Programming Languages for Game Servers Skill

Programming Languages for Game Servers

Master high-performance languages for real-time game server development.

Language Comparison

| Language | Performance | Memory | Concurrency | Use Case | |----------|-------------|--------|-------------|----------| | C++ | Highest | Manual | Threads | AAA, FPS | | Rust | High | Safe | Async | New projects | | Go | High | GC | Goroutines | Microservices | | C# | Medium | GC | Async | Unity, casual | | Java | Medium | GC | Threads | MMO |

C++ Game Server

#include <boost/asio.hpp>

class GameServer {
public:
    GameServer(boost::asio::io_context& io, short port)
        : acceptor_(io, tcp::endpoint(tcp::v4(), port)) {
        start_accept();
    }

private:
    void start_accept() {
        auto socket = std::make_shared<tcp::socket>(acceptor_.get_executor());
        acceptor_.async_accept(*socket,
            [this, socket](boost::system::error_code ec) {
                if (!ec) handle_connection(socket);
                start_accept();
            });
    }

    tcp::acceptor acceptor_;
};

Go Server

type GameServer struct {
    players sync.Map
    tick    *time.Ticker
}

func (s *GameServer) handlePlayer(conn net.Conn) {
    defer conn.Close()
    for {
        msg := readMessage(conn)
        go s.processMessage(msg)
    }
}

Rust Server

async fn handle_player(stream: TcpStream) -> Result<()> {
    let (reader, writer) = stream.split();
    loop {
        let msg = read_message(&mut reader).await?;
        let response = process_command(&msg).await;
        write_message(&mut writer, &response).await?;
    }
}

Selection Criteria

| Factor | Best Choice | |--------|-------------| | Latency critical | C++, Rust | | Rapid development | Go, C# | | Team expertise | Match existing | | Scalability | Go, Erlang |

Troubleshooting

Common Failure Modes

| Error | Root Cause | Solution | |-------|------------|----------| | Memory leak | Manual mgmt | Use RAII/smart ptrs | | GC pauses | Allocation | Pool objects | | Thread deadlock | Lock order | Lock hierarchy | | Segfault | Pointer bug | Use Rust/sanitizers |

Debug Checklist

# C++ memory check
valgrind --leak-check=full ./game-server

# Go profiling
go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/heap

# Rust optimization
cargo build --release

Unit Test Template

TEST(GameServer, AcceptsConnections) {
    GameServer server(8080);
    TcpClient client;
    client.connect("localhost", 8080);
    EXPECT_TRUE(client.isConnected());
}

Resources

assets/ - Language templates
references/ - Performance guides

Agent Skills: Programming Languages for Game Servers

Skill Files