Quick start guide
Pomelo is a fast, scalable, distributed game server framework for node.js. Some commands can help you simplify the development process. All these commands are thoroughly tested on linux, mac and windows os.
If you are on windows, please make sure you have installed Node.js source code compiling tools. Nodejs is written by C++ and javascript, and it use gyp which is written by python to manage the source code. On Windows platform, Node.js use gyp to generate the Visual Studio Solution file, and then is compiled as binary file by VC++ compiler. So you should satisfy the following two conditions to install pomelo on windows platform:
- Python(2.5<version<3.0).
- VC++ compiler，included inVisual Studio 2010 or VC++ 2010 Express.
Install pomelo globally using npm(node package manager):
npm install pomelo -g
You can also download the source with following command:
git clone https://github.com/NetEase/pomelo.git
Both the command "pomelo init ./helloWorld" and "mkdir helloWorld && cd helloWorld && pomelo init ." can create a new project. The first one will automatically create directory and init it. Then, you can install dependencies with the following command: 'sh npm-install.sh'.
A new project is made up of the following folders :
The directory structure clearly classify the game logic, all you should do is filling code in related directory.
The following are details of the directory:
Game-server is the folder contains all of the game logic and components. All the game server logics live here.
Generally, a project needs some configuration files, which we use in JSON format. The game server project contains configuration including master, servers, databases, logs etc.
Logs are essential for the project and contain some information which you can get the project running state from.
Both some configurations and codes can be shared between client and server if you choose javascript as client.
Web server contains web page and game client logic, which is based on express . It is quite suitable for web based game client, if you choose other client(unity 3d for example), you can totally ignore this folder.
Both game-server and web-server should be started, and game-server can be started by the following command
pomelo start [development | production] [--daemon]
while web-server is started like this:
cd web-server && node app
Running in different environment, the project needs different start arguments. If the running environment is development, the argument should be development, otherwise it should be production. By default the project runs in foreground model, and the argument '--daemon' can let project run in background model.
If you use “–daemon” argument, the module 'forever' should be installed by command npm install forever -g
You can also start the game-server with this command:
node app [env=development | env=production]
After project started, you can visit website of 'http://localhost:3001' or 'http://127.0.0.1:3001' by browser with websocket support.
You can query server status with command pomelo list, and the example of result is shown as follows:
The followings are detail definition of each fields:
- serverId: the id of server which is the same as configuration
- serverType: the type of server which is the same as configuration
- pid: the pid of process corresponding to server
- headUsed: the used heap size of server(Unit: Megabytes)
- uptime: the duration since this server started(Unit: Minute)
Both commands pomelo stop and pomelo kill can shutdown the project. The command pomelo stop is recommended for some
reasons as follows:
- front-end servers disconnect to keep players from coming in
- Guarantee game logic with closing all of the servers by certain order
- Ensure data integrity with writing plays' information to the database in time
command pomelo stop id will dynamically shutdown the server corresponding to the given id.
Please avoid the way with command pomelo kill in production environment for it killing process without any remedies.
pomelo add host=[host] port=[port] id=[id] serverType=[serverType] can help you add server with the given arguments dynamically. Now this command is only for backend server, and required in the project root directory.
AdminConsole is a powerful tool which can monitor the project and get valuable information. You can do the following things with adminConsole.
- Monitor server status, logs, online users and scene data etc.
- Get related information with scripts flexibly.
- Trace and analyze memory stack, CPU consumption
sysstat tool is required for AdminConsole on linux, so you should install sysstat tool by apt-get install sysstat .
cd pomelo-admin-web
npm install -d
node app
If you have not installed sysstat on linux, execute the following command:
apt-get install sysstat
Open the console by visiting website of 'http://localhost:7001' with browser which supports websocket. If any port conflicts, please fix configuration in 'config/admin.json'.The system closes the admin console module in default, so you need to open it in game-server/app.js and add the code app.enable('systemMonitor'). You can refer to the source code of lordofpomelo in detail.
If multi-server environment, not only all the servers should support "ssh agent forward", but also the project directory structure of each server should be exactly the same.
Here are some references about 'ssh agent forward':