
I think you need to read my post again then. I'm not contradicting myself in any way.

You acted like no one offers a PaaS for MMOs (and gave it a ridiculous name).

I pointed out just one of many PaaS options for MMOs (or ...MMOAAAS as you insist on calling it.).

In fact, when working for that MMO we did evaluate options the did let you use their game loop with your cloud functions being called on triggers, but you'd have to look that up yourself, that was a few years ago (even Photon has added new services since I did that research).

If you think you have an approach that can enter the space, by all means go ahead, but PaaSes for MMOs have existed for ages.

link