February 2000
- datagram protocol design theory? (Question about multithreaded servers) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Library error J C Lawrence
- Semi-OT: Linux support in commercial MUDs? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- From the Apache Referrer logs J C Lawrence
- From the Apache Referrer logs Kris Van Hees
- good muds for ai programming? Robert Zubek
- good muds for ai programming? J C Lawrence
- Event Scheduling Phillip Lenhardt
- Event Scheduling J C Lawrence
- Event Scheduling cg@ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA
- Event Scheduling J C Lawrence
- Event Scheduling Phillip Lenhardt
- Event Scheduling J C Lawrence
- Event Scheduling Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Event Scheduling Cynbe ru Taren
- Event Scheduling Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Event Scheduling Cynbe ru Taren
- Event Scheduling Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Event Scheduling Miroslav Silovic
- Event Scheduling Jp Calderone
- Event Scheduling Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Event Scheduling Miroslav Silovic
- Event Scheduling J C Lawrence
- Event Scheduling Cynbe ru Taren
- Event Scheduling Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- IO Speed Suggestions Christopher Kohnert
- IO Speed Suggestions J C Lawrence
- Couple of articles Koster, Raph
- Couple of articles Dr Richard A. Bartle
- OT: Soliciting advice from Canadians Alex Oren
- MUD Specific Building pages MichelleThompson
- MUD Specific Building pages J C Lawrence
- Embedding Python icecube@ihug.co.nz
- Embedding Python icecube@ihug.co.nz
- Embedding Python J C Lawrence
- Embedding Python Todd McKimmey
- Embedding Python Oliver Jowett
- Embedding Python Todd McKimmey
- ADMIN: List post rejections J C Lawrence
- distributed objects Kevin Littlejohn
- distributed objects Vijay Weasel Prabhakar
- distributed objects Brandon J. Rickman
- distributed objects J C Lawrence
- distributed objects Koster, Raph
- distributed objects Vijay Weasel Prabhakar
- distributed objects David Bennett
- distributed objects Phillip Lenhardt
- distributed objects cjones@one.net
- distributed objects F. Randall Farmer
- distributed objects Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- distributed objects Kevin Littlejohn
- distributed objects J C Lawrence
- distributed objects Gary Whitten
- distributed objects Balthazaar
- distributed objects J C Lawrence
- distributed objects Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- distributed objects Eli Stevens {Grey}
- distributed objects Jon A. Lambert
- distributed objects Charles Hughes
- distributed objects Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- distributed objects Charles Hughes
- distributed objects J C Lawrence
- distributed objects J C Lawrence
- distributed objects Charles Hughes
- distributed objects Charles Hughes
- distributed objects Laurent Bossavit
- distributed objects Kevin Littlejohn
- distributed objects markm@caplet.com
- distributed objects KevinL
- Distributed Objects Justin Rogers
- Security J C Lawrence
- commercial muds and cable TV (was code base inquiry ) Sellers, Michael
- commercial muds and cable TV (was code base inquiry ) Matthew Mihaly
- commercial muds and cable TV (was code base inq uiry ) Sellers, Michael
- commercial muds and cable TV (was code base inq uiry ) Matthew Mihaly
- business models Matthew Mihaly
- business models Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- business models Vincent Archer
- business models Dave Rickey
- a shrinking pool of players? Johan J Ingles-le Nobel
- a shrinking pool of players? Matthew Mihaly
- a shrinking pool of players? Sellers, Michael
- a shrinking pool of players? Bryce Harrington
- a shrinking pool of players? Travis S. Casey
- a shrinking pool of players? PartyG2816@aol.com
- a shrinking pool of players? J C Lawrence
- a shrinking pool of players? Sellers, Michael
- a shrinking pool of players? Sellers, Michael
- a shrinking pool of players? PartyG2816@aol.com
- a shrinking pool of players? Ryan P.
- a shrinking pool of players? J C Lawrence
- a shrinking pool of players? Koster, Raph
- a shrinking pool of players? Matthew Mihaly
- a shrinking pool of players? Koster, Raph
- a shrinking pool of players? Chris Turner
- a shrinking pool of players? Matthew Mihaly
- a shrinking pool of players? Chris Turner
- a shrinking pool of players? Draymoor
- a shrinking pool of players? Koster, Raph
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Michael Hohensee
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Ted Milker
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications David Bennett
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Ted Milker
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications John Bertoglio
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Justin Rogers
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Eli Stevens {Grey}
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications John Bertoglio
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Koster, Raph
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Lo, Kam
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Justin Rogers
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Joel Dillon
- The Endeavour Map and MUD Applications Justin Rogers
- Next gen MUD wishlist Bryce Harrington
- Next gen MUD wishlist Bruce
- Next gen MUD wishlist Bryce Harrington
- Next gen MUD wishlist Bruce
- Next gen MUD wishlist J C Lawrence
On Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:04:36 -0800
Bruce <bruce@puremagic.com> wrote:
> So? If the commercial games support 1000+ players currently and
> can only be expected to support more in the future, any effort at
> an open source game engine should aim to supercede that. We
> certainly plan on it.
ObNote: I really don't think that 1,000 is a realistic inflexion
point for scalability judgements with current architectures. My
guess (sucked out of my thumb) is that a better figure is around
two to three times that before you start having to get interesting.
Assuming a non-simplistic text mode world, supporting a 1000+
players (and a suitably large and active environment to match) is
not difficult _if_ you are willing to dedicate a small cluster of
machines to the task _and_ are able to mandate their configuration
and use. Such design decisions are typically not made in OpenSource
projects for the simple reason that the resources are not available
to develop, test, or roll out such products. The alternative of
attempting to support 1000+ players on a single machine (current
market) requires some level of rocket science or significant corner
cutting/optimisation.
