1 minute ago, Septopus said:

No worries, I was recommending a commercial grade service package from your ISP.  But putting it on a virtual server somewhere would likely be much cheaper, especially if it's a fairly simple game/server setup. 

In fact, you may want to explore that, I know Microsoft and Amazon and I think Google all have a free-tier Virtual Servers that you can setup and try out.  Limited bandwidth, limited processing power, and limited ram/storage, but usually enough for testing small server/client setups out.  And most of their paid virtual server offerings are still usually cheaper than running your own dedicated commercial grade internet connection.

Okay I see, so with one of those virtual ones I'd only have one port right? Like, a dedicated port. I think that's how it works anyway...

And I could run my executables on it as well? If you don't know it's ok just wondering.

4 minutes ago, Septopus said:

A virtual server is "just like" a real server.  You can run any operating system and any software on them you want, just like a physical server.  Any/all the ports...  The limits are only your imagination, and what you want to pay for the bandwidth/resources(cpu,ram,storage,etc)...  It's actually just a logical "segment" of a massive server room full of actual servers that you get to use a very small(depends on budget how small) piece of to run your software and connect it to the world.

In every instance, I would recommend the use of virtual servers for development and testing of client/server applications.  I use them locally on my development machine to test my client/server games. 

 

Alright, thanks for your help! I really appreciate it, I feel like most articles on this stuff are always super vague and basic, so thanks for hooking me up with some knowledge!

Also if you have discord and you don't mind sharing it, you should add me Minipong#6531! I know you've almost certainly got better things to associate with then something like this, but if you're interested in game development and the type of thing that I'm doing I'd love to get some feedback from you on my progress. Again, thanks for the help man! I really appreciate it!

4 minutes ago, Septopus said:

If you want to explore setting up and running a local virtual machine for testing or just figuring out if you want to use one at all, try:

https://www.virtualbox.org/

There are a bunch of tutorials online for using this software, it's about the easiest out there and I use it regularly.

 

Thank you! I'll check it out when I get time to code.

9 minutes ago, Septopus said:

If you want to explore setting up and running a local virtual machine for testing or just figuring out if you want to use one at all, try:

https://www.virtualbox.org/

There are a bunch of tutorials online for using this software, it's about the easiest out there and I use it regularly.

 

Ok sorry, I'm looking at a tutorial about setting it up and whatnot... it looks like it's just a virtual OS thing, right? Kind of like an emulator? How is it relevant to my programming, I'm confused... I'm not really trying to use Ubuntu, whatever that's used for lol. Is it for security?

1 minute ago, Septopus said:

This is what a virtual server is.  They can run Windows as well.  This specific software would let you test out a virtual server setup running on your local machine.  If you were inclined to go that route instead of hosting it yourself on your fiber with your hardware.  Just options to explore.  

Yeah! I think that hosting it through a virtual machine that I can access anywhere (right?) would be better than having it running on my computer. I'm trying to use Microsoft Azure but this is SUPER confusing lol... I'll figure it all out eventually though. 

2 minutes ago, Septopus said:

That's another reason to play with virtual box first.  nearly all of the virtual server providers have terribly complex and confusing systems...  Knowing a little bit about how they work helps.  But it's not necessary.

I use a development virtual server on my local machine so I don't have to have a virtual server online while I test and develop code.  That's just how I do things though.  Its way faster to make configuration changes and play with different resource options that way.

Alright I gotcha, I'll play around with it a bit, you know.