OverServer

The OverServer is a "server for servers" - its purpose is to allow for coordination of player-hosted servers in one central location so that other players can easily locate games. The OverServer is an open-source tool for game developers who are working on network games and do not require a massively scalable backend for their network services but want a metaserver for their own games.

One particular strength of the player-hosted games setup is that it places the burden of Internet traffic on the player base and not a central server. OverServer tries not to violate this strength by keeping the query and response length very low to cut down on overhead from running the metaserver.

I designed OverServer with a few lessons in mind from Valve and Won's metaserver setup for Half-life. It is at least somewhat resistant to attack through a challenge-response system for incoming requests. I also wanted the tool to be very simple to "snap in" to an existing application.