Techniques for virtual area generation and manipulation are described herein. The described techniques may be used, for example, for virtual areas in electronically presented content items, such as video games and other media items. In some examples, one or more interfaces may be provided that allow content developers to provide and specify a set of rules associated with the virtual area. The set of rules may include, for example, terrain rules, object rules, and other rules associated with other aspects of the virtual area. The terrain rules may include rules for generating, distributing, and/or manipulating different types of terrain, such as such as flat and/or buildable space, mountains, valleys, berms, rivers, lakes, oceans, deserts, forests, and many others. The object rules may include rules for generating, distributing, and/or manipulating different types of objects, such as trees, bushes, rocks, snow, grass, fish, birds, animals, people, vehicles, buildings, and others.

The present invention pertains to a method and apparatus for providing a dynamic and scalable topology for virtual world environments. In one embodiment, the method may include determining, in response to a request of a user computer system to transfer from a first place to a second place in a virtual environment, an instance of a second place that satisfies the request. The method may also include directing the user computer system to a game server that provides the determined instance of the second place.

Embodiments of the present invention allow players to instantly access and begin playing games through an online service. To make the games instantly available, an online service keeps instances of games running in active memory waiting for a player to be added. The game instances running in active memory are not attached to a player profile or an I/O channel from a game client. Once the player requests a game, the player's player profile is loaded into the running game instance and an I/O channel is mapped from the game client to the game instance. From the player's perspective, the preloaded game instances allow the player to browse directly from game to game with very little delay. To optimize the usage of server-side resources, historical usage data may be analyzed to anticipate demand for different games.

A request to create a game fleet may be received by a game session management service. The game session management service may manage a fixed host fleet type and a non-fixed host fleet type, wherein the fixed host fleet type allows game server execution only on a fixed host topology of a computing service provider affiliated with the game session management service, and wherein the non-fixed host fleet type allows game server execution on any host topology. The request may indicate that the first game fleet has the non-fixed host fleet type. A host registration request to register a host to the first game fleet may be received. A process registration request to register a game server process executing on the host may be received. The game session management service may communicate with the game server process executing on the host via a designated communications interface.

The present disclosure relates to a system, network architecture and method having a relay server connected through a computer network between an original simulating host and at least two non-simulating hosts engaged in co-activity within the interactive environment. The relay server may be for receiving control information from the original simulating host and the at least two non-simulating host; relaying state information for the interactive environment from the simulating host to the at least two non-simulating hosts; detecting an unavailability of the original simulating host; selecting one of the at least two non-simulating host to become a new simulating host using a selection criteria; transmitting a copy of the state information to the new simulating host; and instructing the new simulating host to begin operating as the new simulating host based on the transmitted state information.