Multiplayer Support for Corona SDK
Here at uDESIGN.me, we’re always busy with one project or another. When our time isn’t taken up by our flagship title `arc arcana`, we’re working on smaller projects such as our tactical RPG, pet simulator and other things; just to make sure there’s a bit of variety in our development process.
In the development of our tactical RPG, we realised that without multiplayer support – the game would be lacking that essential component of either co-operative play against the computer, or head to head combat against another player. So, with this in mind; we set out to develop a backend system and game class that could make this happen.
Well, after just a few days – we had a rough prototype working. Two players could play head to head in a turn based setting; with no lag noticeable and no performance issues that we’ve been able to discover.
The server was developed in Python and is able to respond to simple http.request calls from your game.
Currently, the storage backend utilizes SQLite; but we’re scaling this to work with BigDB and other similar database systems (for unlimited scaling of your game). Game logic is of course written in Lua (it’s a Corona system; what else would we use?).
So, we’ve managed to add in an essential component to Corona; making your development process even faster. It’s not ready for public testing yet, but we’re hoping to have an early access test out by the 1st week of February.
Our next step is to work on real-time (not turn based) multiplayer support, and support for more than two players (i.e: an MMO, or a tactical RPG with 4+ simultaneous players). Currently the system supports turn-based combat in either a head to head or co-operative setting. We’ll have support for more players than this and a rough implantation of real-time when we launch our testing phase.
Donators to the project and automatically entered in to the early access multiplayer test, which will include full assistance in modifying the server logic to suit your game. During beta testing, the server software will reside on our network; but at launch, we’re happy to provide you with custom tailored code to run your own infrastructure – however, we will also be offering a full hosted solution where the multiplayer server resides on our infrastructure (multiple scaling aws instances; so no capacity issues).
Beyond this, people who donate during this early access period; will receive a full copy of the game and server code at no charge when we release the product. The early access donation window starts today and ends on Feb 1st 2011. At this point, we’ll stop accepting donations and new people in to the early access test.
Interested parties can contact us on ryan@udesign.me with the subject heading “Corona Multiplayer Support”.