Maksim Baryshnikov, Head of Server, Wargaming.net

1. 6 YEARS OF BIGWORLD ENGINE EVOLUTION
CAUSED BY THE SUCCESS OF WORLD OF TANKS
Maksim Baryshnikov
Head of Server, Wargaming

3. WORLD OF TANKS
World of Tanks is massively multiplayer online game focused on PvP
battles using mid 20th century fighting vehicles.
Primary battles type is Random Battles: 15vs15
Average battle map size is 1200x1200 meters
Powered by BigWorld game engine

5. BIGWORLD
BigWorld Technology provides an underlying software architecture
needed for game developers to build MMO's and online games.
The back-end server solution is implemented under Linux, with a
Python API scripting environment.
The tool suite includes content creation tools, server monitoring tools
and support.

6. THE TIMELINE
2010Released
2011200k+CCU
2012500k+CCU
2013800k+CCU
20141M+CCU
2002Released
20036Industryawards
2005RedHerring100
2008Deloittetechfast500
2012AcquiredbyWG

7. AFTER THE ACQUISITION
Nov, 2013 — World of Warplanes
Sep, 2015 — World of Warships
May, 2013 — World of Tanks Blitz
Feb, 2014 — World of Tanks Console

8. CONCEPTUAL CONTRADICTION

9. CONCEPTUAL CONTRADICTION
WORLD OF TANKS BIGWORLD
ARENA SIZE 1200X1200 METERS OPEN WORLDS
PLAYERS PER ARENA 30 UNLIMITED ;)
SCALING MODEL NUMBER OF ARENAS NUMBER OF PLAYERS

10. APPROACH TO SCALE
Cell #1
Cell #2 Cell #3
Cell #4
Cell #5
Cell #6
Cell #7
• Split space into rectangular
subspaces — cells
• Each cell — separate OS
process
• Each cell is calculating the
World within its boundaries
• Cells’ boundaries can be
adjusted runtime
• Larger spaces — more cells

11. APPROACH TO SCALE (ARENAS)
• WoT: cross-cell fire (shell
fired on one server can hit
the target on another!)
• WoT: dynamic server-side
physics split between cells
• WoT: a lot of offloading/
onloading code to transfer
tanks between cells
• etc…

12. BIGWORLD’S EVOLUTION TURNED
TOWARDS “WORLD OF…” TYPE OF GAMES

13. AFTER THE ACQUISITION
Nov, 2013 — World of Warplanes
Sep, 2015 — World of Warships
May, 2013 — World of Tanks Blitz
Feb, 2014 — World of Tanks Console
BigWorld: Indie Edition discontinued
BigWorld: non-WG still-in-development games
switch to Unity/Unreal
BigWorld: supporting internal clients and external clients
such as Unity and others.

14. BUT IT’S OK,
ONE TECH CAN’T BE IDEAL FOR EVERYONE

15. WOT CONTRIBUTION
• Geographically distributed cluster-of-clusters concept
• Server side dynamic physics
• External integrations
• Dynamically loaded extensions concept
• Improved memory allocator
• Protocol compression
• etc…

16. WOWS CONTRIBUTION
• Using single active cell approach — having whole
Space (Battle Arena) managed by exactly one Cell
and having the other to hold shadow copy for
durability
• Built hierarchical cascading multi-cluster on top of
original World of Tanks cluster-of-clusters concept
adopted by BigWorld

17. BLITZ CONTRIBUTION
• Heavily uses World of Tanks server code
• Solved a lot of connectivity and protocol issues in
BigWord related to cellular networks
• Improving logging and telemetry reporting
infrastructure

18. MAKSIM BARYSHNIKOV
Head of Server (World of Tanks PC)
m_baryshnikov@wargaming.net
ANY QUESTIONS?