Are SL games/breedables run entirely in-world?

[Monique Bellambi]

Well, I know some link to databases, but I was wondering about servers and whatever else goes into running games. Is all of that handled in the game world? I was curious because I somehow found the location of the "server room" of a game I play and there was so much going on.  I have a game idea that I'd like to get going and I've always been curious about how the bigger games and breedables work.

[Quistess Alpha]

Well, it /can/ be all done in-world, but there are advantages and disadvantages to different methods.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

A "server" in SL can be and do many things, just like servers outside of SL. If your game needs any kind of shared (or "global") information between sims, you're going to be stuck needing an external server/database because an entirely in-world solution is guaranteed to break every time the grid goes down.

[animats]

It's possible to do quite a bit in world, especially if an experience is involved. With an experience you get a key/value store and can store more data. If you need a real database, you need a server outside of SL. Low-end shared hosting, for a few dollars a month, is often good enough.

A big problem with in-world servers is that you can code them, but others can't find them. They don't have persistent IP addresses. There's no DNS server that lets you give them a name so they can be found. In theory, someone could try hooking up SL to DynDNS, so your in-world server could have a findable name. But servers within SL have so little capacity that it's barely worth it.

Despite this, not only are there servers in SL, there are in-world data centers. Some manage large collections of CasperVend items. Items have to be delivered from inventory in some prim somewhere. So somewhere, there has to be a prim to do that job. It can look like anything. Some look like safes. Some look like rackmount servers.

"Skill gaming regions" often have a data center hidden away somewhere.

Edited March 16, 2021 by animats

[RunawayBunny]

Doable but it will not reliable SIM will restart you have to figure out many workarounds because your in SL service unavailable during restart also some functions sometimes do not work as intended (example llemail).

A external database far more reliable than company service (SL or.. database hosting company or API for accessing database... you name it).

Sadly I have experienced it and burned few times. Most reliable method your own server your own database backups and you can rest easy knowing everything safe with external HDD

Edited March 19, 2021 by RunawayBunny

[Quistess Alpha]

10 hours ago, RunawayBunny said:

Most reliable method your own server your own database backups and you can rest easy knowing everything safe with external HDD

Are you actually suggesting setting up a self-hosted server, or am I reading more into that than you said? The 'most reliable' method would be to use a paid service like Azure or AWS to host and manage things for you. keeping everything on your own harddrives and such is entirely possible, and the traffic you'd get form some in-world stuff /probably/ wouldn't be too awful to manage on a good home internet connection, but that sort of thing really isn't for the feint of heart.

[RunawayBunny]

7 hours ago, Quistessa said:

The 'most reliable' method would be to use a paid service like Azure or AWS to host and manage things for you.

We had a hosting service on a company called OVH they had a major incident, the fire declared in the building we had paid backup option but turns out they backup files at same location so backups also destroyed.

Based on my experience I am suggesting, any service such as digital ocean, google cloud computing, azure, aws etc.. you can set up any OS and any panel you like.. you can send database backups your local drive (or any location you trust) via FTP and crone job.

No matter how famous it is always take your own external backups and don't trust service backup. Because when disaster happen they are legally covered and you have no claims even if you are using paid backup service.

Here is final state of our servers:

[Quistess Alpha]

Doveryay no proveryay.