5 ms·

Show HN: CloudParty – play games with friends in the cloud

24 points by gionn 11y ago

gionn 11y ago
TL:DR; We are building a service were users can easily spin-up private game servers to play with friends.
- gionn 11y ago
  Basically we support launching VM on multiple cloud providers (mainly thanks to jclouds), then we provision a game server via docker container on a vanilla ubuntu 14.04, finally the user can get the IP address of the VM and play. Game servers are launched with pre-defined configurations, but the user can override the command line flags of the game server and restart it, directly from the control panel. With this platform, we would also love to help multiplayer indie developers to host and sell their shiny new game server to users. If there are HN gamers reading this, feel free to suggest any game that you think it should be available.
  - joshmn 11y ago
    Sounds nice in practice. Do any of the major providers (GameServers.com, Hypernia, MultiPlay) use containers for their services? I ask because, if this is something worth doing, why they haven't done it yet (if they haven't)
    - gionn 11y ago
      I don't think, since they existed for years, they are probably stuck with pre-built images to spin-up. However, being a sysadmin, I've never been a customer of such services. The idea came while looking for interesting docker applications published on docker hub, and we saw that a lot of people was published game server images.
marak830 11y ago
Im trying to find the price, but cant? This may be because its displaying weird on my mobile(android/chrome). It is an interesting idea, and using Azure servers i assume would go a long way towards reliability. I do wonder what the limits would be(eg could i spool up a 64 player arma3 server with custom mods?) and ofcourse, how expensive it would be. Edit: i actually think that isnt displaying weird, i think thats intended(although i do have some slight word overlap, and damn that font looks huge on my note 3).
- gionn 11y ago
  Proper tablet / mobile support will come, at the moment is better if you look through a desktop computer. At the moment we don't have yet published a pricing policy, we have just throw everything on the internet to learn if this is something interesting. Just to have an idea, the total cost will be the cost of VM on the chosen public provider, plus a fee for us for the management service. The problem on how to put custom mods isn't solved yet, but we are thinking about giving FTP access to the game data folder, or just package the mods in the base image if they are famous enough. At the moment everything is on Azure since we got a bizspark plus offer and we are not paying anything for it. Please, don't ask what I think about Azure.
finnn 11y ago
That's pretty cool, but seems like something that could just be a collection of ansible scripts. I suppose this allows CloudParty to take a cut and make it easy for non-technical people to use.
- gionn 11y ago
  At the moment we are using Chef, but behind CloudParty there is a 2+ yrs startup idea about creating a generic application marketplace. If I will have the possibility to rewrite it from scratch today, I will be prefer using Ansible instead of chef-solo.
ChrisClark 11y ago
I can't find any price listed anywhere. Without knowing that, I don't feel like even starting the trial.
- gionn 11y ago
  We are very beta, the pricing will be simple since we will charge something for us and the remaining part is to cover the cloud provider costs (e.g.: 10 $ for a 1 GB digitalocean instance).
  - marak830 11y ago
    Ill keep an eye on this, it all boils down to the pricing. Eg id be quite happy to spool up a few servers based on what my mates amd i are playing (especially if i have access to mod the files - talking specifocly about arma 3 mods now), but if its more expensive than a standard server, id prefer not to waste the time setting it all up. Goodluck, and hopefully the pricings good!
    - gionn 11y ago
      What is the cost that you expect for "a standard server"? The service will cost no less than the cloud provider price where the server is running, plus a fee for us to maintain the platform up and running. You will probably like to spin-up game servers using a web interface, rather than administering a Linux machine via ssh, isn't it?
      - marak830 11y ago
        Ill do a quick check when i can (no internet at home atm just moved apartment haha), top of my head for an arma 3 it was around 10 us for a 64 player(again approx info and probably 6 months old at that). A web interface would take a lot of hastle out id imagine, especially if game specific instances and prebuilt modules are available in a semi plug and olay manner.
        11y ago
altern8 11y ago
"in the cloud" == "on the Internet"?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gionn 11y ago
  We are able to dynamically provision new VM on public cloud providers. We currently support AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, Rackspace, potentially anyone who as a decent remote API for creating new VM. However, the cloud is put there mainly as eye-catching.
deevus 11y ago
1. How is the price calculated? 2. Minecraft gets boring quick without mods. Do you guys plan to have a solution for that?
- gionn 11y ago
  1. Cost per month per instance size, depending on the cloud provider, plus a fee for us, paid upfront. 2. We are thinking about giving FTP access to the game data folder.
curiousjorge 11y ago
registered, nothing happens. ended up logging in like 3 times, started a minecraft server that is stuck in a failed loop. 10 VM creation: BadRequest The subscription policy limit for resource type 'public IP count' was exceeded. The limit for resource type 'public IP count' is 5 per subscription, the current count is 5, and the requested increment is 1. 4 ottobre 2015, 5:19:21 pm 9 VM creation, trying again, attempts left: 1 4 ottobre 2015, 5:18:51 pm 8 VM creation: BadRequest The subscription policy limit for resource type 'public IP count' was exceeded. The limit for resource type 'public IP count' is 5 per subscription, the current count is 5, and the requested increment is 1. 4 ottobre 2015, 5:18:21 pm 7 VM creation, trying again, attempts left: 2 4 ottobre 2015, 5:17:51 pm 6 VM creation: BadRequest The subscription policy limit for resource type 'public IP count' was exceeded. The limit for resource type 'public IP count' is 5 per subscription, the current count is 5, and the requested increment is 1. 4 ottobre 2015, 5:17:21 pm 5 VM creation, trying again, attempts left: 3 4 ottobre 2015, 5:16:50 pm 4 VM creation: BadRequest The subscription policy limit for resource type 'public IP count' was exceeded. The limit for resource type 'public IP count' is 5 per subscription, the current count is 5, and the requested increment is 1. 4 ottobre 2015, 5:16:36 pm 3 VM creation
- gionn 11y ago
  Good advertisement for Azure, I've discovered this incredibly low quota yesterday at 16 PM GMT+2, I've open a medium priority ticket to increase this quota, and they haven't replied to us yet (and we are also a bizspark plus partner). I hope they fix this by the end of the day.
  - gionn 11y ago
    We should have workarounded the problem, despite Azure support is slow.
    - curiousjorge 11y ago
      curious, why Azure?
      - 11y ago
sfteus 11y ago
Cool idea and presentation, especially considering the state of some other game server companies. However, I, along with probably many other people, would not give you any personal information without seeing a pricing scheme up front.
- gionn 11y ago
  Yep, eyes were bleeding when two weeks ago we were looking for active competitors in this market, looks like they got stuck in early '90. The pricing will be online soon, thanks.
funkyy 11y ago
You got probably one chance to be featured on front page of YC news. No prices, no updates from owner, no support in the thread. Seems like you missed on an amazing opportunity.
- gionn 11y ago
  Yeah, I've got it. The bad idea was the resubmit the story at 10 PM GMT+2, I just woken up and see the overflow of new users registration emails. That's a good way to woke up, anyway.
gionn 11y ago
Guys, if you want updates, sign-in for the newsletter.
breakingcups 11y ago
The home page scrolls very jerkily, and I have a pretty beefy computer. Otherwise, cool thing :)
- gionn 11y ago
  Browser/version/OS? Thanks!
jagermo 11y ago
Good Work. I'd love to see a comeback for own gameservers instead of things like matchmaking etc. I'll keep an eye on you for sure.
- gionn 11y ago
  That's exactly what we are aiming at, we also love to play with friends and not with random people that I will never met again.

