Game Server development framework written in Node.js

Goals

The primary goal of Universes is to provide a framework for building next generation multiplayer and socially interactive games using Node.js. To do this, we want to build a solid core through which further modules can be attached on, the following is a list of some of these targets for the core as well as secondary modules:

• Easy data persistence handling using Couchbase. node-ottoman is a good base for implementing this, but is immature.
• Autonomous clustering of many universe processes acting as a cluster of nodes.
• Built-in REST api for handling debug information, system statistics, administration capabilities and other not-real-time server endpoints.
• Real-time communications with clients through technologies like websockets, raw tcp/udp sockets or other streaming protocols.
• Cryptography helpers built in.

Additionally, here is a list of higher level modules which would be interesting to add.

• Authentication
• Cryptography helpers.
• Player online/offline mailbox support.
• Packaged modules for handling the distribution of connected real-time players accross a number of universe nodes within the cluster.
  • Rooms - Splitting users based on the specific room they have joined.
  • Zones - Splitting users based on what zone (or maps as they are sometimes referred to) they are in, additionally, players only receive information for players that are nearby.
  • World - Splitting users based on automatically distributed regions of one massive world (open-world). Players still only receive event notifications that are specific to them.

To-Do

In addition to the specific goals above. There are a number of low-level to-do items which should be considered and properly implemented.

• Design a sane interface for handling a plugin architecture. This is complicated by the fact that in a lot of cases, once a plugin has been attached to your Universes app, you still need direct access to that modules instance to perform setup tasks.
• Develop a sane way to handle both rest and real-time networking. Reconsidering the .get/.post/.put/.del and .nemit/.non methods is probably in order.