How does hosting work on xbox live

To Live, the server would appear as another PC client running the game. Regardless, running in a typical dedicated server environment requires being able to be completely launched from the command line. The Live Access Code restriction was the source of other limitations, since the TGServer was going to be made available as a free download. In GFWL, at the time, there was no way to configure a title to either not require codes or to allow a single code to be shared among multiple accounts.

Our solution was to leverage a sign-up system on the TimeGate community website to be able to distribute codes as needed and associate them with website accounts this also allowed players to retrieve lost codes. In addition, we created pipelines for server hosting providers to request a bulk set of Live Access Codes.

Having a PC binary server hosting a game session for Xbox binary clients requires the two to have the same protocol and the same cooked content. Section 8 is based on Unreal Engine 3 , and little work was necessary to get the two builds to understand each other.

The second problem required us to create a new way to "cook for console" on the PC, so that the TGServer content would match what the Xbox clients were using. Matchmaking support was straightforward, but we needed a way for a user to find a specific server.

If someone was going to go through the effort of setting up their own dedicated server for Section 8 , they needed to be able to join that server from their Xbox Traditional PC shooters provide ways to access servers by IP or provide large server browsers with various filters and search tools.

However, in the Live network there is no way to find someone by IP, and queries are restricted to returning 50 results even if we could get a full browser, navigating a large list with a gamepad is not user-friendly. To address these usability problems, we added the ability to search for a server by the host name i.

Each dedicated server could be configured with a clan tag, making it easy to find. Players can compare and rank against each other through Leaderboards and the Stats Portal website. However, this comparison is only valid if servers can be trusted to run without modifications or settings adjustment, which is difficult to enforce when anyone can host a dedicated server.

Working with GameSpy, we established a whitelist of servers and tools to manage the list. Each session handle includes a guid that uniquely identifies the handle, which allows titles to reference the session by using a single guid. An invite handle is passed to a member when they are invited to join a game. The invite handle contains information that lets the invited member's game join the correct session.

A search handle includes additional metadata about the session, and allows titles to search for sessions that meet the selected criteria. An activity handle lets members see what other members on their social network are playing, and can be used join a friend's game. A correlation handle effectively works as an alias for a session, allowing a game to refer to a session by only using the id of the correlation handle. Xbox Live provides an invite system that is supported by the Multiplayer service.

The Multiplayer service enables players to invite other players to their game sessions. Invited players receive a game invite and a title uses this information to join an existing session and multiplayer experience.

Titles control invite flow and when invites can be sent. Invites can be sent through the shell by the user or directly from the title. The notification text for an invite can be dynamically set by a title to provide more information to the invited player.

Invites can also include additional data for the title that is not visible to the player and can be used to carry additional information. In addition to invites, Xbox Live also provides a shell option for players to join an active gameplay session of friends or other known players. This enables another path into an active game session and is also driven by the MPSD.

If Sally sends an invite to Lisa to join her game, Lisa receives a notification on her device that she can choose to accept or decline. If she accepts the invitation, the OS attempts to launch the game, if the game is not already running, and triggers an activation event that contains information about why the game was activated, and any additional details in the case of an invite, for example, the details include the ID of the player that invited, as well as the session that the member has been invited to.

The process of handling this event is known as protocol activation, and indicates that the game should automatically go into a specific state, which is detailed in the activation event arguments. If the member is joining a multiplayer game, the session handle id is specified as one of the arguments. In Lisa's case, accepting the invite should automatically start the game if needed , and join her to the same game session as Sally, without Lisa needing to take any further actions.

Protocol activation can be triggered by accepting an invite, joining another member's gamer via their profile card, or clicking a deep linked achievement. SmartMatch is the name of the Xbox Live service for anonymous matchmaking. This service matches up players of the same game based on configurable a match rule set. The matchmaking service works closely with the MPSD and uses sessions for matchmaking input and output.

Matchmaking is performed on the service, which allows titles to easily do provide other experiences during the matchmaking flow, for example single-player within the title. Individuals or groups that want to enter matchmaking create a match ticket session, then request the matchmaking service to find other players with whom to set up a match.

This results in the creation of a temporary "match ticket" residing within the matchmaking service on a match hopper for a period of time. The matchmaking service chooses sessions to play together based on rule configuration, statistics stored for each player, and any additional information given at the time of the match request. There are a few exceptions to exclusive content hosting on Xbox Live. Longtime gaming industry leader Electronic Arts EA originally wouldn't produce Live Enabled games for Xbox because Microsoft wouldn't allow them to use their own servers.

Some of those games make use of EA's own system of user accounts, such as those available for EA Sports Active players. With the increasing number of online games has come an increasing interest in user-generated content. Microsoft opened the Xbox to the independent game developer community in In addition, it opened the Xbox Live Marketplace so those developers could make their games, add-ons and other software available for download across the entire Xbox Live network.

Microsoft screens each Marketplace contribution in advance to be sure it is secure and meets community standards. Now that we've looked at the tech behind the Live show, let's examine some of the challenges for Xbox and its users.

About to replace your old Xbox with a newer model? Previous Next. Remedy OmG. How satisfied are you with this reply? In reply to Remedy OmG's post on January 1, Looks like there's more info here but i haven't read through it all. In reply to JiuJitsuHero's post on January 3, In reply to UneasyJmitchell's post on January 3, Unfortunately when hosting nothing but hit markers all game long. What's the cap if I may ask and who is your ISP?