# 🏰 Server Infrastructure & Scalability

A game like *The Crownless* demands both immersion and resilience — a seamless world where thousands of players can shape history without performance or consistency trade-offs. Our infrastructure approach is designed for **modular growth**, **regional load balancing**, and **future-proof scalability**.

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#### 🌐 **Phase 1: Modular, Instance-Based World (Launch Architecture)**

At launch, *The Crownless* will operate using a **zone-sharded architecture** optimized for rapid deployment, player density management, and early-stage resource efficiency.

* The continent is divided into **geographically and narratively distinct “zones”**
* Each zone runs as a **dedicated instance** on scalable cloud or bare-metal servers
* Zone transitions happen **in-world** through gates, mountain passes, boats, and teleportation rituals — maintaining immersion
* Server boundaries are abstracted from the player experience through **loading screens** and **seamless data handoffs**

Benefits:

* Faster development and testing cycles
* Improved crash isolation and debugging
* Enables targeted scaling in popular areas (e.g., PvP hotspots, event zones)

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#### 🚀 **Phase 2: Distributed, Persistent World (Post-Funding Upgrade)**

Upon reaching key funding milestones, *The Crownless* will evolve into a **fully persistent, cross-zone synchronized world** leveraging advanced backend technology.

Key Upgrades:

* Transition to a **clustered infrastructure** capable of syncing multiple zones in real time
* Support for **dynamic population balancing**, enabling population overflow redirection or seamless zone instancing
* Integration of **global services** for economy, governance, auction houses, and faction states

Scalability Targets:

* 5,000+ concurrent users per world shard
* Real-time **event propagation** (e.g., world boss spawns, weather shifts, conquests)
* Persistent **player-driven structures and cities** with long-term impact

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#### ⚙️ **Technology Options & Backend Resilience**

To meet future concurrency demands and maintain design flexibility, *The Crownless* will be **engine-agnostic at the server backend level**, with optional support for:

* **SpatialOS**: For dynamic zone stitching and cloud-based spatial computation
* **Heroic Labs**: Scalable open-source backend for matchmaking, leaderboards, and live services
* **Custom Microservices**: For lightweight, event-based systems like token sync, economy, and player logs
* **Unreal Engine Relevance Culling**: Native optimization for reducing tick load and actor replication

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#### 📡 **Network Optimization Strategies**

All networking systems are being built for **efficiency, modularity, and low-latency interaction**, including:

* **Relevance-based actor visibility culling** to reduce server overhead
* **Async state replication** for housing, trading, and low-frequency interactions
* **Event-driven architecture** for combat, resource generation, and governance updates
* **Decentralized economic services** for token operations and smart contract verification (blockchain layer)

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*From a modest first step to a continent-spanning infrastructure, our server design grows with the world — and with the ambitions of its players.*
