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• Matchmaking algorithm with a set of filters

  - by Yuriy Pogrebnyak

  I'm looking for matchmaking algorithm for 1x1 online game. Players must be matched not by their skill or level, as usual, but by some specific filters. Each player sends request, where he specifies some set of parameters (generally, 2-4 parameters). If some parameter is specified, player can be matched only with those who has sent this parameter with exactly the same value, or those who hasn't specified this parameter. I need this algorithm to be thread-safe and preferably fast. It would be great if it'll work for 3-4 or even more parameters, but also I'm looking for algorithm that works with only one parameter (in my case it's game bet). Also I'd appreciate ideas on how to implement or improve this algorithm on my server platform - ASP.NET. One more problem I'm facing is that finding match can't be executed right after user sends request, because if other user sends request before matching for previous is finished, they won't be matched even is they possibly could. So it seems that match finding should be started on schedule, and I need help on how to optimize it and how to choose time interval for starting new match finding. P.S. I've also posted this question on stackoverflow

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• Do I need to create my own or use a commercial server for the features and matchmaking options I want my game to support?

  - by baptzmoffire

  So I'm developing an indie turn-based game for iOS and, in coding up a Game Center matchmaking class, I'm starting to question whether Game Center is even the best choice for what I want this game to do. I need to figure out whether I need to create my own server, invest in a preexisting client or server service, or if I even need to use a server at all. If I do need to use a ready-made service other than Game Center, which server would accomodate my game's needs best? I have limited resources and funds. Here is the list of features I want my game to support, ideally: Turn-based gameplay (a la "with Friends" and "with Buddies" games) Smart matchmaking (matching users up with other players of comparable skill/achievements) Random matchmaking Facebook matchmaking Specific username matchmaking Contact list matchmaking A way to select what "type" of match you want to challenge an opponent to. (In random, smart, and Facebook matchmaking, there will be different "wagers" the player can make. [e.g. "I wanna play a random opponent for 1000 points. Now, I wanna play my Facebook buddy for 1,000,000 points."] There will be a predetermined range of amounts you can play for. It won't be customizable.) Buddies list capability (Game-buddies, as opposed to contacts and Facebook) A higher concurrent game cap than Game Center offers (which I still can't really find a straight answer on) Scalability (it should support 2 or 20,000,000 players) Objective-C compatibility Flexibility (for all the stuff I haven't thought of yet) Am I dreaming, here? Is there even a service that can handle all of these features? Do I need to invest months in learning a networking language to build my own? If so, how much would I need to spend on hardware? I've been looking around all morning and, so far, the only seemingly viable option is SmartFox. Under "Everything and the kitchen sink" section here, it says they support "virtual world with Zones, Rooms and RoomGroups, create complex game challenges, send invitations, manage buddy lists, create custom permission profiles, oversee the security aspects and tons more." http://www.smartfoxserver.com/overview/platform Is there an option that Im just overlooking? Thanks for any help anyone can provide. Sorry for the long poast. One last question: Does anyone know which server Dice with Buddies uses? I was experimenting with how many concurrent games I could get going and my ADHD kicked in at about 80 games. 80 concurrent games would be great for my game, but again, I need the other features I mentioned too. Thanks again.

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• Group Matchmaking

  - by Simon Kérouack

  Consider different groups(1 or more players) queuing together, we want to make 2 opposing teams containing each the same amount of players while keeping the groups together. At the same time we want to make both teams' average ranking as close as possible. Now also consider we have as a working set the subset of groups currently queuing within a given ranking range. For an example, let's say we have the following groups, ordered by queuing time: Id, playerCount, totalRank, avgRank 0, 3, 126, 42 1, 2, 60, 30 2, 1, 25, 25 3, 2, 80, 40 4, 1, 40, 40 5, 1, 20, 20 6, 3, 150, 50 for this specific subset, the expected output should ideally be: team1: 0, 1 (total: 186) team2: 2, 5, 6 (total: 195) up to now the solution I have been using is to balance out each team by making each team pick the group with highest ranking within the subset turn by turn. The team who picks is the one with the currently lowest average rank unless one is already full. If one team is already full the other team tries to complete itself with groups that would make the rank gap as small as possible. This solution turns out to have issues with frequent edge cases and I'm looking for a better solution, or some fine-tuning that could be made. In most cases, players seems to want teams of 5 people and queue in group of 2. Our average subset when 2 teams of 5 are chosen is made of about 14 players if that may be of any help.