24 points by gionn 11y ago

gionn 11y ago

TL:DR; We are building a service were users can easily spin-up private game servers to play with friends.

gionn 11y ago
Basically we support launching VM on multiple cloud providers (mainly thanks to jclouds), then we provision a game server via docker container on a vanilla ubuntu 14.04, finally the user can get the IP address of the VM and play. Game servers are launched with pre-defined configurations, but the user can override the command line flags of the game server and restart it, directly from the control panel. With this platform, we would also love to help multiplayer indie developers to host and sell their shiny new game server to users. If there are HN gamers reading this, feel free to suggest any game that you think it should be available.
- joshmn 11y ago
  Sounds nice in practice. Do any of the major providers (GameServers.com, Hypernia, MultiPlay) use containers for their services? I ask because, if this is something worth doing, why they haven't done it yet (if they haven't)
  - gionn 11y ago
    I don't think, since they existed for years, they are probably stuck with pre-built images to spin-up. However, being a sysadmin, I've never been a customer of such services. The idea came while looking for interesting docker applications published on docker hub, and we saw that a lot of people was published game server images.

marak830 11y ago

Im trying to find the price, but cant? This may be because its displaying weird on my mobile(android/chrome). It is an interesting idea, and using Azure servers i assume would go a long way towards reliability. I do wonder what the limits would be(eg could i spool up a 64 player arma3 server with custom mods?) and ofcourse, how expensive it would be. Edit: i actually think that isnt displaying weird, i think thats intended(although i do have some slight word overlap, and damn that font looks huge on my note 3).

gionn 11y ago
Proper tablet / mobile support will come, at the moment is better if you look through a desktop computer. At the moment we don't have yet published a pricing policy, we have just throw everything on the internet to learn if this is something interesting. Just to have an idea, the total cost will be the cost of VM on the chosen public provider, plus a fee for us for the management service. The problem on how to put custom mods isn't solved yet, but we are thinking about giving FTP access to the game data folder, or just package the mods in the base image if they are famous enough. At the moment everything is on Azure since we got a bizspark plus offer and we are not paying anything for it. Please, don't ask what I think about Azure.

finnn 11y ago

That's pretty cool, but seems like something that could just be a collection of ansible scripts. I suppose this allows CloudParty to take a cut and make it easy for non-technical people to use.

gionn 11y ago
At the moment we are using Chef, but behind CloudParty there is a 2+ yrs startup idea about creating a generic application marketplace. If I will have the possibility to rewrite it from scratch today, I will be prefer using Ansible instead of chef-solo.

