Dedicated Servers?

[Tourmalyn]

Ok... Let me bounce this off of people who are thinking of or have written code already, and those that are thinking of running host servers. This is just my personal opinion on how a system could run so as to not be a terrible burdon on the servers, yet at the same time support a lot of games.

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First "Version"
- A game could be started by an individual by simply setting up it up through the website. Initially, there would be no controls on number of players or whether it is a publicly available game (all would be). This would not actually start anything, it would simply put in a game request that would be listed on publicly available games.
- Players could click any game on this list of queued up games to get all the information about the game (name, settings, map, organizer, etc). They would have the option of signing themselves up for that game and picking the race they want. This would leave a message for the organizer that that user has signed up. The signup information would not allow multiple people to pick the same race, and Users would be expected to pick the race they signed up with upon entering a game.
- Once a certain threshold of user have signed up for a game (threshold to be determined. Can't have a lot of 2 person games supported by one server) the organizer will have the option of setting a start date for the game. This date +48 hrs will be the time that the game is actually being hosted as a TCP/IP server. Players will have to join during this time to claim their spot.
- After the 48 hrs, that game will be taken down, and all turns will be handled by uploading a turn file to the server through a user account. The management server will process all turns submitted and post the next turn to each Users' account allowing them to play the next turn.

What this allows for is lots of games since no game will be hosted 24/7 from an ip address. The only time that will happen is the first 48hrs to allow for players to claim spots. After that, the turn processing can be scheduled in accordance with all the other games. If too many new games are scheduled to start during a certain time frame, games that were initiated later would be pushed to a less "crowded" time frame so that the server would not be overloaded.

Well... Does that sound reasonable? Daunting? What can I say, I'm a perfectionist. If it can't be done right, it isn't worth doing.

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