Project Darkstar
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Project Darkstar, aka Sun Game Server, is a scalable multiplayer and MMORPG server middleware framework by Sun Microsystems.
[edit] History
It was presented on March 22, 2006 at the Game Developers Conference. This framework abstracts away object persistence and application scalability.
The basic unit of interaction in the SGS is the GLO, or Game Logic Object. GLOs are persistently stored in a Game Object Space that is transparently shared between the Game Logic Engines, which can be added to the system to scale it.
The player interacts with the game by connecting to and sending messages to his Player GLO, which then interacts with the game world.
An early access release, including sample projects and tutorials, was made available recently.
[edit] Full History and Update by Jeff Kesselman
Project Darkstar began with my off-time experiments in 1998/1999 in multi-threaded MUD engines while I was at the Total Entertainment Network. This lead to two partially implemented prototypes that used a simple p-code of my own design.
In 2000 I went to work on the Java Performance tuning team at Sun Microsystems and in 2003 I did a redesign of the entire system based on some reading I had done on distributed systems and what I had learned about enterprise systems at Sun. At that point I decided to switch to Java because I had developed a great appreciation for the speed and ability of the Hotspot virtual machine and new i could not duplicate that "rocket science", nor did I really want to try.
In 2004 Chris Melissinos (Sun's Chief Gaming Officer) and Doug Twilleager (manager of the then new Game Technology Group in the Software CTO's office) decided to gamble on it and it became my full time job to work on what became the Sun Game Server. I delivered an early prototype that was demonstrated running a fail-over capable version of WURM Online at GDC 2005.
At the beginning of 2006 the project was transferred to Sun Labs where labs director Karl Haberl took over the management and four more people were added to the project: James Macquier, Seth Proctor, Dan Ellard and Sten <need to get Sten's last name>. At this point it became Project Darkstar. The 5 of us delivered the Early Access release at GDC 2006.
Post GDC the project focused on taking the feedback we had received from the early version and creating a true, production quality release with final APIs. At this point Dr. Jim Waldo (Sun distinguished engineer, Harvard professor of computer science, creator of Jini and noted distributed computing expert) came onto the project to lead the re-engineering. Dan Ellard and Sten went on to other persuits, but those of us that remained were joined labs experts in the various areas of computer science Darkstar touches including such noted names in the Java community as Anne Wolrath, Tim Blackman and Mike Warres.
That team has just delivered the 0.9 version for GDC 2007. At this show we also announced the first major industry user of Project Darkstar -- NCSoft, publisher of such games as Guild Wars, Lineage and City of Heroes.
We have also decided to open source all the code under a GPL license. Our target for the Open Source release is JavaOne 2007.
Jeff Kesselman - Chief Darkstar Architect
