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. Mike Shaver
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Daniel Anderson
  • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Matt Mihaly
    • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Luca Girardo
    • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of themarket. Ron Gabbard
  • 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. Tess Snider
  • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Luca Girardo
  • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Tess Snider
    • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Matt Mihaly
    • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Jeff Fuller
    • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of themarket. Chris Holko
      • • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments ofthemarket. Scott Jennings
        • MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of the market. Jeff Fuller
• 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
• • New Here Mike
  • • New Here MIKE MacMartin
    • • New Here Miroslav Silovic
      • • 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 Tom
  • 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
• • Players policing themselves (was: MMO Launch issues ruining potential segments of themarket.) Marian Griffith
• Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Michael Tresca
• • Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Threshold RPG
  • • Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Mike Shaver
    • Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine Chris
• 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
      • • 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
          <Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com> wrote:
          
          > I know it will sound like I'm plugging this book as I mentioned it
          > in another thread, but it does discuss architecture issues like
          > this so you may be interested ['Massively Multi-player Game
          > Programming',
          
          we shall see, i ordered it right now. books from Amazon UK are
          around 30% cheaper than in local store here in Sweden. But i have
          high hopes for the "Practical Grid Computing for Massively
          Multiplayer Games" which shall start selling in september...
          
          > Anyway, I'm not sure from your componentisation what will be the
          > controlling process? Where is the main loop that controls game
          > time? Presumably it would be the Spatial Manager as that's the
          > only part that has sufficient knowledge of what is within
          > interactive range of other objects? Except that your world manager
          > handles object interaction...
          
          no, the Spatial Manager is just a spatial database, with some heavy
          caching, organised in array to share the load. The central unit
          will be the World Manager, (i called it Cell Manager before, but now
          i have no cells). There will probably be (beside many others) some
          extra module - Event Manager. I am not yet sure about this, but the
          event manager would manage the event queue, the timing of that and
          the running of events. (remote object invocation, perhaps). The
          Spatial Manager itself has the knowledge, but must be queried for it
          first.
          
          > That distinction between world manager and spatial manager strikes
          > me as likely to cause problems. Your game is likely to be making
          > an awful lot of spatial queries, so you don't really want it being
          > in a different process to the world manager.
          
          yes, but with this design i dropped completely the need of cell
          rebalancing and the need of dedicating of some instances of
          WorldManager to some part of the process (geographicaly). That part
          will be definitively mostly loaded and will need great care at
          design.
          
          > Furthermore it looks like you are discarding with the idea of
          > zones here? Not sure that is a direction I'd choose to pursue as
          > it makes your spatial queries potentially much more expensive?
          
          i can, and probably will keep the zones - but in another form. the
          spatial managers will be probably serving different zones.
          
          > objects in neighbouring zones. That's where the problems start to
          > occur. One solution proposed in the aforementioned book is to have
          > a border area that exists in both zones - pretty ugly and hard to
          > syncronise etc. An option I've considered is to have very small
          > zones, smaller than the visual/weapons range of the players, and
          > to
          
          probably zones will be axis aligned rectangles, so it will be easy
          to tell that for some query it has to be jointly run on more spatial
          managers. the results are then joined and you will get only one
          result.
          
          > The other nice affect of this approach is that it solves another
          > problem with transitional border areas. What happens if an object
          > is larger than the zone border? i.e. a wopping great dragon, which
          > zone is it officially in if it could be said to be in either. With
          > the
          
          good question, that will still be problem in my design. maybe i
          will drop the idea of zones alltogether :) and have just pool of
          spatial managers serving each the whole universe. by that design,
          all servers (when spatial managers will get mapped to HW) will get
          loaded evenly, and will share resources evenly.
          
          > Anyway hope I've made some sense ;)
          
          you did :)
          
          but i am still not that far. i am currently only on the very highest
          level. Then will i work around the central issues - the World
          Manager, silently supposing that the Database/Spatial Manager will
          get designed later on the assumptions i made now. and that is: don't
          differentiate the data too much on game logic but on the server load
          (so that i won't end having one server serving zone with some city
          and which is 100% loaded all the time, and some other serer serving
          some wilderness, never seeing more than 30% load. until some local
          wizard will organise a big party there and then the wilderness
          server will get 100% load and the city 30%... If any of the servers
          will show more that the "Planning Load" (70%, for instance) in the
          "Busy Hour", a server should be added.