Sun: Clarifications on SGS, please.

[BlackRook]

In reading up on the documentation, and on the web, I have a few questions about the direction of SGS.  If someone can answer them, great, but I understand that some questions may have to hang like a chad until the legal suits at Sun decide to grace us with answers...

1.  Will SGS be a game-building platform, or only a common set of server APIs?  Everything I have seen so far conflicts.  On the one hand, some website interviews tout SGS as being something of an MMO kit, while the other sites state that it is not a game platform, but a server clustering solution.  Can someone give a clarification?

2.  Hanging Chad Question time:  Licensing and costs.  I think this is the big one that everyone is sort of waiting to see before committing anything large to the SGS.  I have been comparing and delving into various game platform solutions lately, and the range is great.  You have the Torque Engine and its MMO Kit selling as a package for a flat ~$450.  Then you have Kaneva selling a hosted platform solution for what seems to be a non-locked-in $50,000 of your game's profits.  Its the use of this platform going to be free, like most other Java technology?  Then we pay for optional hosting packages?

3.  What all does the SGS intend to provide, functionality-wise?  If this is just a collection of APIs for clustering and redundancy-securing a server farm, then why would a 'Very Important Early Adopter' be interested in it?  The spirit of my question is really:  is there coming functionality that hasn't been announced yet?

Thanks for any responses.  I understand if some of these are offlimits answers or are unknowns at this point.  Just any sort of direction will help in people making educated choices on direction.

[sjennings]

Can't answer #2, but the SGS software is a framework that allows you to add your own game logic. It's a bit more than an API that handles clustering, as it takes care of both network connectivity and data storage, but you still need to actually, you know, write your game. 

[Jeff]

SO questions one and 3 go together.

Part of your problem is that you are thinking in tems of what already exists in the game industry, and the short answer is the SGS/Darkstar is NONE of those.

The closest existing analogy is in the Enterprise space and is Enterprise App Servers.  Fundementally, Darkstar is an app server but one that has been completely re-invisioned, designed and  implemented to meet the needs of online games rather then online business applications.

Like an app server it provides functionality to the app programmer by creating a simple coding environment that automatically and invisibly scales out across a farm of equiptment and provides reliability and availability gaurantees.

Also like an app server it provides this environment for many installed applicatiosn at once in an organized and administerable way, allowing unified hosting solutions.

Download the SDK and look through the server programmer's tutorial and the client API tutorial and I think it will all become clearer.

And yes 2 is a hanging chad until the business guys finish doing what they need to do.  And  no sorry, I don;t have control over that or even a guess at time-table yet.

JK

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[blahblahblahh]

You still need to answer the question if you want people to lay money on the line...

[Jeff]

And it will get answered.

But I have no controil on how long management takes to do so.

Welcome to the world of big companies.

[ChrisM]

You still need to answer the question if you want people to lay money on the line...

Yes we do and we are working on that.  However, some things need to be addressed before we can talk about pricing and we are still working through the various business models that Darkstar can provide.  Is it a completely managed/hosted service?  Is is licensed to GNOC's? Providers? Publishers? Joe Blow?

As for pricing, the $450 Torque package can call itself a MMO package all it wants.  Would love to see someone try to deploy a large scale MMOG on that tech.  As for Kaneva's model, you use their client engine and network framework to build your game.  Throw out your own engine and toolpath.  What happens when you blow out their bandwidth for $50K? How does it scale?

We don't want to throw numbers around before whe are sure of them.  However, the goal behind this work is to make is affordable for the small devs to get an online game out there, with full support and hardened systems, just like the big boys.  It is this goal that is guiding our pricing models.  Equal for everyone.

-Chris

[aNt]

just give it away and stop messing about- by the time the management get there act together we will be back in the iceage...
gives me an idea- goes to make a topic for fun...  hehehe

[ChrisM]

just give it away and stop messing about- by the time the management get there act together we will be back in the iceage...
gives me an idea- goes to make a topic for fun...  hehehe

Will you hire all of us and pay our salaries for just giving it all away?

-Chris

[endolf]

I suspect that Sun might have something to say about that, even if one of us was a secret billionaire and *could* pay your salaries, I think Sun might own the right to what is there atm

But it's a nice thought, so if anyone out there has a few quid/dollars lying around, you can PM me

Endolf