ChrisClark 11y ago

I can't find any price listed anywhere. Without knowing that, I don't feel like even starting the trial.

gionn 11y ago
We are very beta, the pricing will be simple since we will charge something for us and the remaining part is to cover the cloud provider costs (e.g.: 10 $ for a 1 GB digitalocean instance).
- marak830 11y ago
  Ill keep an eye on this, it all boils down to the pricing. Eg id be quite happy to spool up a few servers based on what my mates amd i are playing (especially if i have access to mod the files - talking specifocly about arma 3 mods now), but if its more expensive than a standard server, id prefer not to waste the time setting it all up. Goodluck, and hopefully the pricings good!
  - gionn 11y ago
    What is the cost that you expect for "a standard server"? The service will cost no less than the cloud provider price where the server is running, plus a fee for us to maintain the platform up and running. You will probably like to spin-up game servers using a web interface, rather than administering a Linux machine via ssh, isn't it?
    - marak830 11y ago
      Ill do a quick check when i can (no internet at home atm just moved apartment haha), top of my head for an arma 3 it was around 10 us for a 64 player(again approx info and probably 6 months old at that). A web interface would take a lot of hastle out id imagine, especially if game specific instances and prebuilt modules are available in a semi plug and olay manner.
      - 11y ago

altern8 11y ago

"in the cloud" == "on the Internet"?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gionn 11y ago
We are able to dynamically provision new VM on public cloud providers. We currently support AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, Rackspace, potentially anyone who as a decent remote API for creating new VM. However, the cloud is put there mainly as eye-catching.

deevus 11y ago

1. How is the price calculated? 2. Minecraft gets boring quick without mods. Do you guys plan to have a solution for that?

gionn 11y ago
1. Cost per month per instance size, depending on the cloud provider, plus a fee for us, paid upfront. 2. We are thinking about giving FTP access to the game data folder.

curiousjorge 11y ago

registered, nothing happens. ended up logging in like 3 times, started a minecraft server that is stuck in a failed loop. 10 VM creation: BadRequest The subscription policy limit for resource type 'public IP count' was exceeded. The limit for resource type 'public IP count' is 5 per subscription, the current count is 5, and the requested increment is 1. 4 ottobre 2015, 5:19:21 pm 9 VM creation, trying again, attempts left: 1 4 ottobre 2015, 5:18:51 pm 8 VM creation: BadRequest The subscription policy limit for resource type 'public IP count' was exceeded. The limit for resource type 'public IP count' is 5 per subscription, the current count is 5, and the requested increment is 1. 4 ottobre 2015, 5:18:21 pm 7 VM creation, trying again, attempts left: 2 4 ottobre 2015, 5:17:51 pm 6 VM creation: BadRequest The subscription policy limit for resource type 'public IP count' was exceeded. The limit for resource type 'public IP count' is 5 per subscription, the current count is 5, and the requested increment is 1. 4 ottobre 2015, 5:17:21 pm 5 VM creation, trying again, attempts left: 3 4 ottobre 2015, 5:16:50 pm 4 VM creation: BadRequest The subscription policy limit for resource type 'public IP count' was exceeded. The limit for resource type 'public IP count' is 5 per subscription, the current count is 5, and the requested increment is 1. 4 ottobre 2015, 5:16:36 pm 3 VM creation

gionn 11y ago
Good advertisement for Azure, I've discovered this incredibly low quota yesterday at 16 PM GMT+2, I've open a medium priority ticket to increase this quota, and they haven't replied to us yet (and we are also a bizspark plus partner). I hope they fix this by the end of the day.
- gionn 11y ago
  We should have workarounded the problem, despite Azure support is slow.
  - curiousjorge 11y ago
    curious, why Azure?
    - 11y ago

sfteus 11y ago

Cool idea and presentation, especially considering the state of some other game server companies. However, I, along with probably many other people, would not give you any personal information without seeing a pricing scheme up front.

gionn 11y ago
Yep, eyes were bleeding when two weeks ago we were looking for active competitors in this market, looks like they got stuck in early '90. The pricing will be online soon, thanks.

funkyy 11y ago

You got probably one chance to be featured on front page of YC news. No prices, no updates from owner, no support in the thread. Seems like you missed on an amazing opportunity.

gionn 11y ago
Yeah, I've got it. The bad idea was the resubmit the story at 10 PM GMT+2, I just woken up and see the overflow of new users registration emails. That's a good way to woke up, anyway.

gionn 11y ago

Guys, if you want updates, sign-in for the newsletter.

breakingcups 11y ago

The home page scrolls very jerkily, and I have a pretty beefy computer. Otherwise, cool thing :)

gionn 11y ago
Browser/version/OS? Thanks!

jagermo 11y ago

Good Work. I'd love to see a comeback for own gameservers instead of things like matchmaking etc. I'll keep an eye on you for sure.

gionn 11y ago
That's exactly what we are aiming at, we also love to play with friends and not with random people that I will never met again.