Local Persistence: Scale Your Persistent Game Worlds

GameFabric by Nitrado is proud to announce its newest upcoming add-on: Local Persistence. Part of GameFabric’s Multiplayer Servers, this feature will streamline the creation and maintenance of persistent game worlds, allowing developers to focus on what they’re best at: creating experiences that last.

What Is Local Persistence?

Local Persistence is GameFabric's newest add-on that provides local disk behavior for game instances running on our hyperscalable and distributed system in both bare metal and cloud environments. It’s the convenience of having local file storage but with the reliability and scalability of the cloud, merging the best of both worlds. Through this cloud-based persistence, crucial game-related data persists across sessions, server restarts, shutdowns, updates, and even infrastructure transitions from cloud to bare metal or bare metal to cloud, as well as server region migrations. Your data follows your server wherever it goes. Local Persistence ensures your vital world states don’t get lost.

This means that player-built structures, owned settlements, and player-housing remain intact even after server shutdowns or during scaling. With Local Persistence, your players can participate in your evolving worlds. They can enjoy bustling hubs, work together to craft formidable fortresses, or make their own personal spaces that truly feel like home.

Local Persistence comes equipped with a variety of compelling benefits for game studios undertaking the challenge of sandbox worlds:

• Persistent Data: Data survives graceful server shutdowns, restarts, and scaling operations for optimized continuity.

• Seamless Migrations: Move servers between cloud providers, to bare metal, and even across regions without the headache or fear of data loss. Your game worlds can now travel with you. 

• Easy Integration: Local Persistence can work with your existing games without the hassle of code changes, provided they are within operating limits, significantly reducing developer time and labor.

• Cloud Reliability: Built on a distributed cloud architecture, Local Persistence affords greater reliability than conventional disk storage solutions.

   

• Simplified Debugging: Your saved data can be downloaded straight from your server after it is shut down, simplifying the debugging process and providing a seamless way for re-uploading.

The advantages of Local Persistence trump those of alternative providers, as other solutions often force developers to outsource their saved server states onto external storage provided by extraneous third parties, requiring them to change how they develop their game servers to enable this behavior. This effectively roadblocks a variety of games these providers can orchestrate.

Local Persistence, however, keeps your data paired to your designated servers with local behavior, meaning it can service the wide array of potential worlds developers have created without a hiccup, ensuring their game state data is always right where they need it to be.

How Local Persistence Works

Local Persistence integrates seamlessly with GameFabric Multiplayer Servers’ Vessels feature. Vessels are designed specifically for creating long-lived game servers with unique configurations such as names and IDs, which can be customized and, crucially, persist across game updates. These are perfect for game modes where players can return to a distinct game instance over and over again.

What’s more, GameFabric’s Formations further simplifies this type of game server management by grouping Vessels based on shared configurations, resource requirements, and game versions, ensuring consistency across multiple servers. This makes it easy to deploy and manage large numbers of persistent game instances.

Because of these existing features, Local Persistence was a natural addition to the GameFabric suite that our team developed to complement the platform’s functionalities.

By being able to write world data to a virtual disk which is uploaded to cloud-based storage upon shutdown, this transparent cloud-based local file system allows game states to automatically follow your designated servers, eliminating the need for complex data transfers. When your game servers start, your game states will already be present. This is especially useful when transferring your game servers across infrastructure such as bare metal or cloud, and also when starting a game server up in an entirely different region.

Furthermore, this cloud-based persistence model stores file data redundantly, making Local Persistence's distributed system highly scalable. Developers will also be able to download their game state snapshots and start their servers with older versions if they so choose. This comes particularly in handy when the need for debugging arises, as downloading and re-uploading data is an effortless process.

It’s important to note, however, that Local Persistence is designed for persistent world data, not session-based servers or service-specific information. Player inventories, leaderboards, and character information, which are typically handled by a developer’s backend, are not included in this feature. Local Persistence focuses on the core building blocks of the game world itself and snapshots are captured when a game server is gracefully shut down.

The GameFabric API lends itself to the platform’s developer-first approach, and like other GameFabric functionality, Local Persistence can be deliberately managed through our API, Terraform, and the GameFabric UI.

Many of the most popular, groundbreaking multiplayer titles today are built out of persistent worlds. The allure to fully participate in games that drive creative expression is a call that many players around the globe have answered. And one thing is clear: they’re hungry for more. Titles such as Minecraft, Rust, Palworld, Valheim, DayZ, and Conan Exiles aren’t just some of the most popular multiplayer games, but some of the most beloved video games period. The reason? Continued engagement as a co-creator. Local Persistence provides the foundation for these types of experiences by enabling:

• Player-built bases and structures: Games like Minecraft or Valheim boast the ability for players to invest countless hours building their visions, where the only limitation is their imagination. These player-created structures can be as detailed or simple as they wish and often play an intrinsic role in their in-game survival and progression. Persistent game states allow for their creative endeavors to remain across updates, migrations, scaling, and server restarts for uninterrupted engagement and continuous evolution.

• Player-owned settlements: In games such as DayZ, Conan Exiles, or Rust, players are encouraged to stake their claim in an area of the game world where they can defend their forts and loot containers. With Local Persistence, these settlements and all that is meticulously stored within them are retained.

• Server-bound housing: MMOs such as Final Fantasy XIV enable player housing that is bound to specific instances. These give enhanced ownership and agency to players, motivating them to decorate, furnish, and augment their own self-told stories. Fortifying a player’s sense of accomplishment and continuity is a major perk offered by Local Persistence.

• Persistent factories and infrastructure: With titles like Satisfactory, players build sprawling factories and intricate in-game infrastructure. Local Persistence ensures these creations persist, making sure the factory line of industrial endeavor never comes to a halt.

• Creature habitats: In games such as Palworld, players tame and breed a variety of fantastical creatures, building habitats for them to live and endure in. In-game fauna has a right to persistent “life” just as player-built structures do! With this GameFabric add-on, players will be able to rest easy knowing their companions are safe and sound.
  
  

• Get innovative: You also can break the mold and introduce new takes on persistent worlds such as structure decay or through the spread of infection, for instance. GameFabric is about options and opportunities. Get creative with our upcoming functionality!

Integration and Support

We’ve designed Local Persistence to offer seamless integration with full functionality coming right out of the box. Barring exceptional cases, this add-on can work with any of your existing games without the nuisance of required code changes. What’s more, GameFabric offers robust support options with its dedicated, veteran customer success management team. As with all GameFabric solutions, we’re committed to helping your studio succeed every step of the way.

Local Persistence through GameFabric represents a significant leap forward for our developer-first multiplayer server orchestration platform. By simplifying data management and scalability, ensuring seamless migrations, and providing hosting experiences that last and evolve, our robust and reliable platform empowers game developers to create the most immersive and engaging player experiences possible.

This March, our Local Persistence add-on will be released in alpha and made available for customer testing. The full feature release can be expected in June of this year, giving you plenty of time to get comfortable with this exciting evolution of GameFabric.

Weave Your World

Ready to build truly persistent and dynamic game worlds and engage your players in a new way? Get a personalized demo or contact our sales team to explore the GameFabric suite, your developer-first multiplayer server orchestration platform. Reach out today!