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Ask HN: What tools did you use to create the server for your multiplayer game?

9 points by aerovistae ↗ HN
I've been looking to create a server-authoritative multiplayer browser game, and as a primarily frontend dev I have been having a TON of trouble finding a good option to build the backend with. Nakama's server-authoritative features seem really limited and only support Lua/Go, and to be honest I can't find any decent alternatives.

What did you use?

6 comments

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offtop5
Are you sure you want to roll your own ?

I'd suggest Proton or another hosted solution unless your working on a team. Getting a single player game done solo is hard enough

aerovistae
Do you mean Photon? I wouldn't say I'm set on anything right now -- whatever is easiest and most effective/efficient in terms of my time is what I would definitely go with. That's basically what I'm trying to figure out -- what the easiest / most efficient option is.

I have two reasons that I've been reluctant over photon:

1.) It seems to be largely Windows-only. I prefer to develop on Mac or Linux.

2.) Its documentation seems lacking from what I could see. I spent half an hour perusing it and just found myself constantly hitting dead-ends and finding things missing.

GameSparks seemed like a nice option, except their pricing is $299/month for "Standard". [1]

[1] https://www.gamesparks.com/pricing/

offtop5
1.) It seems to be largely Windows-only. I prefer to develop on Mac or Linux.

It's primarily used with Unity and you can develop for Unity on a Mac. It is C# though.

pitched
I did this once in C with just OpenSSL and I can't recommend against that enough! I learned a lot (about security) and it was fun, but, you're not valuing your own time at that point. If I had that same problem today, I think I'd use one of Go, Rust or Racket instead. They're a bit easier to set up and probably a bit less of a security nightmare.

If you're using Unity, Normcore is the one I hear most often. I think Photon is the most popular though. The built-in networking in Unreal is pretty solid if you're using that too.

imaniman
My Co-founder (Dan) and I built an authoritative server framework called Game Plumbers Framework which handles multiplayer and much more (Persistence / Content/ Auth / UI). https://gameplumbers.com/