February 2007
- [Design] Personal virtual worlds Lachek Butalek
- [Design] Personal virtual worlds Mike Rozak
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Nick Koranda
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Raph Koster
- [ALL PLEASE READ - FROM MODERATOR] Nick Koranda
- [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons and animals Mike Rozak
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- stock market mechanisms in muds John Buehler
- stock market mechanisms in muds Acius
- stock market mechanisms in muds Daniel James
- stock market mechanisms in muds Matt Chatterley
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- stock market mechanisms in muds Chapman, Greg
- Imaginary Realities mirror Richard Tew
- Imaginary Realities mirror Michael Hartman
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Peter Harkins
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Phillip Lenhardt
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? John Bertoglio
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Jeremy Noetzelman
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Alex Arnon
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Squid
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Ghilardi Filippo
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Darryl Woodford
- stock market mechanisms in muds Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? John Bertoglio
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Mike Rozak
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Michael Sellers
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Caliban Darklock
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] John Buehler
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Michael Sellers
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Jeffrey Kesselman
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Caliban Darklock
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [wasPersonalvirtual worlds] Dave Scheffer
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Jeffrey Kesselman
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Ghilardi Filippo
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Mike Rozak
- stock market mechanisms in muds Matt Chatterley
- stock market mechanisms in muds Peter Keeler
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- [MUD-Dev2] Michael Sellers
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Jeffrey Kesselman
- Mailing List Alternatives (was Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives) Morgan Ramsay
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Lachek Butalek
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] cruise
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] cruise
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Sean Howard
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants cruise
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dave Scheffer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Phillip Lenhardt
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Vincent Archer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Hartman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Vincent Archer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Hartman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Matt Chatterley
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Phillip Lenhardt
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Lachek Butalek
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
On Mar 7, 2007, at 2:12 PM, Adam Martin wrote:
>> The graphics engines aren't the problem, I don't think Torque has
>> been out for years, for example, and even has a 3rd party "MMO Kit".
>> Irrlicht and CrystalSpace are free, etc.
>
> ...and there's much much better stuff out there for very low cost if
> you're going to go commercial, or have a promising project and can get
> the interest of the big commercial engine licensors.
Indeed. I was just pointing out that engine availability isn't the
stumbling block, even if you have no money at all :-).
>> The problem I see for doing an indie MMO is infrastructure. It takes
>> a lot of bandwidth and computing power to support very many users,
>
> Nah, b/w is ever cheaper and computing power now for servers is
> shockingly cheap - prices I was quoted last year for quad-core servers
> with more RAM than any of our dev machines are lower than I was
> expecting for single-core 1Gb machines.
Bandwidth is ever cheaper, yes (though dedicated low-latency
bandwidth is less so than "good enough for a web site" bandwidth).
Power, alas, is not.
Let's back-of-the-envelope what it might take to roll out an indie
MMO (as opposed to an indie MO, which are legion :-)), since I
suspect we're comparing apples and oranges a bit.
Baseline assumptions:
- Use BitTorrent, sourceforge, googlepages, or some other free file
hosting service to host client downloads. No cost there, pretty
reliable. $0.
- Static terrain/buildings/etc.: prevents having to store & stream
geometry/texture data, and means you don't have to run (much) physics
on the server beyond passable/impassable areas. With a good
architecture, this means you could get a few thousand clients per
server, rather then a few tens to hundreds (note SL, where running
lots of stuff server side and streaming everything to the client
means that they can only support a couple dozen clients per server
before they hit performance walls).
- Let's say 2000 clients per server, and disregard for the moment
whether that's sharded vs. a single load balanced simulation.
- Say half a rack per data center: 6 servers, Ethernet switch(es),
router, a couple upstream bandwidth providers (in case one has bad
internet weather).
- Start with, say 3 data centers; say, SF, DC, and Chicago. Since
we're an indie, using data centers with "smart hands" service means
you don't have to travel as much to deal with stupid hardware problems.
So, let's see.
3 data centers x 6 servers per data center = 18 servers, figure we go
midrange for about $2500 each. That's $45K upfront capex (though you
could start smaller if you don't expect tens of thousands of users).
A half-rack of space, power, and a few megabits of bandwidth will
probably be about $1K/month, x 3 = $3K/mo opex.
Conclusion: Very practical for a startup if you have some money to
throw at it, but not practical as a sideline even on an affluent
programmer day-job salary.
I suspect that the future of indie MMO hosting is not in Moore's Law
as applied to server prices, as impressive as that is, but in things
like Amazon EC2, where you can buy both computing power and bandwidth
in much smaller incremements based on demand:
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2
A virtual world toolkit based on something like that would be very,
very interesting, I think.
> have friends who've
> kickstarted stuff on what a few years ago would have been considered
> major "big iron", funded by nothing more than their own spare cash
> (normal people on average programmer salaries).
>
> For instance, have a look at people like OGSI.
OGSI, if their website is accurate, is hardly funded by spare
cash :-). It does like like they've got the "indie games
infrastructure == market opportunity" idea, though. Looks pretty
good (and reading their slide show, looks like they're making the
same point about "rolling your own" infrastructure as I did above
with my envelope costing exercise).
> Personally, I'm betting that will happen but disappear because the
> amount of revenue being pumped into client/server systems vastly
> eclipses what goes into the p2p stuff, and yet the p2p stuff has only
> marginal benefits.
I'd have thought so too (my day job is definitely in the "bet on big
iron" category ;-)), but I am continually surprised that it keeps
popping back up. Skype, BitTorrent, Joost, ... there's got to be
some benefit or people wouldn't keep doing it.
> This will remain the case until/unless the
> last-mile home broadband b/w goes up by several orders of magnitude
> whilst the cost of server b/w and silicon only drops by a small
> factor.
Well, I wish we had reasonable home broadband in the US, but we won't
as long as the Bell System and the cable TV cartel keep their
regulatory monopoly on the last mile. This is one area where Europe
and Asia are pulling way ahead.
Amanda Walker - [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Daniel James
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Phillip Lenhardt
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- Re:[Humor] MMORPG Cliches (was " A rant against MMORPG installs and initialuserexperience") Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Jon Leonard
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Vincent Archer
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system Michael Sellers
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system cruise
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Michael Sellers
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Lachek Butalek
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Raph Koster
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant for Vanguard DANIEL Harman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant for Vanguard Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry (Was: A rant for Vanguard) Nick Koranda
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Morgan Ramsay
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Adam Martin
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Christopher Allen
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster