How do I host my server application?

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PsychLantern

Guest
Hello, I followed a networking tutorial that allowed me to build server and client applications, with both of them currently being located and hosted in my PC. I'm close to releasing the client applications and would like to have a server host the server application instead for testing purposes before a proper release, but I have some questions about the subject:

-What is the best kind of server to host the server application?

-How would I install the application on the server and make it run?

Any on the subject help is appreciated.
 
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harambe1

Guest
I have the same question! Please lemme know if you got an answer :D
 

chamaeleon

Member
You essentially need a server with a desktop environment, which is not typical for servers, as I'm under the impression that starting the "game" expects it to be able to open a window. GMS is not very suitable for server programs as it does not have a headless option. You're better off using another language and environment for it except for experimental purposes. Although I'm sure if one has gone full steam ahead with implementing it in GMS, odds are you are depending on an awful lot of functionality like collision detection, etc., and one would have to figure out how to deal with that and keep it consistent with what client programs do and expect (unless the server in question only passes information between clients and does not do its own checks on the data). Besides this, with GMS being single-threaded you won't easily take advantage of multiple cores, unless you push a lot of your code into extensions and manage threads there.
 
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harambe1

Guest
What about using virtual windows machine from amazon web service? or any other services
 

chamaeleon

Member
What about using virtual windows machine from amazon web service? or any other services
By typical I meant it is not the common way of doing it (server deployment in general, not GMS servers), but it should be possible if one is determined to do it. Do feel free to go full steam ahead.
 
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harambe1

Guest
By typical I meant it is not the common way of doing it (server deployment in general, not GMS servers), but it should be possible if one is determined to do it. Do feel free to go full steam ahead.
Thanks.. I feel like it's far from optimal.. but it may be my only choice with my current skillset
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Some games (Minecraft, Terraria, Touhou fighting games) let you launch the game specifically as a server, so one player runs the server (or runs the game in a mode where they're acting both as a server and a client) while others connect to their PC. The downside is that being fully peer-to-peer like this means you can't have any sort of random matchmaking (all players must synchronize their session together), though having public server connection info in something like a dedicated discord server is one way to let bigger parties join your private server randomly.
 

chamaeleon

Member
If the server does not rely heavily on GPU facilities because nothing or almost nothing is drawn, etc., it would be possible to use an Ubuntu built program and run it in a vncserver session if one wants to avoid paying the Windows license premium (tested it with a Ubuntu compiled GMS program I had laying around, running in VNC on a Fedora VM accessed from my desktop computer using vncviewer). Whether the desktop or vnc CPU overhead is acceptable is another matter.
 
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