Introduction

Introduction

Sirikata is an BSD licensed open source platform for games and virtual worlds. We aim to provide a set of libraries and protocols which can be used to deploy a virtual world, as well as fully featured sample implementations of services for hosting and deploying these worlds.

Sirikata is not an application but a platform on which shared, networked, 3D applications can be built. Examples include multiplayer online games, interactive meeting spaces, and social virtual worlds. Sirikata recognizes that large parts of these systems are identical -- objects join a shared space, discover other objects, communicate with each other, have behavior defined by small scripts, and so on -- and attempts to provide scalable, flexible, and extensible implementations of these services. Application developers can build on Sirikata's infrastructure, taking advantage of a much lower barrier to entry and proven scalability.

Target Audience

This manual is targeted at users of Sirikata. Note that this means users of the platform, not users of applications built on Sirikata. So in this case, user means an application developer. Because Sirikata has many standard components with reasonable defaults, ideally applications can be developed mainly in scripting languages. However, this manual is geared towards users who need to also extend Sirikata, adding functionality which is not already available from the existing plugins.

Latest Documentation

Please make sure you have the latest documentation, or the version appropriate for your release, before proceeding.

• See http://www.sirikata.com/docs/ for all available documentation
• See http://www.sirikata.com/docs/head/ for documentation generated nightly from the source code repository

How to Proceed

• Architecture - High level description of the architecture of the entire system. For more detailed information on each component see:
  • Space Architecture - Introduction to the architecture of a space server, which simulates and mediates interactions between objects.
  • Object Host Architecture - Introduction to the architecture of object hosts, which simulate individual objects, running their scripts.
  • CDN Architecture - Introduction to the content distribution network architecture, which handles long term static storage of content such as scripts and meshes.
• Authoritative State - Explanation of where the authoritative version of state is maintained. For security and consistency, not all state for a given object resides with the object itself.