WorldServer Developer Edition¶
The WorldServer Developer Edition is freely available to developers for download with a limitation of 5 concurrent user connections across all hosted worlds (more info). It’s built for windows and requires .NET Framework 4.0
License keys are available to partners and enterprise customers to remove the concurrent user limitation.
To Get Started¶
- Download
- Find out more about downloading the software.
- Install
- Tutorial to Installing the WorldServer and Hosting Virtual Worlds
- See the tutorial in video or as a step by step guide.
- Sample World Templates
- Network Tester
- A simple park with avatar
- Double click on the desktop icon to start the application
- It should start up within a few seconds
- If there are no clients connected, the server should utilize less than 3% CPU with up to 10 worlds hosted. This will increase as the load from clients increases. The limits on your server are your CPU, your server network bandwidth and any bottlenecks in the send and receive ques shown in the interface.
- If it crashes on start up, it is usually a port binding issue. Check the crashlogs. Find out how on our Troubleshooting page for more information on solving problems.
Related Links¶
About the WorldServer Developer Edition¶
As the name implies, this version of the server is targeted at developers and aims to provide more information on the framework’s behavior, a little closer to the metal than has been possible in the past.
Interface
The user interface for the server is written with WPF and looks like this:
Some of the more interesting features are covered in detail below.
WorldServer Usage History
Many of the factors that contribute to server load such as send/receive rates, send/receive queues and client connections, are visible at a glance, with a rolling 60 second view of activity graphed:
It’s likely additional metrics will be made available in future releases, such as dynamic element counts, owned element counts, mutex holders, etc along with the ability to filter and manipulate the usage history graph.
Logging
Each world maintains it’s own log that displays IMML notifications such as those related to scene.ui:writeline, along with any world related notices, errors and warnings that the framework associates with that context.
A system log is also available via the View -> Log menu. It contains log information related to the networking infrastructure.
File Hosting Support
One nice new feature is the ability to host assets along side client IMML, meaning that IMML can be coded with relative URIs.
This supports the use case where a team wants to avoid setting up a web server or using a public storage provider such as Amazon S3 and is a convenient way to consider developing worlds.
For example, the model in this IMML:
<IMML xmlns="http://schemas.vastpark.com/2007/imml/"> <Model Source="models/ground_path1.model" /> </IMML>
Is resolved to the client folder of the hosted context via the HostingRoot:
In the above example, the HostingRoot is at My Documents\VastPark\Server\ and the hosted context is called “sanctuary” (for some live shots of sanctuary in action, see here) .
Client Metrics
The client tab displays the behavior of all clients connected to a specific world.
Information on user alias, connection time, framework version, ping, message resends, and time since last message provide the ability to troubleshoot scenarios where certain clients are experiencing difficulty with the system.
v1.5.0 software uses a different network stack and is compatible with the v1.5.x software only. If you are using an older release, you must use it for both the VastPark Player client and the Server.
v1.5.1 changes¶
The newest version is now called the "WorldServer".
It features a new resources tab for each world, enabling you to see what resources are running on your server in real time such as Mutex, channels and elements. This should aid developers in uncovering issues they may be seeing and will help administrators see how many things are running on their server.