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• Is there an IDE that can simplify the process of creating a game matchmaking website?

  - by Scott

  Yes, I'm an old guy. And I'm well versed in "C" and have written several games which I have been selling on the web for a number of years. And now, I would like to adapt one of my games to be "online". Sounds simple. I'm sure I can use the thousands of lines of "C" code that I've already written. Right? So my initial investigation begins. First, I think I'll need a server program that lives on a dedicated server (or a VPS probably) that talks to a bunch of client applications that live on individual devices around the world. I can certainly handle that! (I think to myself). I'll break up my existing game into two pieces, a client piece that is just the game displays and buttons, and a server piece that does everything else. Piece of cake, right? But that means that the "server piece" must be executed on a remote machine somewhere and run 24/7. Can I do that? [apparently, that question is so basic, so uneducated, and so lame, that nobody has ever posed it before. Because hours of Googling does not yield an answer. Fine. I'll assume I can do that and move on.] I'll need a "game room", which to me means a website where you log in and then go to a lobby of some kind where you can setup your preferences, see if any of your friends are connected, and create or join games. Should be easy, but it's not. No way. Can I do all this with my local website builder? (which happens to be 90 Second Website Builder, a nice product, btw). It turns out, I can not. I can start with that, but must modify each page, so I can interact with my sql database. So I begin making each page a "PHP" page and dynamically modifying the HTML code with PHP code. I'm already starting to get a headache. Because the resulting web pages looked terrible, I began looking at using JQuery. I want to user a JQuery dialog on my website to display a list of friends and allow the user to select one to invite to the game. [google search for "how to populate a JQuery dialog from a sql database" yields nothing but more confusion.] Javascript? Java? HTML? XML? HTML5? PHP? JQuery? Flash? Sockets? Forms? CSS? Learning about each one of these, and how they interact with each other and/or depend on each other is too much for my feeble old brain. Can anyone simplify this process for me? Is there an IDE that will help me do all this without having to go back to college for a few years? Thanks, Scott

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• Clientside anticheating in multiplayer game 1vs1

  - by garnav

  I'm developing a simple card game, where there will be a matchmaking system that will put you against another human player. This will be the only game mode available, a 1vs1 against another human, no AI. I want to prevent cheating as much as possible. I have already read a lot of similar questions here and I already know that I cannot trust the client and I have to make all verifications server side. I intend to have a server (need one for the matchmaking anyway) and I intend to make some verifications server side but if I want to check everything server side this makes my server to be able to keep track of the state of all current games and check every action, and I don't have the money/infrastructure to support that server. My idea is to make clients check and verify some of the actions made by their opponent* and if they find some illegal action notify the possible cheating to the server and make the server verify it. This will still require my server to keep track of all current games, but it will save resources only checking some things that cannot be checked at client side(like card order in the deck) and only checking other things when they are actually wrong. *(only those they can check with out allowing themselves cheating! for example:they can't check if the played card was in hand cos that will need them to know all cards in hand) Summing up, my questions are: is this a viable approach? will I actually save resources doing this or the extra complexity in the server and client for exchanging this messages is not worth it? do you know any game that has successfully or unsuccessfully tried a similar approach? Thanks all for reading and answering

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• What options do I have for game hosting.

  - by Jonathan Kaufman

  DISCLAIMER: I know this question starts to leave development island but it is very game development related and still think this is the best place. I see many free MMOs/online desktop client games out there. I am baffled at the ability to fund such. I don't mind hosting myself but would at least like to have someone host a matchmaking service. If these indie devs really are pouring money down the server drain then I'm screwed but if some one can "learn me" :) some alternatives I would greatly appreciate it.

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• As an affiliate, how do you know if a sale is made?

