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Guild Software has announced the upcoming launch of a new MMO middleware product: the NAOS Engine. Developed to power the company's long-running MMORPG, Vendetta Online, the engine provides "a complete and multi-platform solution, with native client build targets for Windows, Mac and Linux."

The highly scalable distributed game server uses lightweight Erlang threading to provide persistent handling of hundreds of thousands of individual NPCs and other game elements, with seamless management as they transition across running/non-running boundaries in the game universe. A well-proven update/patch server and client are also included, the server allowing optimized binary patching and user queues for rate limiting and overflow. The update client supports redundant failover to multiple patch server clusters, and includes automated client crash reporting, with fetching and submission of auto-generated tracebacks via HTTP to a proprietary bug tracking system. Finally, a completely custom Lua/FastCGI-based web content management system, with proven billing, messageboard, mailing list and administrative features, rounds out the server solution, creating a nearly-complete package for the prospective MMO developer. All server software can be run on either FreeBSD or Linux, and works well with existing RDBMS solutions such as MySQL or Oracle, as well as DBMS such as Mnesia. Beyond the use of a database for persistency, an integrated RDF triple-store is in development to more elegantly enable applications such as advanced AI, simulated-economics, and monitoring tasks.

The NAOS Engine will be available either as a complete licensed source package, or individual components may be licensed separately at a reduced cost. The product is expected to launch in the year, and will be followed by the NAOS Platform, a cloud-based MMO development solution which also includes scalable hosting, with sliding pricing based on usage and revenue, to help startup MMO developers focus purely on their games.

NAOS Engine

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Vendetta Online (add to watch list)

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