Minecase – A distributed Minecraft server in .NET Core
github.com
github.com
But a neat side project. Wish them luck.
> MineCase is a cross-platform, distributed Minecraft server application developed using .NET Core that uses the Orleans framework.
Orleans seems to be what makes this distributed I think, following the trail leads me to: https://dotnet.github.io/orleans/
> Orleans is a framework that provides a straightforward approach to building distributed high-scale computing applications, without the need to learn and apply complex concurrency or other scaling patterns. It was created by Microsoft Research and designed for use in the cloud.
- Various parts of this Minecraft server have been built as Grains
- Grains are basically class instances which are activated (instantiated) somewhere in a network
- Orleans has a very clean interface which allows one to use a class instance in regular code as though the instance were stored in local memory. In reality, the class instance may be instantiated on a different machine in the cluster.
- Orleans clusters are generally controlled/private, though I suppose there's nothing stopping someone from building an open network of Orleans silos. That means the distributed aspect of this project is in regards to how the code behaves within a datacenter, in most cases.
This seems to be an exploration of how to build game infrastructure using Orleans. Microsoft has done this with the Halo franchise in their most recent games (Halo 4 + Halo 5.) Seems to work pretty well. On a fast network you can operate on distributed instances of just about anything and have sub-millisecond response times. Mind you, that'll depend greatly on what work is being done.
I haven't played multiplayer MC in quite a while, but from what I can remember, lag could be a bummer, so I could see how being able to connect to a low-lag "local" server and yet still play alongside players from around the world with their own low-lag connections would be nice. Yet if someone places a block on the ground and it still takes a couple seconds for that block placement to be distributed to my local server's Mongo instance and sent to me, I don't know how much the user experience is really improved for anyone.