Optimizations II: Reconnects, Edge Caching & Polish
• 2 min read
Handling thundering herds, passive mode for alt-tabbed clients, and edge caching strategies. The final 20% of performance gains.
distributed-systemsperformancecachingreliability
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distributed-systemsperformancecachingreliabilityprotobufcompressionorchestrationscalingkubernetesvalidationsecuritygameplayredispub-subfan-outswimgossipfailure-detectionarchitectureblack-skies
Optimizations I: Protocols & Serialization
• 2 min read
Why we chose Protobuf over FlatBuffers, heartbeat coalescing, and Zstandard compression. The wire format decisions that saved 40% bandwidth.
distributed-systemsperformanceprotobufcompression
Dynamic Tile Spawning & Lifecycle
• 2 min read
How the world dynamically expands and contracts based on player distribution. The garbage collection model for tile processors and preemptive neighbor spawning.
distributed-systemsorchestrationscalingkubernetes
Ingress: Handling Client Actions at Scale
• 2 min read
Command validation, intent collection, and the 500ms tick budget. How client actions flow into tile processors and get validated before execution.
distributed-systemsvalidationsecuritygameplay
Designing Fan-Out for 10,000 Real-Time Players
• 2 min read
Case study of tile processor sharding, backpressure, and delivery guarantees. How Redis sharded pub/sub enables viewport-relevant event delivery.
distributed-systemsredispub-subfan-out
Massive Scale & SWIM Gossip
• 2 min read
Node failure detection and cluster membership at 10,000 players. How SWIM gossip protocol enables scalable failure detection without centralized coordination.
distributed-systemsswimgossipfailure-detection
Introduction & Architecture Overview
• 1 min read
Problem framing: why naive fan-out breaks at scale. An overview of the Black Skies distributed architecture and the constraints that shaped our design decisions.
distributed-systemsarchitectureblack-skies