The question is: Do you want to plan for the architectures that are
available today, or what you think will be available in a couple
years?
Its not an easy decision.
My own figuring is that for a text based game (which tends to have
far simpler and less significant player state concerns as well as
lower internal IO requirements) you can currently easily support up
to around a 2,500 - 3000 player world on a single $9K machine.
Once you add any level of complex world rendering/physics atop that,
complex player states, and significant IO levels (and tracking
multi-level IO states with remote intelligent clients is
significant) -- all the things you start getting as side effects
with graphical world presentations -- it starts getting expensive
(and boy am I embarrassed by some of my early posts on the area on
the list now). While its tough to get a real handle on the problem
scale without having designed and rolled out systems of that calibre
(is Rick Delashmit or Damion Schuster still on the list?), my gut
feel guess is that a three to four node cluster of 50 SpecInt nodes
would probably do just fine __if__ internal memory and internode
bandwidth were high enough (NUMA and/or NUMA type architectures are
only just starting to become atttractive in thsi space but are
certainly not cost effective for that small a problem).
My faint memory is that UO uses 5 node clusters of Sun Ultra 60's or
something similar. UO were pretty well first on the block for that
sort of problem space. I suspect that EQ and AC (outside of having
significantly different internal designas and in AC's case a
mandated platform due to MS involvement) being second on the block
may be able to get away with something a little lighter (tho AC is
attempting to solve a slightly larger problem in terms of load
balancing and seamless world presentation than either UO or EQ
(which will mostly hit their internal bandwith requirements rather
than raw SpecInt needs).
>> Hmm, okay. I specified this mostly because I know everyone has
>> their own favorite scripting language, and that deciding on a
>> single language can be hard. For instance, I might perfer
>> Python, but someone else want Mercury, Guile or Perl (or worse!)
There's always the simple approach: define a VM to which scripting
languages can compile their bytecode Jave has done this to good
effect with half a dozen or more language out there which compile to
JVM bytecode (I think NetREXX was the first after Java itself).
> The core game engine is but a small piece of the pie.
A well fleshed server (network handling, DB handling, etc) for a
text mode MUD that doesn't attempt to handle world mechanics has
little need of more than 20,000 lines of code and can be
accomplished in less than half (cf COOLMUD).
10K lines of not very intricate code is not all that big a problem.
> The game mechanics and everything needed to flesh out the game can
> be far larger.
It is easy to have your world definition be an and order or two
magnitudes larger than the server. What's the current stat on
lambdaMOO (whole thing, not just core)?
>> What would you suggest as good challenges to undertake?
> Read the list archives!
You are evil.
--
J C Lawrence Home: claw@kanga.nu
----------(*) Other: coder@kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=-- - Next gen MUD wishlist Chris Jones
- Next gen MUD wishlist J C Lawrence
- Next gen MUD wishlist adam@treyarch.com
- Next gen MUD wishlist Sellers, Michael
- Next gen MUD wishlist adam@treyarch.com
- Next gen MUD wishlist Bruce
- Next gen MUD wishlist Bryce Harrington
- Codebase Ideas punitac@prodigy.net
- Codebase Ideas Bryce Harrington
- Codebase Ideas Aaron Mitchell
- OT: Money as motivator (was code base inquiry ) J C Lawrence
- OT: Money as motivator (was code base inquiry ) Matthew Mihaly
- Guide Applicant : Player Ratio Geoffrey A. MacDougall
- Guide Applicant : Player Ratio Matthew Mihaly
- MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #286 - 13 msgs Dr. Cat
- MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #286 - 13 msgs Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #286 - 13 msgs Koster, Raph
- voice vs. text Matthew Mihaly
- voice vs. text Justin Rogers
- voice vs. text John Bertoglio
- voice vs. text Lovecraft
- voice vs. text Lo, Kam
- voice vs. text Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Client side prediction Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Client side prediction Koster, Raph
- Client side prediction Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Client side prediction Justin Rogers
- Client side prediction Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Client side prediction Koster, Raph
- Client side prediction Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Dynamic help files, was code base inquiry Richard Woolcock
- OpenSource licenses for game rules? J C Lawrence
- To all the devoted! (fwd) J C Lawrence
- Newbies Johan J Ingles-le Nobel
- MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #288 - 9 msgs Dr. Cat
- (fwd) Commercial-use Restrictions on Code Bases (was: help me find 100% free graphical mud) J C Lawrence
- (fwd) ADMIN: "A Classification Of Muds" [was 'In defence of stock muds...'] J C Lawrence
- Distribution Geir Harald Hansen
- player persistence Matthew Mihaly
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 Derek Snider
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 J C Lawrence
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 Justin Lockshaw
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 Christopher Allen
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 Matthew Mihaly
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 Joe Andrieu
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 Kristen L. Koster
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 Richard A. Bartle
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 Bruce
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 David Bennett
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 J C Lawrence
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 J C Lawrence
- [Off-topic] GDC-2000 J C Lawrence
- [Off-topic] AAAI symposium (was: GDC-2000) Robert Zubek
- MSP Richard Ross
- Privateer-style mu*? Bobby Bailey
- Minimum community sizes Dan Root
- Minimum community sizes Koster, Raph
- Minimum community sizes Dan Root
- Minimum community sizes adam@treyarch.com
- Minimum community sizes Matthew Mihaly
- Minimum community sizes David Bennett
- Minimum community sizes Matthew Mihaly
- Pike codebase Daniel Podlejski
- chil@gate.net Joel Kelso