Web hosting advice?

odium

Hey all, just a quick question maybe one of you can help with?

I've hired servers before for websites and the like with no real concerns, all good. Pretty standard, know all about databases, how to get everything set up. Good times.

But now I'm looking at a new issue...

I'm trying to find a server that I can use for all my usual web hosting goodness, but ALSO let it act as a master server for my game (Think Quake 3 tech). That means the game will contact the site and send/receive information to it, master server lists, achievement data, the works.

Does anybody have any idea what I should even be looking for? This is all new stuff to me so I'm totally clueless as you may tell when it comes to this.

Thanks in advance guys.

ZacD

Amazon web services maybe? I know people use them for some game servers, like Minecraft, https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/hosting-minecraft-realms-on-aws/

furiouslul

I guess it also depends on how you want to handle the information you mention in your post.

For example, I'm currently writing an API that can easily plug into engines like Unity, UE and CE. The server side of things is written with PHP and MySQL, so a system like this wouldn't require anything fancy.

That being said it doesn't (currently) handle things like master server lists or the like, and I'm not quite sure how efficient they would work using the above.

VPrime

Amazon AWS is a good choice, you can get a micro instance for free for a year, and it should be enough to get started.

There is also Google Cloud Platform, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure. Plus a bunch more.

KeirKieran

I just hooked up with https://asmallorange.com. I don't know what they have for games, but they seem pretty flexible and the customer service is great. I had a nightmare moving from GoDaddy (cus GoDaddy is evil) and they were very helpful.

odium

Thanks guys for the tips. As you can tell I'm a bit clueless on all this. When the game is done it will use the steamworks setup anyway, so this is just a temp effort. Thanks all!

DrunkShaman

If you would want to make a little more effort, as you stated that this is just a temp. I would recommend using a LAMP stack on Raspberry PI and using NAS (Or free NAS for starters.)

I was actually going to recommend it until I read "AWS is the way to go, it has resolved most of my problems, it is amazing!!!"

AWS free tier is helpful to those who are just stepping in or would like to know how networking is before they can dive in to the subject. If that helps you, good luck.

EDIT1: If you dont like to install or work on Linux have a look at this website, it may help you find what you are looking for. https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html

EDIT2: Feel free to answer this question.

Is there any other reasonable Linux box besides Raspberry PI?

odium

Yeah I'm gonna guess and say that Linux is pretty much required for this, so it may help with a Pi. Its cheap enough to run all the time and should be more than decent enough.