Tuesday, March 11, 2008

PS3 + YDL + Erlang = ready for prime time

Ok, it's been a long Sunday, but I did manage to install Yellow Dog Linux on my Playstation 3 successfully. It took much longer to backup the PS3 than it did to configure YDL. After that I installed VNC Server to remote control the machine and let me tell you, that the Gnome Desktop is a beauty. Installing Erlang was as simple as downloading and compiling it, so no new really on this end, either. In other words, the server platform is ready for deployment, I will now go ahead and run the SMASH framework on it to compare speed ratios among my test systems, let's see what happens next. This is for me a major milestone, given that THIS PS3 will be the mother of all SMASH development nodes. I will have some time next week as well to push the conection between the socket server (Mr. SOX) and the SMASH framework, so I definitely hope to have some empty game world that people can actually connect to by next week. If that holds true, we might do a very first game world logon, maybe, maybe, maybe.

Oh and by the way, some may ask, WHY Linux and PS3 at all ??? Very simple, the thought process behind that is, that I want to be able to provide a server frame work taht is inexpensive and powerful, because regular servers are definitely more $$$ heavy and not everybody will be able to afford buying Windows Server licenses, so nothing beats Linux moneywise and a U$500 PS3 server should make a nice duo. Now, that much said, many people are scared of Linux, because it's not exactly intuitive, well, given that we only need a DVD install and later on a simple download + install of Erlang, that should be fairly simple to do for everyone and ALL the others tasks can be done thru native Erlang, no more touching of the PS3 is required, I am planning on adminstrating everything from a more comfortable platform, without losing the power of the solution.

Stay tuned.

Sunweaver