Announcements

Join the ongoing conversation on Discord: https://discord.gg/w6Tpkp2

Please read the current update for instructions on downloading the latest update. Players with Mac versions of the game will not be affected, but you will have a slightly longer wait for your version of the new maps. Please make a copy of your character folder before running the new update, just to make sure you don't lose any of your custom work.

It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.

To purchase your copy of the City of Titans Launcher, visit our store at https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/ A purchase of $50 or more will give you a link to download the Launcher for Windows or Mac based machines.

Building the Backbone

For any online effort, the servers matter as much as the tools used. Even in today's push for cloud computing or software as a service, everything still depends on servers.

When we began, our server needs were very simple. We ran everything on a pair of virtual machines running on Amazon's Web Service. We outgrew this after a few months, and migrated several systems over to a setup on Rackspace.

Today, we have our own machines plugged directly into the internet, and we anticipate that they should suffice for our needs for quite awhile. And we built all of this under the budget cap we put in place for our Kickstarter. Actually, by using slightly older models where we could, we wound up spending only half of our original anticipated server budget, leaving wiggle room for future upgrades, or if the funds are needed elsewhere.

Our server space currently consists of 5 physical servers – a 6 year old Dell PE2950, a 4 year old Sun T5220, a brand new iXsystems storage server, and two Raspbery Pi's. To connect them, we have two firewalls, one a Cisco and the other a Mikrotik, and a Dell managed Switch. Each of these do a very specific job for us.

The Dell server, we call it Alexandria, is our virtual machine host. On it you will find various VM's, some permanent, some temporary, running everything from our login system to our art repository manager and even our internal game server. It is not a speed demon, but it is more than capable of keeping everything running. This particular model was chosen due to its reputation for reliability.

The Sun machine, nicknamed Aten, is a radically different beast from the Dell. It was built for web servers. Able to run 64 simultaneous threads, the T5220 was, when released, considered one of the premiere web servicing servers on the market. We are currently working to migrate our older Rackspace and Amazon websites over to the Sun, after which the current VM's will be retired.

The iXsystems storage machine, labelled Gaia, is in effect a gigantic hard drive with an ethernet port. Running a modified BSD based operating system, it stores, well, everything for us. It is to be partnered with an off-site storage system we are currently assembling as well, to ensure redundancy.

The two Raspberry Pi's, Eris and Coyote, are our wildcards. If we see a temporary server task, they're what we use. These two do not keep their OS's for longer than a few weeks in our experience, for if a task becomes permanent we migrate that task to a bigger machine. They've done everything from manage our wiki to running the game server database test. Right now, Eris is verifying a backup restoration of assets and Coyote is balance-loading the asset synchronization.

The Cisco firewall is Yutu, and is our older firewall. Right now it is handling our maintenance system, allowing us to maintain our servers without needing to access them through the front-end. This allows us to lock down the front, exposed sides of our machines without worry, as we can do the maintenance needed through a specialized, dedicated system.

The Mikrotik firewall is Cerebus, our guard dog. It handles our virtual network, allowing our volunteers to work together like we are all in the same office. It also protects us from outside intrusion. It may surprise you, but we get several hacking attempts daily. And we take everyone's data very seriously. One of the beautiful parts about the Mikrotik family of firewalls is the variety of firmware options available for it. This includes popular firmware options such as RouterOS and OpenWRT, but you can even custom make your own Linux or BSD build for it.

And to weave them all together, we have a Dell switch, Moirai. It replaced an earlier D-link switch which could no longer handle the traffic we were generating. All of our traffic flows through this.

Our setup is not what anyone would consider standard, but the elements chosen were done to fit our particular needs – not just immediate but what we anticipate through Beta. I hope you have enjoyed this look at our servers.

[img=350x622]http://cityoftitans.com/sites/default/files/IMG_20140701_134428351.jpg[/img]

In order from bottom to top: Aten, Alexandria, Yutu, Cerebus. Eris and Coyote are in the back.

Written by - Nathaniel 'Doctor Tyche' Downes

Discuss the update here: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/discuss-building-backbone