  - by fiftyeight

  I want to start doing affiliate marketing on a blog. Now I have someone who wants to advertise who has contacted me. How do I know if he has made a sale to a user who came through my website? Is this only possible to track using a third party in order to know he isn't lying? If so, what platforms are available for this kind of "indpendent" affiliate marketing? i.e I don't need the matchmaking service, just the tracking service. the blog is Wordpress if it matters

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• Need a solution to store images (1 billion, 1000,000,000) which users will upload to a website via php or javascript upload [on hold]

  - by wish_you_all_peace

  I need a solution to store images (1 billion) which users will upload to a website via PHP or Javascript upload (website will have 1 billion page views a month using Linux Debian distros) assuming 20 photos per user maximum (10 thumbnails of size 90px by 90px and 10 large, script resized images of having maximum width 500px or maximum height 500px depending on shape of image, meaning square, rectangle, horizontal, vertical etc). Assume this to be a LEMP-stack (Linux Nginx MySQL PHP) social-media or social-matchmaking type application whose content will be text and images. Since everyone knows storing tons of images (website users uploaded images in this case) are bad inside a single directory or NFS etc, please explain all the details about the architecture and configuration of the entire setup of storage solution, to store 1 billion images on any method you recommend (no third-party cloud storage like S3 etc. It has to be within the private data center using our own hardware and resources.). The solution has to include both the storage solution and organizing the images uploaded by users. How will we organize the users images if a single user will not have more than 20 images (10 thumbs and 10 large of having either width or height 500px)? Please consider that this has to be organized in a structural way so we can fetch a single user's images via PHP/Javascript or API programmatically through some type of user's unique identifier(s).

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• Development costs of an indie multiplayer arcade shooter

  - by VorteX

  Me and a friend of mine have been wanting to remake one of our favorite games of all time (007: Nightfire) for a long time now. However, remaking a game likes this is really complicated because of the rights to the Bond-franchise. That site was created months ago, and by doing so we have found some great people (modelers, level designers, etc.) that want to help, but our plans have changed a little bit. Our current plan is to create a multiplayer-only remake of the original game, removing all the Bond-references so that the rights shouldn't be a problem anymore. We still want to create the game using the UDK and SteamWorks for both PC and Mac. Currently there's 3 things I need to find out: The costs of creating an arcade shooter like this. We want to use crowdfunding to fund the project. The best way to manage a project like this over the internet. Our current team consists of people all over the world, and we need a central place to discuss, collaborate and store our files. The best place to find suitable people for this project. We already have some modelers and level designers but we also need animators, artists, programmers, etc. I believe creating an arcade game like this with a small team is feasible. The game in a nutshell: ±10 maps, ±20 weapons, ±12 game modes, weapon/armor pickups, grapple hook gadget, no ADS, uses SteamWorks, online matchmaking, custom games, AI bots, appearance selection, level progression using XP (no unlocks), achievements. Does anyone know where to start? Any help is appreciated.

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• Alternatives to a leveling system

  - by Bane

  I'm currently designing a rough prototype of a mecha fighting game. These are the basics I came up with: Multiplayer (matchmaking for up to 10 people, for now) Browser based (HTML5) 2D (<canvas>) Persistent (as in, players have accounts and don't have to use a new mech each time they start a match) Players earn money upon destroying another mech, which is used to buy parts (guns, armor, boosters, etc) Simplicity (both of the game itself, and of the development of said game) No "leveling" (as in, players don't get awarded with XP) The last part is bothering me. At first, I wanted to have players gain experience points (XP) when destroying other mechs, but gaining two things at once (money and XP) seemed to be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity. If I were to have a leveling system, that would require additional development. But, the biggest problem is that I simply couldn't fit it anywhere! Adding levels would require adding meaning to these levels, and most of the things that I hoped to achieve could already be achieved with the money mechanic I introduced. So I decided to drop leveling off completely. That, in turn, removed a fairly popular and robust mean of progression in games from my game (not that I would use it well anyway). Is there another way of progression in games, aside from leveling and XP points, that wouldn't get rendered redundant by my money mechanic, would be somehow meaningful (even on a symbolic level), and wouldn't be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity?

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• Worker roles in Windows Azure to host a multiplayer server

  - by MrWiggels

  I've been doing research on where to host a simple multi-player backend for a simple game I'm developing. So as a first choice I downloaded the Windows Azure SDK, which provides a nice and simple emulator environment where you can test out your application before uploading. I also download the Azure Social Game Toolkit (Visit), and followed as far as my understanding can take me. So, down to the main question. Is there anybody with experience developing Azure applications. I'm developing a Action RPG game, in a similar vein to Diablo III. I was thinking of putting up Matchmaking, Friends Lists, etc. Is there another way to connect to Azure services via something like UDP or TCP for sending packets or does everything have to go through HTTP requests? Is it even possible to use HTTP request/response for something like this? All game commands will be simple. Because the game server and the clients will be kept in-sync and will have deterministic actions, I'm just going to send actions like "Use Primary Skill" and "Use Secondary Skill". Any hints, ideas, light bulbs or a smack-in-the-face presentation will be much appreciated.

