Topic

Quick question about how the server works

I read somewhere that there is no 'server' and i can basically play with anyone since the world is 100% open.

Lets say we eventually get to 1mil players. it would be ridiculous to share maps with that many players. how does the server work? How does it select where i play etc.

Posted 20 months ago by Justos Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • No, there is definitely a server serving images and data (JSON) out to the clients. It can't magically come form nowhere ;)

    As far as delivering to that many players, the secret is a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Basically, a whole bunch of servers store all the same (parts of) data and a the server that is closest to you geographically and least busy will serve you the data.
    Peer to peer technologies are in use by Blizzard to distribute games and could be used in glitch, but there are a lot of problems with this technology as it is still relatively new to the playing field.
    Posted 20 months ago by geoffreak Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When someone said there was "no server", what they really meant was that glitch is not "sharded", in the usual MMO sense. When you play World of Warcraft, you pick a "server" (or "realm") to play on, and you can only talk to and play with other playerw on the same server. World of Warcraft has more than 200 servers in the US alone.

    Instead, Glitch is one giant world - every player is in the same world as every other player. We can do this because the Glitch world is very big and can expand as we add more players.

    In terms of real servers (the machines that run the game), there are many of them, each responsible for different parts of the world at different times.
    Posted 20 months ago by Bees! Subscriber! | Permalink