Oludap is a multiplayer online strategic game that is based on the open-source (j)Ruby on Rails framework MADMASS (MAssively Distributed Multi Agent System Simulator). MADMASS simplifies the development of next-generation web applications by relying on methodologies from Artificial Intelligence and Multi-Agent Systems. In Oludap, players compete in real-time for limited resources in a shared environment. Oludap’s gameplay is episodic, meaning that small groups of users can play one-shot games. This type of games presents two challenges: the episodic nature of the game-play may yield to rapid and unpredictable fluctuations in the workload that can make planning for IT infrastructures not sustainable; the fact that players act on a shared environment generates a high level of contention on data thus, considering that consistency is a strong requirement, scalability may be at risk. In order to overcome these challenges, we are working to re-implement the data layer of the game on top of Hibernate OGM and Infinispan, in the framework of the Specific Targeted Research Project (STReP) Cloud-TM, which is co-financed by the European Commission through the contract no. 257784.

1. an AI approach to
web gaming in the cloud
Vittorio Amos Ziparo
@OWF 2011

2. Cloud-TM
co-financed by the European Commission through the contract no. 257784.

3. Web Games
Browser Games Flash Games
Gameforge > 300M reg users!
Zynga has 50% of facebook users!

5. Outlook
● an AI design pattern
● scaling in the Cloud

6. an AI
design pattern

7. MAS: an AI pattern
Percept
more agents
Action
Agent Environment

8. Why MAS?
1. Benefits of a cmd pattern
2. Guarantees on correctness
3. Easy to plug in AI and MAS code

9. MadMass
rc e
so u e r )
p en e r v
o ( s )
y lib
e n t
r u b ( c li
li b
js

10. scaling in
the Cloud

11. The price of scaling

13. A DSTM data layer
Distributed Software Transactional Memory
... imagine a memory that elastically scales,
that transparently persists data,
and that deals for you with concurrency issues

14. A Red Hat Backbone

15. Autonomic Self-Optimization

16. Want to know more?
oludap.com
github.com/algorithmica/madmass
cloudtm.eu
www.hibernate.org/subprojects/ogm
www.jboss.org/infinispan
torquebox.org

17. Thanks!