Game Cloud

The Game Cloud is a Layer Two component that extends your server to add many common massively multiplayer role playing game (MMORPG) features as well as a suite of server world scripting extensions that simplify game programming.

Game Cloud Scripting

The Game Cloud offers a large extension to the server JavaScript environment. The main API access points are through the two global objects Cloud and Bot. I will provide scripting examples throughout this document.

Game Cloud Applications

The Game Cloud groups configuration and data storage into containers called Applications. An application can be developed, configured, and tested on your development server, and then published to your live server when you're ready. All of the application's associated objects move with the application as a single unit when transferred.

Identifiers and Scope

The Game Cloud makes heavy use Identifiers which are strings of text that uniquely identify some object within a scope. Your application will have an identifier, as will most of the things you create within your application.

Good identifiers should use namespacing to help ensure they are unique. Identifiers should not contain spaces. I recommend you use a format like this:

company.feature.name

For Example

vww.quests.firstquest

This helps ensure that things created by different companies or teams don't interfere with each other.

Generally speaking, identifiers are global in scope. This means they should be unique across all applications on your server. This is because an application groups objects for transfer, but does not provide a naming container. This is so that scripts and features from one application can interact with scripts and features from another application.

Data Storage and Scope

The Game Cloud offers several ways for your scripts to store and retrieve data. These are explained in Metadata and Data Storage sections. Data storage is always associated with (scoped to) an application. When a script wants to work with application data, it must first set an application context like so:

Cloud.SetApplication("vww.apps.example");

Generally, application data is considered to be "server local". This means that your application's stored data is not transferred between servers with the application. This is because the data stored by your scripts represents the runtime state of your world. What is transferred is the ``configuration`` of your Game Cloud features and also any Metadata stored with your application.