Megaserver

[testman]

Whenever I look at server list, I see EKT-1 or TheMatrix being played on, and everything else empty.

A lot of servers running for nothing.

On the other hand, there is quite a low limit per server, 40 people.

Would it not be good idea to make all those servers work together?

Or at least make servers that are near each other work together.

Quite a few MMORPGs already use this technology.

Or would megaserver(s) make bring more problems?

[Truxa]

The problem is that the game becomes unplayable with many vehicles on them. This is the reason for the 40 player limit. The game needs optimization.

"mega servers" as you suggested it sound like you want more people to play with in 1 place. As nice as this idea may be, the game is nog designed for more than 64 players per gamesession. Even the original renegade wasnt designed for more than 40 people. This has to do with balancing issues and building health and the likes.

There are other topics on the subject discussion the wish for some to have the player limit increased while there are also people wanting to even lower the player limit (to say 24; 12v12)

I dont see your idea taking flight

[testman]

Megaserver is connection between many servers into one server. Cluster, if you will.

That would make people connect to the nearest server near them, and then servers among themselves would exchange information about who is connected to them and what is he doing.

if you have 5 servers connected into megaserver, each server has to calculate vehicle physics only for vehicles of players that are playing on that server.

And if servers among themselves are connected with something faster tan 56kb/s dial up, than synchronisation is not such problem any more.

That would leave us with less empty servers on server list and higher player cap.

But on the other hand, that would require some serious engine modifications.

Developers would get Way too little in return for making so much work.

[Truxa]

But on the other hand, that would require some serious engine modifications.

Developers would get Way too little in return for making so much work.

I still read "blablabla I want more people to play with blablabla" but as I mentioned before, player amounts are a point of discussion. Some find 20 more than enough while others find it enjoyable when the amount reaches above 30.

To the above quote:

Developers get nothing now, other than the gratitude and eternal thanks from the community for making this epic game. They are already doing such enormous work and haven't gotten a dime for it.

[RoundShades]

I wouldn't mind, if servers could have linked servers, where a server shows up as one listing and if it nears it's population it will start filling 2 seperate games with half the population going to each.

Still much too much work to accomplish reasonably.

[SFJake]

And why exactly would we want to split people up?

Anyway, none of this entire topic makes sense. This game has a hard time filling a single server across the world. Exactly what the heck would we accomplish with any of this?

[Truxa]

SFJake, as I understand it, everyone will play on a server closest to that player. That server communicates to a central server coordinating everyone into 1 play session creating the illusion of playing on the same server.

I foresee communication and syncing problems though, between the servers causing errors in calculating positions e.g. player 1 sees an enemy running behind a wall towards a gap. The enemy wants to run to the gap but not expose himzelf. Player 1's server calculates that the enemy is continuing to walk thus seeing him, shooting and killing him while in fact the enemy was never exposed in his own screen/server.

Server settings need to be the exact same while the server providers do not communicate that well.

[RokumanZA]

There would be way too much work to make this work properly. The way the engine works would beed to be completely reworked, and I don't see the devs redoing all the enginework when they are already most of the way there with what they have. I'm pretty sure udk wouldn't support this in any case

[RoundShades]

And why exactly would we want to split people up?

Anyway, none of this entire topic makes sense. This game has a hard time filling a single server across the world. Exactly what the heck would we accomplish with any of this?

The game has updates and with larger loads will fill 4-5 servers. If it got near 40 players and split into 2 20 servers, it leaves room for both to grow. If 2 servers dropped below 10 with a total of 35 or less players, it could connect those players into the fuller game upon game end.

It would be better for less or more people, as long as people could opt to get into specific games with each other.

Ask for the engine, it isn't a engine rework, it is still the unreal engine and still within capability of the unreal engine, it is just making servers know how to manage players, whether to keep them in-game or pass them to another and how to determine it. It is still a lot of work.

[TP|himselfXD]

I don't think any of this is possible to be honest they work with the 100% free version of UDK which if I am not mistaken the max players is 64.(hard-coded I believe) Not to mention the game has some net code issues at 40players and above. I do not know anything about working on net code but this idea sounds like a net code disaster of epic proportions to me. I think the best that could come from this idea(if it's even possible) is people having pings of 20-90 but the pings won't depict bullet reaction time instead each bullet will take a half a second to hit. The reason I am so doubtful of this this would be the equation for your true ping:

ping to closest server+ping from server to master server+ ping to server the other player is on + master server ping again to confirm= really high ping (especially if you have servers outside of the continent of the master server)

My guess is the average ping if you factored in true latency would become: 200ms at best

[Kriemhild Gretchen]

I don't think any of this is possible to be honest they work with the 100% free version of UDK which if I am not mistaken the max players is 64.(hard-coded I believe) Not to mention the game has some net code issues at 40players and above. I do not know anything about working on net code but this idea sounds like a net code disaster of epic proportions to me. I think the best that could come from this idea(if it's even possible) is people having pings of 20-90 but the pings won't depict bullet reaction time instead each bullet will take a half a second to hit. The reason I am so doubtful of this this would be the equation for your true ping:

ping to closest server+ping from server to master server+ ping to server the other player is on + master server ping again to confirm= really high ping (especially if you have servers outside of the continent of the master server)

My guess is the average ping if you factored in true latency would become: 200ms at best

Can anything be done about this? Is there a better version of UDK they can get without these issues? They could take donations for it if they can't afford it.

[TP|himselfXD]

Can anything be done about this? Is there a better version of UDK they can get without these issues? They could take donations for it if they can't afford it.

Sadly any money given to them in renegade x's name wouldn't be legal.

[kenz3001]

well making servers work "together" as would just make more problems and more latency (lag) for players

the only way this would work is if all the us/eu server were in the same us/eu data centre (even better on the same rack) but this will never happen and as such no point in even attempting it this sort of thing is grate for MMO's and such were latency is not an issue but in a "FPS" no way will this ever work.