Marauroa

What is Marauroa?

Marauroa is completely written in Java using a multithreaded server architecture with a TCP oriented network protocol, a MySQL or H2 based persistence engine and a flexible game system based on open systems totally expandible and modifiable by developers. Game rules can be written in Java, and Python scripts could be supported with a little work.

Marauroa is based on a philosophy we call Action/Perception, on each turn a perception is sent to clients explaining them what they percieve and clients can ask server to do any action in their names using actions. Marauroa is totally game agnostic and makes very little assumptions about what are you trying to do, allowing a great freedom to create whatever type of game you want.

Instructions

• Marauroa Wiki
• Core API Overview
• Marauroa Chat Tutorial
• Adventure Games Concepts

Features

Marauroa features state-of-art technologies as:

• Java 1.5 and higher compatible
• Persistent objects
• Transactional relational database support
• Asynchronous database access
• Delta and Delta² Perceptions to reduce bandwidth usage
• Multiple independent zones of gameplay
• Server content streaming
• Turn based or real time gameplay
• Nicely documented: Design and specifications available
• Based on a XP development model
• Follows KISS principle: Keep it simply stupid
• True Open Source Software: GNU/GPL

Remember that Marauroa is programming framework and so you need a game to do anything with Marauroa.

Marauroa is based on very simple principles:

• Clients communicate with the server, and vice-versa, using a TCP portable network protocol with reliability in mind to allow a stabler experience when online game lag occurs.
• To play a game every player needs an account on the server that is identified by an username and a password.
• Players use their account to login into the server and then choose a 'player' stored under their account to play with. The server then checks the login information using the MySQL backend and loads the player into the game using the persistence engine.
• Players send actions to the server. The action system is totally open and has nothing hard-coded so you can edit it totally to your game style. The server sends at regular intervals, called turns, a perception to each player to inform them about the state of the game and any relevant state modifications. Marauroa's perception system is based on the Delta^2 ideology: simply send what has changed.
• The server executes some code each turn in order to move the game status on. Using this hook it is simple to code triggers, timeouts, conditions and whatever kind of behavior you need.
• The server transparently and automatically stores players and game status modifications on the persistence engine, and also information decided by the game developer using their game definition scripts.
• Game rules can be coded in Java to allow simple and rapid development and without having to know anything about Marauroa's internals.
• Python scripts for the game rules could be supported with a little work.
• The server generates statistics of usage which are stored in a MySQL or H2 database (so you can later generate fancy statistics from them). Or in case you don't require them, they can be disabled to save CPU cycles and disk space. Marauroa features a modular structure that means modules can be changed and disabled without affecting the operation of other modules.
• Both the server and clients are fully and wisely documented, with documentation about specification and design and not just API documentation.