Developer Voices

What can game programming teach us about databases? (with Tyler Cloutier)

Jan 17, 2024

Expert in game programming, Tyler Cloutier, discusses using game development concepts like event sourcing and subscriptions in database architecture. They explore the challenges of traditional databases, tick rates, and data subscriptions in gaming and non-gaming scenarios, emphasizing the importance of unifying data architecture for optimal performance.

01:05:31

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Episode guests

Tyler Cloutier

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Game programming tackles global networking issues and concurrency, providing unique solutions for traditional programming challenges.

Mobile games use complex data strategies to predict player behavior and manage vast data pipelines, highlighting the data processing demands in gaming.

BitCraft's game design integrates SpaceTimeDB for optimized data querying and synchronization, showcasing a subscription-based streaming model for player interactions.

Deep dives

Novel Angles in Game Programming

Game programming presents challenges like global networking issues, concurrency, and latency that offer novel solutions to traditional programming problems. Tyler Klutier, with a background in distributed systems and data science for the gaming industry, discusses how games handle massive data volumes and concurrency issues, offering unique insights on system design.

Introduction

2min

Exploring the Intersection of Data Science and Game Development

2min

Exploring the Intriguing Virtual Kingdom of a King Simulation Mobile Game

2min

Revolutionizing Data Management in Game Development

12min

Game Programming and Database Architecture

21min

Data Subscriptions and Game Programming

22min

Exploring Space Time DB and Janktime DB Development

5min

The world of game programming might seem a million miles away from 'regular' programming. But they still have to deal with the same kinds of data, scale and concurrency problems that we’re all familiar with in the software world. And that makes the gaming world an interesting place for new ideas - under the hood they’re solving those same problems we face, but often with some novel ideas about the solutions. So this week we’re off to the massive open world that is game development, to see what we can learn that might make lives easier in the non-gaming space. Joining us for that is Tyler Cloutier, the founder of Clockwork Labs. They’re building SpaceTimeDB, a curiously-distributed database built to be the underlying platform for their new MMORPG, BitCraft. Digging down into the architecture of SpaceTimeDB, we pick Tyler’s brain for nuggets of information on event sourcing, request/response vs. subscriptions, transactions, security and much more. All in an effort to make our programmers and data scientists’ lives easier.

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SpaceTimeDB: https://spacetimedb.com/

BitCraft: https://bitcraftonline.com/

“4X games” defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X

Plan 9 O.S.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

Tyler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylercloutier/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

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#programming #podcast #softwaredevelopment #software #gamedev #gamedevelopment