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• What is involved with writing a lobby server?

  - by Kira

  So I'm writing a Chess matchmaking system based on a Lobby view with gaming rooms, general chat etc. So far I have a working prototype but I have big doubts regarding some things I did with the server. Writing a gaming lobby server is a new programming experience to me and so I don't have a clear nor precise programming model for it. I also couldn't find a paper that describes how it should work. I ordered "Java Network Programming 3rd edition" from Amazon and still waiting for shipment, hopefully I'll find some useful examples/information in this book. Meanwhile, I'd like to gather your opinions and see how you would handle some things so I can learn how to write a server correctly. Here are a few questions off the top of my head: (may be more will come) First, let's define what a server does. It's primary functionality is to hold TCP connections with clients, listen to the events they generate and dispatch them to the other players. But is there more to it than that? Should I use one thread per client? If so, 300 clients = 300 threads. Isn't that too much? What hardware is needed to support that? And how much bandwidth does a lobby consume then approx? What kind of data structure should be used to hold the clients' sockets? How do you protect it from concurrent modification (eg. a player enters or exists the lobby) when iterating through it to dispatch an event without hurting throughput? Is ConcurrentHashMap the correct answer here, or are there some techniques I should know? When a user enters the lobby, what mechanism would you use to transfer the state of the lobby to him? And while this is happening, where do the other events bubble up? Screenshot : http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/695/sansrewyh.png/

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• Should Starting a Quick Game via Google Game Services be Iterated?

  - by user46727

  I have been following this tutorial for Google Play Game Services. I am a little unclear as to if the room matching algorithm should be looped or not. Can I just initialize this process once and let it time out? Or by iterating through it is it somehow rechecking it? If anyone had the approximate timeout that would be great as well. The problem stems from the fact that even when both phones are signing into the Game Services (at virtually the same time, my friend and I logged in), the room is not registering multiple people. One time my friend's phone even entered the game map, showing that he somehow was able to progress from the room initialization process. Relevant screen update methods which I am starting this matchmaking process: @Override public void update(float deltaTime) { game.options.updateTiles(); if(!isInitiated) { startQuickGame(); } } private void startQuickGame() { // auto-match criteria to invite one random automatch opponent. // You can also specify more opponents (up to 3). if(game.mGoogleClient.isConnected() && !isInitiated) { Bundle am = RoomConfig.createAutoMatchCriteria(1, 3, 0); // build the room config: RoomConfig.Builder roomConfigBuilder = RoomConfig.builder(Network.getInstance()); roomConfigBuilder.setMessageReceivedListener(Network.getInstance()); roomConfigBuilder.setRoomStatusUpdateListener(Network.getInstance()); roomConfigBuilder.setAutoMatchCriteria(am); RoomConfig roomConfig = roomConfigBuilder.build(); // create room: Games.RealTimeMultiplayer.create(game.mGoogleClient, roomConfig); // go to game screen this.mRoom = Network.getInstance().getRoom(); if(this.mRoom != null && this.mRoom.getParticipants().size() >= 2) { game.setScreen(new MultiGameScreen(game, this.mRoom)); isInitiated = true; } } else { game.mGoogleClient.connect(); } }

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• How to break up a table holding 100mil+ number of records?

  - by Chiao

  We're currently storing answers for 52 predefined questions for our clients in our matchmaking site. we have over 30million unique users summing up for worst case of a 52x30million rows. Of these 52 questions, 11 are required and always answered. Our previous solution was to open an answer table for each question. This solution distributed our answer rows for faster insert/delete/update. But it also caused us an unconventional programming such as dynamically opening a table each time a question is added/updated, or removing an answer table if it was to be destroyed permanently. We want to come up with a better solution for our third version but could't get very far yet. Any ideas to accomplish this in any other, perhaps a more conventional, way?

