Anyone Interested in a Multiplayer Persistent Universe Mod

KleiZwei · Post by **KleiZwei** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 6:04 am

If anyone is interested please post here ideas, or if you'd like to work on something like this. I'm in the process of seeing truly how much work it would take to modify VS into a playable Persistent Multiplayer Universe. But my ability to code isn't that good for I have very little experience coding program languages.... I'm a web guru what can i say?

PEACE!

Duality · Post by **Duality** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 6:22 am

I thought vegastrike already have a dynamic universe.. doesn't matter.. single or multi.

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 6:27 am

might be fun, but there will be some hosting problems.
for those sort of thing the need is very big bandwith, and plus there must be an admin team to monitore it continusly

Post by **dandandaman** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 7:31 am

isn't this what our networking team is already working on....a persistant multiplayer universe?

Dan.a

Surfdargent · Post by **Surfdargent** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 7:35 am

Yes it is...

KleiZwei · Post by **KleiZwei** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 6:33 pm

You guys didn't mention a persistent universe, just a multiplayer universe. A few points about my idea, and if what your team is doing is close or the same then well you guys rock more then I thought you did.

*Persistent, meaning the server is always there something is always happening. One Exception if no one is on the server can go into a sort of "stasis" to save bandwidth.

*Everyone starts at the same level and progresses, however players choosing different paths will open different options. This suggests that not every ship will be available to every player through natural means. A player who decides to stay a privateer will have better access to larger trade ships, a bounty hunter may find better access to fighters, frigates. Pirates may have very limited access to ships, and will have to steal ships to advance. (put a limit on the number of ships a player can own at one time.)

*To save bandwidth have the client load maps and images, locally.
the server will deal with relaying everyones position and saving the game periodicly. I don't know how well this will work but I know its the same method games like UO and DarkSpace use. Otherwise have it all serverside, and maps without players in them can be dropped from the server until someone goes there. I don't know a whole lot about networking (is that obvious yet?)

There is also the idea of a metaverse, wich is having a number of servers deal with different aspects of the game, you could divide the systems amongst different servers, if a server machine goes down, the rest of the universe is still available.

I realize running a persistent universe can also be expensive. So this option might be better suited to lan games... but worth trying out.

FlyingAce · Post by **FlyingAce** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 6:51 pm

there have already been server(s) offered to host it. "red naranja" something I beleive.

Post by **mkruer** » Wed Jul 23, 2003 8:27 pm

Yes this was the general concept of the dynamic universe from the start.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Jul 24, 2003 1:02 am

Well, bandwidth can be an issue, or not, depending on how it's purchased...

First you must make sure that a network version of the game is playable by those with modems. For this to happen, you must use no more than perhaps 3 kilobyes per second per user for game data.

Thus, a 768/768 DSL (which I can get for $149/month with a static IP and unlimited throughput), which can average about 80 kbytes/sec should be able to comfortably handle up to 26 client sessions at 3k each.

I have a server at my Los Angeles office which hosts the devel universe, and the two public "newbie" unverses for XShipWars.

dev1:~# netstat -na | wc -l
777

Nothing else runs on that machine, except an httpd which no one ever connects to, so there are over 700 entries in netstat which are connections to XSW. Now, most of those are in "close" or "close_wait state". I actually only see 3 right now that are "established".

/*
And in case anyone is interested:
dev1:~# uptime
5:01pm up 265 days, 22:54, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
*/

Nevertheless, that is only a little 128/128 DSL circuit, and as you can see here:

http://207.224.113.89/mrtg/207.224.113. ... .94_2.html

it's rarely ever maxed out (the web server that hosts the wiki is in the same rack in that office, running over the same circuit).

I can upgrade that bandwidth with just a phone call, up to its maximum of 1 megabit. At 1 megabit, I would be able to host everything I host now, as well as supporting 32 multiplayer gamers (if they only used 3k/sec each). The 1mbit/1mbit would cost me $249/month (I pay $79/mo for the 128/128 now).

OR

I just had a chat with a rackspace.com sales guy who can give me their rock bottom Linux box for $270/month, or that same box upgraded to 1g of ram and 100gbit/month traffic for $325/mo. I asked if they would be willing to sponsor some open source teams but they weren't interested.

Still that should be plenty of bandwidth for both VS and XSW, right?. Well, not according to my handy spreadsheet I just built (I build spreadsheets for everything):

32 (client sessions) * 3 (k/second) * 60 (seconds) * 60 (minutes) * 24 (hours) * 30 (days) / 1024 ( to get megabytes) / 1024 (to get gigabytes) = 237 gigs/month traffic.
[I double checked this with a calculator, but someone please correct me if I boned the formula somewhere...]

Plugging in a 4 as the first number in the formula, gets me an end result of 30.

Thus a default rackspace box with 30g/month traffic should be able to handle 4 non-stop simultaneous player sessions (if they use 3k/sec ea.), 24/7, and the 100g/month option should be able to handle 13 non-stop simultaneous player sessions, 24/7.

