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Rapidly Developing FarmVille

Rapidly Developing FarmVille. How we built and scaled a # 1 Facebook game in 5 weeks. Amitt Mahajan Lead Developer – FarmVille March 9, 2010. 5 week development cycle. FarmVille. 6 developers (PHP/Flash) 2 artists 3 producers/designers. At Launch. Today. FarmVille.

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Rapidly Developing FarmVille

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  1. Rapidly Developing FarmVille How we built and scaled a #1 Facebook game in 5 weeks • AmittMahajan • Lead Developer – FarmVille • March 9, 2010

  2. 5 week development cycle FarmVille • 6 developers (PHP/Flash) • 2 artists • 3 producers/designers

  3. At Launch • Today FarmVille • 18K users/day after 24 hrs • 1M users/day after 4 days • 110M+ Installs • 31M Players/Day

  4. My Goals • Reduce the amount of time it takes you to develop your games • Give you a blueprint for how to reliably scale your games to millions without your servers falling over

  5. What slows down developers? • Other developers • Design / Art • Production (Copy) • Lack of knowledge

  6. Flash (Client) • PHP (Server) Increasing Developer Efficiency • All developers know both • Design DOESN’T rule all • Developers co-own features with designers

  7. Data Driven Design • Shoot for a content pipeline that doesn’t need a developer • Data driven can be as easy as a designer-editable XML file No devneeded!

  8. String Tables • A string table is an external file that holds strings for the app • Best practice to prepare for localization • Developers are not blocked by production • Allows quick response to Facebook TOS changes

  9. Abstracted Network Layer PHP Flash • Feature A • Feature B • Feature A Service • Feature B Service Networked Actions • Feature developers get client/server communication and serialization for free Goal Action Dispatcher Network Layer Network Layer Validation Checks Validation Checks AMF Protocol (RPC) Result Batching Action Batching

  10. Network Layer Batching • No need to do the work twice • Reduced server load in FarmVille by 50%! Server Client Only One Request onPlow() Plow Plow onPlow() Plant Plant onPlant() Plow …

  11. Network Layer Validation • Solves problem of unfiltered input • Ensures data is received by server in-order it was sent

  12. Social Network Wrapper • Single place to perform Facebook API calls • Working with a highly dynamic API can be difficult • Abstracting FB calls makes them easier to integrate • Allows for cross-platform games

  13. Continuous Deployment • Build latest version of source-repo • Deploy to test “auto app” on Facebook to surface production issues early

  14. Continuous Deployment FarmVille QA Process Auto app Staging Production Quick Smoke Full Test Pass

  15. FarmVille Traffic Growth 1 Million DAUsevery week for 20 weeks source: developeranalytics.com

  16. Scalable Server Architecture • We had no choice but to scale on the cloud • Every part of the server architecture scales horizontally • No single points of failure • Take the DB out of the equation

  17. Round Robin DNS … • Load Balancer #1 • Load Balancer #N • Auto-scaling web array (PHP) … • Web Server #M • Web Server #1 User Data & Updates • Memcache Pool Lazy Writes DB Layer Data Reads … • DB-#1 • Master • DB-#K • Master … • DB-#1 • Slave • DB-#K • Slave

  18. All you need to implement is… … • Web Server #M • Web Server #1 …everything else is off-the-shelf components! …

  19. Reducing Load-times • Users want responsive pages • Show something immediately • Player’s won’t wait for your app to load • Stream non-critical content

  20. Avoid Remote Calls • Remote server calls are slow and unreliable • Aim for no remote calls during load • Embed data into Javascript Facebook Iframe Inline-JS here Flash ClientEmbed

  21. Caching Slow Calls • Build in FacebookAPI caching within the social network wrapper • Write a DB wrapper to generate and cache SQL

  22. FarmVille Page Profiler • Catch and eliminate all un-cached Facebook and DB calls Goal

  23. Fault Tolerance • Servers do go down randomly • Build redundancy on all levels of server architecture • Facebook is a dependency also • Aim for DB-less & Facebook-less modes • “Defcon”-style error management

  24. Runtime Config • How do we progressively keep the game running? • Create all features with kill-switches • Create a web dashboard to allow non-technical folks to help out

  25. Is it still running? • Notify your team when things break using server monitoring (Nagios/Munin) • What to watch • Server load/traffic graphs • Memcacheevictions

  26. Stats Tracking • How do we know what users are seeing? • Have the client send back statistics • Number of errors • Load-times • Take a metrics driven approach to error handling

  27. Before Launching • Get confidence that your stuff actually works • Perform load testing • Social games are a marathon not a sprint • Sleep before launching!

  28. Questions?

  29. Thank You!

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