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• Social Search: Looking for Love

  - by Mike Stiles

  For marketers and enterprise executives who have placed a higher priority on and allocated bigger budgets to search over social, it might be time to notice yet another shift that’s well underway. Social is search. Search marketing was always more of an internal slam-dunk than other digital initiatives. Even a C-suite that understood little about the new technology world knew it’s a good thing when people are able to find you. Google was the new Yellow Pages. Only with Google, you could get your listing first without naming yourself “AAAA Plumbing.” There were wizards out there who could give your business prominence in front of people who were specifically looking for what you offered. Other search giants like Bing also came along to offer such ideal matchmaking possibilities. But what if the consumer isn’t using a search engine to find what they’re looking for? And what if the search engines started altering their algorithms so that search placement manipulation was more difficult? Both of those things have started to happen. Experian Hitwise’s numbers show that visits to the major search engines in the UK dropped 100 million through August. Search engines are far from dead, or even challenged. But more and more, the public is discovering the sites and brands they need through advice they get via social, not search. You’ll find the worlds of social and search increasingly co-mingling as well. Search behemoths Google and Bing are including Facebook and Google+ into their engines. Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter have done some integration of global web search into their platforms. So what makes social such a worthwhile search entity for brands? First and foremost, the consumer has demonstrated a behavior of acting on recommendations from social connections. A cry in the wilderness like, “Anybody know any good catering companies?” will usually yield a link (and an endorsement) from a friend such as “Yeah, check out Just-Cheese-Balls Catering.” There’s no such human-driven force/influence behind the big search engines. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and others call it “Friend Mining.” It is, in essence, searching for answers from friends’ experiences as opposed to faceless code. And Facebook has all of those friends’ experiences already stored as data. eMarketer says search in an $18 billion business, and investors are really into it. So no shock Facebook’s ready to leverage their social graph into relevant search. What do you do about all this as a brand? For one thing, it’s going to lead to some interesting paid marketing opportunities around the corner, including Sponsored Stories bought against certain queries, inserting deals into search results, capitalizing on social search results on mobile, etc. Apart from that, it might be time to stop mentally separating social and search in your strategic planning and budgeting. Courting your fans on social will cumulatively add up to more valuable, personally endorsed recommendations for your company when a consumer conducts a search on social. Fail to foster those relationships, fail to engage, fail to provide knock-em-dead customer service, fail to wow them with your actual products and services…and you’ll wind up with the visibility you deserve in social search results.

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• Seeking advice on tools and technology for my new game [closed]

  - by k.k. slider

  I'm a C# developer who has been programming a game in my spare time using XNA and Visual Studio. The game's logic is mostly done and I've completed a prototype that has most of the functionality of (what I envision to be) the final game. However, having heard about the uncertain future and (possibly) limited audience for XNA games, I'm looking to switch platforms... but I don't know what technology would best suit my needs. Below are some specifics about my game and what exactly I'm looking for, if you're interested: The game is a 2D turn-based tactical RPG (strategy game) for two players. It is a basic sprite and tile based game with animations and sound. 3D capabilities are not necessary. I'd like to allow players to compete with others online, and have a basic ranking/matchmaking system. I will probably need something that can interact with a server and a database (the game is turn-based and has no RNG, so cheating would be easy to detect even if most computation is done client-side and minimal data is sent to the server). Ideally, I would be able to release an early version of the game and have people give feedback as I develop additional features (similar to Minecraft). I'd prefer to have a way to release periodic updates to the game instead of releasing an absolute final product. To reach the widest possible audience, I'd prefer technology that allows me to release on PC, Android, iOS, and (maybe) Mac. This is a game with simple mouse inputs which can fit on a mobile touch screen. The game should be monetizable. If I find success with this game, then I may consider becoming a full-time indie game developer. I have several other game ideas and have learned quite a bit from my first attempt at game development. My first thought was an F2P/microtransaction model, but I'm open to other suggestions. Language isn't a primary concern of mine, since I have a decent amount of experience using several languages to program large projects. I'm willing to spend money (e.g. on a developer's license), but the more expensive it gets, the more hesitant I am to use it. I've looked into the following solutions... there are a LOT of tools out there... if anyone has experience with any of these and would like to recommend/reject any of them, it would be helpful. C#/.NET (XNA/MonoGame/SDL/SlimDX/Xamarin/ExEn/ANX?) HTML5/JS (AppMobi/PhoneGap/Marmalade/FlashCanvas/Cordova/libRocket?) Python (Pyglet/Pygame/Kivy?) Java (JavaFX/libGDX?) Unity/Construct 2/Cocos2D/NME/Corona/other game creation software? I'd like something that can do 2D and isn't limited by being too high-level. Other languages (Lua/LOVE? Moai?) Thanks for answering this rather long and tedious question...

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