Audeuro's Realm

Currently, Hikato and I are working on a new game (details and name to remain non-disclosed until design is done), and it occurred to me that people oftentimes expect too much from their server manager program.

What the standard person seems to expect is complete control over every one of their game's servers, to reboot and shutdown and give them remote control over every single server. This is pretty flawed, as anything you can implement would be easy to circumvent. Plus, and I guess it's my personal design philosophy, you as the creator shouldn't get this type of power anyways, but that's a whole different story.

What I expect from my server manager program is different. I expect for it to keep track of the servers that are currently running, and that's about it. It can also hold savefiles and give those out, but that's about it, because I believe in subtle control over servers. My control exists in two areas: hub_password, and savefiles. My savefiles are kept on my server manager (they can be saved locally, but that's on a server-by-server basis), so in order to run one of my game's servers you have to be an authentic host. These are my beliefs.

Server management is different for everyone, I suppose. Others may use it to exercise complete control over their servers, but I use it to store savefiles and to a lesser extent moderate hosting of my game.