Question: Can I use public servers for commercial games?

[happygreenfrog]

I'm kinda curious about this: If I were to use a public server in a commercial game (such as a game that I'm selling), would that be allowed? What about a freeware game? Or anything other than testing purposes? I really would like to know, since I doubt I could possibly afford to keep a VPS running, or a normal server, for that matter.

In the event that I can't use the public servers for such a purpose, then I would like to know: What is the best cheap-priced VPS hosting company that you know of? Also, what would the minimal requirements for running PyLacewing on such a server be? Can PyLacewing servers be hosted using Linux (most of the VPS hosts I've found so far usually have Linux servers)? Would it be better to use a Windows-based VPS or a Linux-based VPS if I were to be running a Lacewing server?

Sorry about all the questions, I've kinda been wondering about this stuff for a long time.

[Ryan]

Whether you can or not is fairly irrelevant, but I'll let the owners of the servers speak for themselves.

The bigger issue is if you do, you're asking for a lot of trouble. Without owning the server you have don't have any control over it. You can't notify your community about expected downtimes, you can't increase bandwidth if your server gets overloaded, and you can't provide a high level of customer service that will prevent a community from abandoning your game in favour of something more stable.

The solution is provide the user with the option to configure the server in the game itself. That way you can test with your community on public servers, then if your game blows up in popularity, you can advise your community to switch a server you can afford (maybe even raise money from your community to pay for the better server, and stress that you're providing a non-profit service). This will save you wasting money on a server if your game doesn't take off.

[Villy]

Linux is the way to go for a server.

I run the ledev.org pylacewing server (which for some unknow reason stops working a couple of times each year. I could probably automate restarting it but I can't be bothered to do so at the moment, however I tend to it as soon as I see someone post that it is down on the forum).

Personally I don't care what people use it for as long as it is legal. If it is a commercial product it would be nice with a donation but it is not necessary.

I can also host custom pylacewing servers for a small amount of money depending on the bandwidth usage / cpu usage. (I got 5 tb of bandwidth and I don't think that I use even a terabyte per month atm)

And I agree with Ryan hosting from within the game is awesome and would throw in that you could use a public server for listening all the player hosted servers.

[happygreenfrog]

Linux is the way to go for a server.

I run the ledev.org pylacewing server (which for some unknow reason stops working a couple of times each year. I could probably automate restarting it but I can't be bothered to do so at the moment, however I tend to it as soon as I see someone post that it is down on the forum).

Personally I don't care what people use it for as long as it is legal. If it is a commercial product it would be nice with a donation but it is not necessary.

I can also host custom pylacewing servers for a small amount of money depending on the bandwidth usage / cpu usage. (I got 5 tb of bandwidth and I don't think that I use even a terabyte per month atm)

And I agree with Ryan hosting from within the game is awesome and would throw in that you could use a public server for listening all the player hosted servers.

Okay. Thanks for the answers! How would I add server hosting functionality in my game, by the way (a simple example/guide would suffice)? I'm curious since I'm highly considering making an online multiplayer game (which could benefit from such a feature). Also, how would I use a public server to look for hosted servers (again, a simple example/guide would suffice)? Would the hosted server be designed to send a message to the public server or something?

[Ryan]

You could download a list of servers from a MySQL database or comma delimited webpage (Get object) and briefly connect to them to show which are active (online/offline).

I don't know how you could build hosting functionality into the game itself, I meant just make the connection screen customisable so you're not forcing the users to redownload the software every time you want to direct them to a new server. Perhaps Villy can answer this.

[Danny]

You could build self-hosting functionality into your game so users can host their own 'home servers' or allow for external server hosting at the same time.

If you opted for the former, you could setup a lacewing 'master' server, where all the online servers ping their IP so you can then allow in-game users to choose which online server to connect to. All the home-brewed servers would merely ping the master server every minute with their IP, the master server would then list all the available gaming servers to play on. You could also ping over stats such as 'slots available' 'average ping times' etc.