Looking for a server solution

Mloren · Post by **Mloren** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 6:13 am

I'm looking for some sort of dedicated server type thing to run the game I'm working on.
This thing is that hiring a dedicated server seems like massive overkill.
The game is fairly small and due to its turn-based nature will only need to send like 2K of data every 5 minutes or so.

I know socket programming (eg winsock) and in the past I have just made my own software solution, but this usually involves having one of the clients act as host and then they have to deal with port forwarding and its horrible.

What I'm thinking is that surely there is some existing generic technology that is common in websites that would allow the sending of this tiny amount of data.

I know next to nothing about web-technologies so I may be on completely the wrong track, but I'm thinking something like a websites apache server, php page, or similar could be used.

But as I said I don't know anything about these.

Ideally I don't want to pay lots for a dedicated server, if it is something that runs already within a standard websites I'm happy to pay for hosting for one of those.

I guess what I'm asking here is if anyone has any ideas on where I should start looking.
Is there an existing technology that would do what I want? or am I just going to have to go the dedicated server or port forwarding approach?

hendu · Post by **hendu** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 8:28 am

The web tech (php, cgi etc) could be used, yes. But you'd need to remember it's always pull, the server can't push data to the clients.

A very small VPS is not much more expensive than a shared web host, and you could run any proper server there.

serengeor · Post by **serengeor** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 8:31 am

there are also VPS(virtual private servers) which AFAIK are a bit cheaper. In my country server with:
Bandwith: 50GB.
Space:500mb.
...(More stuff I was lazy to translate).
Is only ~0.8$ atm. (and normally its 1.6$).

Grumpy · Post by **Grumpy** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:50 pm

Have you thought about making your own server ??
Do a search under making your own... its seems simple enough.

serengeor · Post by **serengeor** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:31 pm

Grumpy wrote:Have you thought about making your own server ??
Do a search under making your own... its seems simple enough.

Well, some people don't keep their computers 24 hours a day and may not want to use their own bandwidth.

Mloren · Post by **Mloren** » Sun Jun 26, 2011 3:00 am

Thanks for this.
its been helpful.