WebSphere Strategy

I have used IBM's WebSphere Application Server in the past and I work on it on a daily basis. Something that astounds me is the direction IBM is taking the server. Every year a new feature pack is released and there are also stack products, which are pieces that build on top of the base WAS product and add some extended benefit(such as the XD offering which gives many health monitoring processes to the server, among other things). Overall it's not too bad of a strategy, the problem comes in the form of the base WAS product. It's so bloated and overpriced I can guarantee many people don't use it because they would only use the Web Container and nothing else. Why pay thousands of dollars for a product you would only use a small part of when you could use a free offering(such as Glassfish) and only use what you want at a price that can't be beaten? This is where I think IBM is falling behind and needs to redesign and re-release WebSphere as a whole. However this isn't going to be easy and it's not going to happen over night.

The first part would be disassociating all the individual components of WAS. In doing this WAS could be broken down to the most basic level and the base would be only the things needed to run servlets(pretty much just the WebContainer and Channels). These newly designed components would be pluggable into a base WAS framework and new ones could be created by hooking into the existing base. Developers would be able to easily hook into the base WAS and create new components quickly. Not only would the WAS footprint be much smaller but users could get exactly what they want without any of the bloat.

The second part is building all the new components. It wouldn't be "new" per say, but just a redesign of all the existing components and stack products. The new stack products would just be many of the components bundled into an easy to manage package. These could be dropped in and out easily. This is sort of how they work now, however with the current way of doing things each component couldn't be dropped into the base WAS. For example, lets say you wanted health monitoring and Web Services. In the current model that would mean installing a whole feature pack and stack product, which leads to more money and resources required. With the new model a customer could purchase just the health monitoring and Web Services component, drop it into the environment, and be ready to go. No wasted space on things that aren't going to be used, only exactly what is required.

Finally we come to pricing. The base product would be free, the very very basic components would be included. Customers could pay for support if they wish. All the components that aren't included in the basic level would be a pay per component basis, each coming with support as well as the ability to drop it into an environment. Doing it this way would let customers pay for exactly what they want, and only get exactly that and nothing more. If we stay with the current pricing model we see customer paying 10s of thousands of dollars for a piece of software and not utilizing it to its full potential.

One downfall to this new model is that it could create a lot of fix pack issues. With all of the different little components it would be hard to install the fix packs for each one and keep track of it all. One option would be to create on big fix pack that encompasses all the components and the product is smart enough to only install the ones it needs.

As the years pass WebSphere is showing it's age. It continually gets bigger with each new feature and shows no signs of stopping. I think if properly packaged up and sent out this would be a vastly superior model for IBM to follow. WebSphere would have a smaller install and fesource footprint. Customer would get exactly what they want at a lower price. It's a win, win: customers are happy and IBM is happy. But, like I said: it's not going be an easy road to travel.

Step One: The Idea

Recently I've been thinking about designing a game and what goes into it. I have no idea where I would start, aside from an idea. Once I have that where would I go? Create a small mock up? Design the in-game systems? Start character design? Write a back story? I guess I'll start with the obvious: the idea.

The first part would be to start with what kind of game it will be. I've had many ideas, but I think my two favorite would have to be a Strategy/RPG hybrid and a squad based Strategy/Action/RPG. The one I'm leaning towards is the Strategy/Action/RPG, mainly because I've got a few ideas for it. So lets move onto the next part: the setting.

Since I've been thinking about it I've had about 100 different settings go through my mind. Mage Knight, Magic the Gathering, D&D, Warhammer(Fantasy and 40K), Warmachine, Mechwarrior, my own settings, cyberpunk, steampunk, and many more. But what we would be fit for a great game? It all depends on the style of game you want to go for. For example: a strategy game would fit great into Mage Knight or Warhammer, however they wouldn't translate real well into an RPG or Card Game. My Strategy/RPG hybrid idea would fit in with Magic the Gathering, but I am not going to use that as my example as I don't have too many ideas as of yet. My interests lie with the Strategy/Action/RPG. I think a game like that would translate amazingly into the Warhammer 40K universe. Think about a faux first person shooter with squad based commands, the ability to switch freely between squads, command all squads from a top down perspective, and have RPG elements mixed in there. Sounds like a great game to me!

Now we have our setting and our game type: a Strategy/Action/RPG set in the Warhammer 40K universe. What about game play? I was thinking over the shoulder(third person) faux shooter. When I say faux shooter I mean one that doesn't rely totally on skill, it also relies on the stats of your character or the equipment. Which is also where the RPG element comes in with equipment and character stats. There won't be any levels, but there will be some form of advancement.

With any game we need a decent single player option with a healthy dose of PvP. Being in the 40K universe it's going to have a gritty art style set in the far future. It'll include the ability to pilot vehicles or leave them to their own desires. Each map will be broken down into smaller "zones" that can be controlled, each map will have specific advantages to controlling it(for example a communication uplink or production facility). The overall goal of the game is to capture and control as many planets as possible.

We've gotten a pretty good idea of what we want, which was the goal. We want: a Strategy/Action/RPG set in the Warhammer 40K universe with squad based combat, top down strategy control for squads, "zone" control, and no levels. That's the basic idea I've got in my head. The next step is going to be fleshing out the difference pieces of the ideas presented here. It also happens to be where alot of the features sorted through and gives a pretty good idea of what the final product will look like.

Until next time!

Servers

So I am a little late with my post =P Oh well, I got busy. On with the post!

I think a corner stone of a good MMO are it's servers. Can't have an MMO without its servers up and running. Without a good server(s) everything starts to break down; people become angry and end up leaving. No one wants that for there game! To avoid this just have some good servers!

