A Web-Based Game Streaming Service

Stratus is a game streaming service that enables users to play games directly from their web browser. It starts stream sessions in under 2 seconds and achieves round-trip "click-to-photon" latencies of as little as 40ms while streaming 1080p game video at 60fps. Stratus is unique among cloud gaming solutions for its use of Linux-based streaming servers, the WebTransport protocol for streaming to web browsers, and a custom Wayland proxy for capturing game video.

For more information, visit playstratus.io.

Project Structure

Stratus is composed of three main components: a cluster of streaming servers that run games, a web client that streams games from the streaming servers, and a coordination server that pairs clients with streaming servers. The source code for all three is located in this monorepo, which is organized as follows:

• backend/: the coordination server
• design/: design files for the frontend UI
• docs/: content for the Stratus blog
• frontend/: the Stratus website and streaming client
• games/: scripts for packaging games to run on Stratus
• os/: scripts and packages for provisioning new streaming servers
• stratusd/: the streaming server daemon

Each subdirectory contains a REAMDE.md with instructions on building the component locally for development. Refer to the Stratus blog for more details on the architecture of Stratus.

Deployment

1. Google OAuth: Register a Google OAuth client and obtain the access credentials (client ID and secret).

2. AWS: Create an AWS account and obtain the access credentials (region, key ID, and access key).

3. DynamoDB: Configure and populate a DynamoDB instance consisting of the following tables and columns:

   • Games: GameID (string), developer (string), genres (list of strings), lDescript (string), s3 (list of strings), sDescript (string), title (string)
   • Users: UserID (string), Username (string), Email (string)

4. Web Client: The frontend is a Next.js web app packaged as a Docker image. Deploy it by running

   $ cd frontend
   $ cp .env.example .env
   $ vim .env # set environment variables
   $ docker build -t stratus-frontend .
   $ sudo docker run -p 80:3000 --env-file=.env stratus-frontend
   

5. Coordination Server: The coordination server is also packaged as a Docker image. Deploy it by running

   $ cd backend
   $ cp .env.example .env
   $ vim .env # set environment variables
   $ docker build -t stratus-backend .
   $ sudo docker run -p 80:4000 --env-file=.env stratus-backend
   

   You will most likely also want to configure both containers to run automatically and use a reverse proxy to serve them over HTTPS.

6. Streaming Servers: The streaming servers are deployed on bare metal. For each one, boot into a live Arch Linux environment and run the Stratus OS installer:

   # curl -sL os.playstratus.io/install.sh | bash
   

   After rebooting you will be able to log into the stratusd user account over the console or an SSH connection to perform system administration tasks. The core streaming service runs under the stratusd systemd service.

7. Start Streaming: The streaming servers should appear on the frontend's /dashboard page within 15 minutes. Once they do, you can log in and start a stream session.

Project Authors

Stratus was developed by a team of Oregon State University students as a capstone project.