摘要
對於大型多人線上遊戲來說，要同時服務來自世界各地大量的玩家，讓玩家可以享受優質的遊玩品質，就必須充分利用遊戲伺服器的資源以及保持玩家遊戲連線的順暢。現行多偏好使用伺服器叢集（Server Cluster）來服務大量的玩家，通常會將虛擬世界地圖切割成數個較小的遊戲地圖。由於遊戲的設計或是遊戲業者舉辦的活動，很容易讓玩家在各張地圖上分配不均，有些遊戲也會設計任務動線，使得在玩家多且活躍活動的地圖就容易形成熱點（Hotspot）。本研究的目標即是有效地平均伺服器的負載以及改善玩家在各個伺服器中分配不均的情況，來提升伺服器叢集的效能。如何分配遊戲地圖與任務地圖到伺服器叢集中的真實伺服器，是重要的負載平衡課題，影響遊戲伺服器叢集的效能。本研究提出兩個新的負載平衡策略，其一為針對無任務熱點的一般遊戲地圖所提出的eMPNM/S（expected Maximal Playerson Neighboring Maps by Server）。其二，針對有任務熱點的遊戲地圖，我們提出TBO（Task-Based Oriented）混合型的負載平衡策略。我們將所提的負載平衡策略實作於LVS-CAD遊戲伺服器叢集中， 並且使用開放原始碼的多人線上遊戲Stendhal來進行實驗。實驗的結果顯示，我們新提出的策略對於有無任務列地圖設計的遊戲都有較佳的效能表現，大大地提升遊戲伺服器叢集的效能。
並列摘要
The massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have a large group of players from the whole world, so the server resources must be used effectively. To serve a large amount of players, most MMOGs vendors use the server cluster architecture. Usually, they divide the virtual world of a MMOG into smaller game maps and design a variety of tasks or events at different maps. Some popular game maps will become hotspots and gather more players than the regular game maps. The goal of this paper is to maintain load balance of the game servers in the game cluster. How to assign game maps to different servers in the cluster is a critical load-balancing issue, which affects the performance of a game server cluster. In this paper, we propose two load-balancing policies for assigning game maps to servers in a game cluster and dealing with different types of games. The first policy named expected Maximal Players on Neighboring Maps by Server (eMPNM/S) is a dynamic policy designed for games with regular game maps. The second policy named Task-Based Oriented (TBO) policy is a hybrid policy that is devised for game maps designed with specific tasks and events. Through the practical implementation in the LVS-CAD game cluster and using the open-source MMOG - Stendhal in the experiments, the experimental results show that our policies outperform other policies and greatly improve the performance of a game server cluster.
延伸閱讀
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- 吳宗翰、姜美玲、鄭暉盛（2018）。支援瞭解需求內容分配及負載平衡的虛擬機器伺服器叢集之設計與實作。載於國立東華大學（主編），NCS 2017 全國計算機會議（頁844-849）。國立東華大學。https://doi.org/10.29428/9789860544169.201801.0158
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- 俞博文（2011）。基於地圖分割實作可延展性的負載平衡伺服器叢集於大型多人線上遊戲〔碩士論文，國立暨南國際大學〕。華藝線上圖書館。https://doi.org/10.6837/NCNU.2011.00257