That is my first foray into game-dev and I solely have webapp expertise professionally. I am making a browser recreation in nodejs/react. It’s principally text-based, so no intensive graphics (suppose chess.com with out the board/items). There’s a multiplayer component the place timing by the tenths of seconds is important.
What’s one of the simplest ways to implement a backend structure that may:
- Host a number of video games at a time
- Run a gameloop for five minutes per recreation (timer, recreation state, and many others)
- Settle for participant inputs in realtime
Extra particulars: The server must be ticking on a regular basis. Parts will likely be revealed on the display at particular intervals as a part of the gameplay. The participant is anticipated to reply to these parts and scored based mostly on once they reply.
These are quite simple specs, so I assumed I may use Firebase and Cloud Features to keep away from sustaining a backend infra. I am discovering that the realtime efficiency is actually nice with firebase, however operating a gameloop and accepting participant inputs utilizing cloud/serverless capabilities could be very uneven. Additionally they do not assist scheduled duties on the interval I would like, so I am losing quite a lot of assets with the gameloop (ticking) inside a operate. I positively can’t do ticking on the consumer facet due to browser throttling.
I am trying into different companies like Playfab and even DigitalOcean’s App Platform. Up to now, I am starting to suppose I am going to simply should plunker down and create a regular server. Even then, I am not skilled to know if a single gameloop can assist concurrent video games and scale, however that is a distinct downside.
These BaaS (Firebase, Playfab) appear nice so I haven’t got to fret concerning the infra stuff (websockets, database, scaling, and many others). However the gameloop facet of my recreation is making me second guess. Any steering could be significantly appreciated!
