Disclosure: On this site you won’t find specific advice on “how to call function xyz()”. Interpreting C++ ARM and #pragma dwim is also out of scope.

We’re treating our readers as intelligent beings who can use Google and/or StackOverflow, where all such specific questions were answered more than once.

What you will find is opinions, more opinions, and even more opinions on all the aspects of software development - and with a large chunk of them based on real-world experience too.

Your mileage may vary. Batteries not included.

Unity 5 vs UE4 vs Photon vs DIY for MMO

February 22, 2016 by “No Bugs” Bunny

Three-way shootout: Unity vs UE vs Photon

Quote:

You can still use HLAPI despite its shortcomings

Another Quote:

If you're using one of the engines above (and not your own one), and your game requires Client-Driven Development Flow, you may want to start with a single-player Unity 5, or with a single-player UE4.

Filed under: Book: D&D of MOGs1st beta of Vol. I-IIIOn.System ArchitectureDistributed systems(Re)ActorsOn.ProgrammingNetwork Programming

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IDL: Encodings, Mappings, and Backward Compatibility

February 15, 2016 by “No Bugs” Bunny

signing IDL contract

Quote:

Modifying generated code usually qualifies as a Really Bad Idea

Another Quote:

How much can be gained by each of such specialized encodings – still depends on the game, but if you can try-and-test a dozen of different encodings within a few hours – it will usually allow you to learn quite a few things about your traffic (and to optimize things both visually and traffic-wise too).

Filed under: Book: D&D of MOGs1st beta of Vol. I-IIIOn.System ArchitectureDistributed systemsOn.ProgrammingNetwork Programming

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MMOG. Point-to-Point Communications and non-blocking RPCs

February 8, 2016 by “No Bugs” Bunny

IP juggling between Client and Server

Quote:

In other words, you can write your code 'as if' all-your-code-within-the-same-FSM executed within the same thread

Another Quote:

As soon as we have these two parts of processing – we can say that our Server-to-Server communication is tolerant to all kinds of transient inter-server disconnects

Filed under: Book: D&D of MOGs1st beta of Vol. I-IIIOn.System ArchitectureDistributed systemsOn.ProgrammingNetwork Programming

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MMOG: World States and Reducing Traffic

February 1, 2016 by “No Bugs” Bunny

Data Compression

Quote:

In practice, for most classical RPGs you can get away with simulating each of your PCs and NPCs as a box (parallelepiped), or as prism (say, hexagonal or octagonal one)

Another Quote:

Mathematically speaking, without Interest Management, the amount of data on our servers will need to send (to all players combined), is O(N^2). Interest Management reduces this number to O(N)

Filed under: Book: D&D of MOGs1st beta of Vol. I-IIIOn.System ArchitectureDistributed systemsOn.ProgrammingNetwork Programming

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