Lets start with the power of the servers. No I don't mean watts going to the machines, I mean actual specs(processors, RAM, etc). If you end up with something underpowered, you're never going to survive when people start logging on. An underpowered server will end up with you watching as people leave and you struggling to get a better server as quickly as possible. How can this be overcome? Plan ahead! If it's forseeable that a server with a dual core processor and 2GBs of RAM will be just right, then double it! Give it two processors and 4GBs of RAM! Can't go wrong with more, especially when it hinges on success.

Next is number of machines. If it can be done with one just fine, then use two. Now one may ask: "Why two if one is just fine?" What happens if one server goes down and you only have one? You're completely out for a period of time, which means loss of service to the end user. In the end it's bad juju. I don't know if it would be beneficial to plan ahead and double everything, but it would be beneficial to get more than you think you may need.

Bottom line, if the need calls for X, make sure to plan for more! Plus with more than needed there is more power available for those unforseen circumstances(such as higher than planned users).

That more or less covers the physical aspects. The next piece would be the more abstract part of how to configure the servers.

The most important part of the configuration is redundency! Always make sure there is a backup of any information creation. It may seem like a waste but if there are ever problems you could always refer back to the backup or restore fully from a backup. Think of how bad it would be if the server crashed when everyone was at the end game; if there was no backup every player would lose all the work put into the game. No one wants that! Just use some data replication software to ensure the game data is safely backedup.

Another thing replication is good for is spreading the load onto other machines. If the data is replicated to other machines it allows the user requests for data to be spread out to other machines, which will reduce the lag for everyone. Not lag from a bad connection, but lag from too many people hitting the underpowered "server"(which in this case is a cluster of servers).

That pretty much covers most things I can think of. I'm sure I will come back and post more when I think of it.

Until next time!

A new leaf

I'm back!

It's been a while but I'm going to start posting here more often. I'm also going to focus primarily on the gaming aspect of development as opposed to the general development cycle. I do this because I'd like to move into game development eventually, right now I'm just a developer at IBM. Although I like development, I'd much prefer to design and architect the games but not develop them. But then again that's my preference for any development =)

Now that I'm back I'd like to start by evaluating some aspects of newer games and there design. From there I'll take a look at what I would have done differently. Eventually I'd like to start designing a game on here and allow others to participate in the effort.

But for now I must go. I will update later tonight!

Music Industry

I haven't posted in a while, but I felt motivated by recent news.

The music industry makes me laugh. They are the biggest bunch of fools. With this new digital age, and something called the Internet, they are still stuck in an age that has past. The age of the CD. Sure people are still buying them, but recent reports are saying CD sales are declining sharply. Why you may ask?

Digital Music Distribution services. iTune, Amazon, Rhapsody, etc...

These new medians have made it much easier and more convenient to acquire music. Most of the big names still haven't caught up. Sure they license the music out and make money from online sales, but they are still spending a huge amount on hard media. It's turning into a frivolous venture. The companies have to find a bigger and better way to distribute their music because CDs just aren't cutting it anymore.

Sony's idea of moving forward is novel... but still dumb. They are giving you the ability to buy DRM free music on the net. Catch is you need to go to the store and buy a card(which is the same price as a CD) and the scratch it off. This may work for some people. But for all those who download their music off of iTunes, why bother? It makes no sense to me, especially in this day and age.

Speaking of DRM.... it's a joke. They are so afraid of losing their music that they protect it. How well has this worked? People can still download their music for free from P2P(Peer to Peer) networks. DRM hasn't seemed to stem this. According to BigChampagne about 1.1 BILLION songs are downloaded from file sharing networks. If DRM is stopping anything then you could have fooled me. I know it stops me from using iTunes, or any other music distribution service for that matter, because the songs are copy protected and only work in certain places. I don't have a mainstream MP3 player(Toshiba Gigabeat) so some songs don't work on it. I can't even use iTunes because most of the music from there won't work in anything but an iPod, and I really don't like iPods.

Stop fearing people and move forward in the world. The movie industry doesn't seem to have problems, why does the music industry have to put up a HUGE stink. In fact, in college more people downloaded illegal movies than they did music.

That's what this whole thing comes down to in the end: fear. The music industry fears change, like the majority of companies and people out there. For years they have known the threat of the Internet was out there and choose to ignore it. Now that it is slapping them in the face they are struggling to play catch up. They are thinking of ways to make up for the rapidly dropping CD sales with other services and medians to sell and license music.

One idea, get this, was to put MORE onto the CDs. How would that sell more if people aren't buying them in the first place. The general population has shown they don't want physical media anymore, they want to buy from the comfort of home. And if the 1.1 billion downloads is any indication, they also want DRM free music.

You had a strangle hold on the distribution channels for so long you let it get to your heads. Now you have competition on an evolving distribution channel. What are you going to do? The age of the CD is dying and so far you are still trying to play catch up. Stop fearing the Internet and use it as your advantage. I saw some ideas you all had and most of them dealt with something other than the Internet.

Get with the program. The Internet is the new distribution median. Learn to leverage it and you can once again take control of the market.

Another School Quarter

I started another quarter about 2 weeks ago. This one ought to be pretty interesting as I have an internship for Novell. So far it has gone rather well and I think we are going to impress them. This is good for all of us as it is real world experience and maybe even a job offer ;)

Hopefully this quarter I can get one or two of my Microsoft Certifications in; my Windows App and Web Application certifications. If not then I will have plenty of time next quarter with only one class and then projects in the afternoon. All is going according to plan so I will be out in two more quarters after this one, so I really need to work on the certifications =P I would like to get my Java ones but I don't think that is going to happen as it is going to take a lot of time.

Anyway that is it for me. Tune in next time with my status of World of Warcraft post.