- Owner
- In NetCraftGames, the game developer or studio that is our customer. The owner submits the game and manages it. The owner's customers are players.
- Player
- Someone who plays an owner's game. Players connect to the owner's server using a connection configuration.
- Dedicated server
- A game server process that runs on its own machine with no player at its screen, and that all players connect to. Contrast with a listen server, where one player's game also acts as the server.
- Listen server
- A multiplayer setup where one player's game instance is also the server. NetCraftGames does not host listen servers.
- Headless
- Running without a window, graphics or audio device. Godot uses the
--headless argument and Unity uses a Dedicated Server build or -batchmode -nographics. - Linux x64
- Linux on 64-bit x86 processors, also called x86-64. The only server platform NetCraftGames hosts.
- Authoritative server
- A server that decides what really happened in the game, so clients cannot simply declare their own results. The basis of fair play.
- Transport
- The network layer a game uses to send data: for example UDP, TCP, WebSocket or WebRTC.
- UDP
- A network protocol that sends independent packets with no guaranteed delivery or order. Fast games use it because a lost packet does not delay newer ones.
- TCP
- A network protocol that delivers data reliably and in order. A lost packet delays the data behind it.
- WebSocket
- A browser-supported connection that runs over TCP and lets a page and a server exchange messages both ways.
- WSS
- WebSocket over TLS, written
wss://. A page served over HTTPS may only open WSS connections. - TLS termination
- Ending the encrypted connection at a gateway, so the server behind it can speak plain WebSocket. NetCraftGames' gateway terminates TLS for browser games.
- Gateway
- The NetCraftGames service that accepts players' wss connections, checks the browser origin and forwards frames to the game server.
- wsPath
- A setting in the manifest that names the path your WebSocket server answers at, such as /ws. You fix it when you release, and nothing a player sends can change it. See the Node guide.
- Launcher
- The small start script, named server, that
ncg pack writes for a Node or Python project. It starts your code with the server's Node or Python, and the manifest's command points at it. - Origin
- The scheme, host and port of the website a browser page was loaded from. The gateway allows only the exact origins an owner lists.
- WebRTC
- A browser technology for direct peer-to-peer connections, including data channels that can be unreliable and unordered.
- Signaling
- The exchange of offers, answers and ICE candidates that peers use to set up a WebRTC connection. It carries no game data.
- ICE
- Interactive Connectivity Establishment, the process that tries to find a working network path between two peers, using STUN and TURN.
- STUN
- A protocol that tells a client its public address and what kind of NAT it is behind. It does not relay data.
- TURN
- A relay server that carries traffic between peers when a direct connection is impossible. NetCraftGames does not offer TURN yet.
- NAT
- Network address translation, the router feature that lets many devices share one public address. Symmetric NATs often block direct peer connections.
- ENet
- A reliable UDP networking library. Godot's
ENetMultiplayerPeer uses it. - KCP
- A UDP-based reliable transport. It is the default transport in Mirror, typically on port 7777.
- Mirror
- An open source networking library for Unity, with swappable transports such as KCP, Telepathy and SimpleWeb.
- Netcode for GameObjects (NGO)
- Unity's networking library for GameObjects. It uses the Unity Transport package, which runs over UDP.
- Replication
- How Unreal Engine copies game state from the server to clients.
- Manifest
- The deployment file that tells the host how to start and check your server: engine, transport, command, ports, probes, save path and shutdown. See the config guide.
- Connection config
- What a player's client needs to reach the server: address, port, protocol, TLS and version, produced as a schema-checked JSON document that never contains secrets.
- Health probe
- A declared check, over TCP, HTTP or UDP, that proves the server process is alive.
- Join probe
- A game-level exchange with a known reply that proves a player could actually join, not just that a port is open.
- Player probe
- A loopback endpoint returning a bounded player count as JSON, used for idle shutdown.
- Idle shutdown
- Saving and stopping a server after ten continuous minutes with zero reported players, so empty servers do not use hours.
- Standard profile
- A 2 vCPU, 4 GiB server that uses one plan hour per hour.
- Large profile
- A 4 vCPU, 8 GiB server that uses two plan hours per hour.
- Weighted server hour
- One hour of a running, verified-ready server multiplied by the profile's weight. Plans are measured in these.
- Egress
- Data sent from the server out to the internet, which clouds usually charge for and plans cap.
- Checkpoint
- A saved snapshot of a server's state taken during shutdown, verified before the machine is destroyed.
- Protection hold
- A visible state where a machine is kept because a save or shutdown failed, instead of being deleted.
- Launch gate
- A required check, with dated live evidence, that must pass before NetCraftGames accepts customers or provisions servers.
- llms.txt
- A Markdown file at a site's root that tells AI systems what the site is and where its best pages are.
- MCP
- Model Context Protocol, a standard way for AI assistants to call tools. NetCraftGames has a local MCP server for its owner API, not yet published.
Written by Charging Bull Software. Facts on this page are checked against the product source and dated sources listed above; where something is not proven, the page says so.