So...

A metered bandwidth of 30 gigs per month of traffic could only support 4 non-stop client sessions, while an unmetered bandwidth of 768/768 could support up to 26 non-stop client sessions.

tobby · Post by **tobby** » Thu Jul 24, 2003 6:01 am

will it take up more bandwidth if u hook up with another server just like irc(internet relay chat) & call it a network?

it know it really sucks that it costs a fortune for those who want to host an mmorpg.

KleiZwei · Post by **KleiZwei** » Thu Jul 24, 2003 8:55 am

Well the problem with networking is generally the less you keep server side, the less you keep secure, period. A multiplayer universe would require all the changing information such as player stats, the universe (planets,stars, etc.) and whatever else on the server. Otherwise you have people who will hack their save files, or try to use custom ships with an unfair advantage.

Now about the 100gbit/month that would be enough because it's safe to assume that no one will be playing 24/7/30 i would imagine the average person would play at most 20 hours a month... Now I'm only pretending to know what I'm talking about but the math seems simple enough.

32 (client sessions) * 3 (k/second) * 60 (seconds) * 60 (minutes) * 10 (hours) * 23 (days) / 1024 ( to get megabytes) / 1024 (to get gigabytes) = 75.81gigs/month traffic.

Please note i've change the hours and number of days to give a more realistic prediction of how much people will actually be using the server.
I picked 12 hours because the average person at works or school 8 hours a day and sleeps 6 hours, so this would leave 10 hours for people to use the server if they so choose. And subtracted 8 days for weekends. Now I may be doing this all wrong but from what i gather that leaves you with 24gigs/month to spare

Now you guys who have control over the server could pull a Ragnarok Online (and for anyone plays you know what i'm talking about) and create some downtime for "server maintenance" say you have people working on it. and Go for coffee. Come back, say you run up against something unexpected and the server will be back up by monday... TADA you've saved yourself bandwith and a little $ (assuming you're charged by the gig, and not a flat rate.

)

(that was more of a joke/rant then anything but I think the point gets across that if too much bandwidth is being used, find a way to cut back limit the number of users to 28, limit the number of hours a person can play... automaticly disconnect players who remain idle for X minutes
washroom and snack runs are allowed, letting your ship gather resource while your at work is a NO NO!)

I'm ranting again, but in all honesty i've had a little vodka and it's almost 1am and I've been awake for 26 hours... can you tell i'm unemployed?

One last thing, yes this is relevant!
MKruer, can you post a link or a message containing the planned (not implemented) features for the multiplayer universe. ie. Server settings, Client options, Anything cool. Please?

Post by **mkruer** » Thu Jul 24, 2003 6:51 pm

The Person you need to talk to is Surfdargent hes the one workign on getting the basic networking working. I dont know the current status, other then not working. but currently Surfdargent is trying to add sometype of video (animation?) support for Mac OSX, and running into problems. I sure he would love help with the nextoworking aspect of it though.

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Thu Jul 24, 2003 7:27 pm

On the extension page there is a status-info (up to date?) for the networking stuff:

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/model ... d=1&catid=

Pontiac

Duality · Post by **Duality** » Wed Aug 06, 2003 8:41 am

Will a static universe take up much less bandwidth than a presistant one??

If no, then I think it doens't make a difference then or bother to make static one(like structures are indestructable, and players are only presistant).

KleiZwei · Post by **KleiZwei** » Thu Aug 07, 2003 6:10 am

I would imagine that a persistent one would naturally take more bandwidth since many more things are constantly happening.

now as cool as it sometimes is, I think certain objects should remain static such as planets... if by static you mean that they are not destroyable and the amount of change is limited, where as objects like a spacestation should not be...

One important thing i wanted to add to the persistent universe Idea is
a concept of Time... 1:3 hour and then have a concrete list of how long certain things take to accomplish. This would require that time warping (f9) be removed, wich I think would be plausible considering we have in system jumping (right?) my next idea is more of a long shot but I think could add to the game is multiple languages + a basic language( this was actually an idea i got playing D&D the other day)

thats all for now, hey anyone figure out why that xmesh of my spacestation didn't work, pontiac?

Surfdargent · Post by **Surfdargent** » Thu Aug 07, 2003 7:11 am

I must say that even in a persistant universe planet wouldn't eat that much bandwidth since they move really slowly.
The position update system already takes those parameters into account so
that the period where planet and nebalua position is big.
You could send their update every 20 seconds per example.

As for time compression it will certainly be disabled in networking games.

Rabiator · Post by **Rabiator** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 8:41 am

If something in the games is completely unchangeable by the player, you should not need updates at all. For planets, send the orbital data once when the player enters the system and let the client compute the rest.
Or better yet, include a formula for calculating them at any time in the release of the game. Then transmit only the current time in your universe.