June 2003
- Damage and Stuff (Math and Code) Ben Chambers
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Derek Licciardi
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Mike Shaver
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Daniel Anderson
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Chris Holko
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Matt Mihaly
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Justin Coleman
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of th e market. Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of th e market. Jeff Fuller
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Matt Mihaly
- MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Luca Girardo
- New Column by Dave Rickey "Engines of Creation" Now at Skotos Christopher Allen
- Announcing Shadow Door: an NPC Control Interface for Neverwinter Nights Robert Zubek
- ADMIN: So, what has been happening? J C Lawrence
- [Meta] Forward of moderated message J C Lawrence
- New Here MIKE MacMartin
- Looking for a GUI Mud Development program Snicker Furfoot
- Looking for a GUI Mud Development program Ben Greear
- ADMIN: List archives are now restored. J C Lawrence
- The Price of Being Male Rayzam
- The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
- The Price of Being Male Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- The Price of Being Male Rayzam
- The Price of Being Male Byron Ellacott
- The Price of Being Male Dr. Cat
- The Price of Being Male Castronova, Edward
- The Price of Being Male Boyle, Paul
- The Price of Being Male Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
- The Price of Being Male Rayzam
- The Price of Being Male Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
- The Price of Being Male Rayzam
- The Price of Being Male Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
- The Price of Being Male Marian Griffith
- The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
- The Price of Being Male Rayzam
- The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
- The Price of Being Male Vincent Archer
- The Price of Being Male Rayzam
- The Price of Being Male Castronova, Edward
- The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
- The Price of Being Male Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
- The Price of Being Male Amanda Walker
- The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
- The Price of Being Male Castronova, Edward
- The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
- The Price of Being Male Tazzik
- The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
- The Price of Being Male Tazzik
- The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
- The Price of Being Male Marian Griffith
- The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
- The Price of Being Male Tom
- The Price of Being Male Marian Griffith
- The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
- The Price of Being Male Marian Griffith
- The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
- The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
- The Price of Being Male Castronova, Edward
- The Price of Being Male Richard A. Bartle
- The Price of Being Male Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
- The Price of Being Male Daniel Anderson
- The Price of Being Male Travis Casey
- The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
- The Price of Being Male Travis Casey
- The Price of Being Male Chris Holko
- The Price of Being Male Travis Casey
- The Price of Being Male Sanvean
- The Price of Being Male Sasha Hart
- The Price of Being Male Tom
- The Price of Being Male Sanvean
- The Price of Being Male Paul Schwanz
- The Price of Being Male Amanda Walker
- The Price of Being Male shop@isparkinson.co.uk
- The Price of Being Male Boyle, Paul
- The Price of Being Male Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- The Price of Being Male Sheela Caur'Lir
- The Price of Being Male Jeff Crane
- Are gold pieces taxable? Koster, Raph
- Are gold pieces taxable? Boyle, Paul
- Are gold pieces taxable? Amanda Walker
- Are gold pieces taxable? Thomas Leavitt
- Are gold pieces taxable? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Functors / Loki (was: New Here) Eli Stevens
- Architecture Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture ceo
- Architecture Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- SW:G this is so unfair Marian Griffith
- SW:G this is so unfair Marc Bowden
- SW:G this is so unfair Martin Bassie
- Players policing themselves (was: MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of themarket.) Derek Licciardi
- Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Michael Tresca
- Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Threshold RPG
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Zach Collins {Siege}
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Rossmann Peter
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) ceo
Rossmann Peter wrote:
> It was overengeneered. I have tried to draw new design here:
> http://w1.860.telia.com/~u86015984/MMO-Grid-Cluster-v2.jpg
> all elements are actually arrays of the same elements.
That's a nice little design for a theoretical "game server". But
distributed-system design is not as simple as that. The easiest
analogy that comes to mind is the OSI 7-layered comms model. Yeah,
it's a great way of abstracting the functions, and it's a lovely
simple way to understand and reason about existing systems.
But it's not helpful if you're trying to build fast networking
systems (However: the OSI model has been around a looooong time;
I've been using it for over a decade IIRC, and by now I'm sure
hardware and networking systems have advanced so much in terms of
performance etc that actually it's OK to implement the 7 distinct
layers separately).
In network-design, 7 layers always meant 7 levels of parsing,
message passing, and indirection. If often meant 7 levels of
buffers, and 6 inter-layer interfaces - all of which added
latency. Bandwidth was often leeched by all that indirection too
(although improvements in handling of large amounts of data and
implementation of things like zero-copy data-transfer through the
layers got rid of many of those problems, I believe).
In a clustered system, latency is still a problem (note: generic
systems rarely worry much about latency - this is one of the ways in
which games-systems are fundamentally different). You can almost
look at it and say that latency is the only problem - perhaps
everything people find hard to implement in a cluster could be
implemented fairly straightforwardly if you were prepared to endure
long processing-time-per-request (for instance, all your concurrency
issues would be easy to solve - largely by just serializing
everything ;)).
I'm not attempting to argue against the use of abstraction in
server-design - but the abstraction has to come from a much
lower-level than isolating systems (which is what your design
currently does). You want to be abstracting things that work
together in practical terms e.g. by looking at working-sets (c.f. a
google search for "working set" if you don't know the term) and
making sure each clump of related/non-independent data is grouped
together in the abstraction. ISTR JC spoke a couple of times about
dependent working sets on the night before the MDC (in relation to a
dicussion on geographical partitioning).
Otherwise you have a design that is easy for a human to read on
paper, but practically impossible to implement.
Adam M - Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) J C Lawrence
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) J C Lawrence
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Rossmann Peter
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Rossmann Peter
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) J C Lawrence
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) ceo
