How many players.

Post by **uzurpator** » 31 Oct 2005 10:18

This seems to be a trivial question but...

How many players do we allow on a single game?

8? 16? Dynamically set? 2000?

Discuss...

Arathorn · Post by **Arathorn** » 31 Oct 2005 10:33

What would be the arguement against dynamicly?

Post by **uzurpator** » 31 Oct 2005 11:36

Usually dynamic solutions impose certain overhead and require using 'tricky' data structures - like hash tables.

DominionSpy · Post by **DominionSpy** » 31 Oct 2005 11:47

I don't think we need to think about this until much later on. For now we could plan to simply have the max number of players set as a constant somewhere. When we have a working netcode we can then tweak the values depending on the bandwidth use.

Post by **uzurpator** » 31 Oct 2005 11:50

COnsidering that I currently write client-server tcp-ip uplink - i kinda need it now...

Arathorn · Post by **Arathorn** » 31 Oct 2005 13:07

Could it be a soft limit? So that you set it on 16 for now (wich is plenty I think). but if there is, much later in devlopment (after first playable releases a possibility of raising that limit? How do other games do that? Like OTTD or certain multiplayer RTS games?

Post by **uzurpator** » 31 Oct 2005 13:09

Well - for now I'm going for dynamic limit, but once we start implementing data structures - we will have to impose some limits.

And we cannot use vectors or lists for some of the bigger data structures (like ownership matrices)

Grunt · Post by **Grunt** » 31 Oct 2005 14:58

uzurpator wrote: And we cannot use vectors or lists for some of the bigger data structures (like ownership matrices)

Those can just be matrices of pointers to possible owners, which will use comparatively little memory.

Post by **uzurpator** » 31 Oct 2005 15:07

Grunt wrote:
uzurpator wrote: And we cannot use vectors or lists for some of the bigger data structures (like ownership matrices)
Those can just be matrices of pointers to possible owners, which will use comparatively little memory.

Yes - i was speaking in general terms.

And I really would like to play a game of 64000x64000 with 1000 players in it. Altho it would require this for the server

Arathorn · Post by **Arathorn** » 31 Oct 2005 16:34

Perhaps in 20 years time, that will be common.

Who's gonna be the server by the way, one of the players with a fast connection?

Zuu · Post by **Zuu** » 02 Nov 2005 19:26

Arathorn wrote:Perhaps in 20 years time, that will be common.

Who's gonna be the server by the way, one of the players with a fast connection?

At that time, we'll would have faster internet connections too.

So I guess thats not something we have to care about now.

For enormous maps a variant could be to split the map among several servers, perhaps along at the maps natural borders as rivers etc, to minimize the inpact, or maybe eaven make separate islands. Perhaps the only way to transport stuff between islands would be by ship and airplane. Meaning that the 'islands' would not be islands, but rather continents.

But I guess that lays long time in future. As we first need to be able to play one contintent.

Arathorn · Post by **Arathorn** » 02 Nov 2005 19:41

My comment about the server was meant for the current generation. So who's the server?

Zuu · Post by **Zuu** » 02 Nov 2005 20:06

I have a 10/10 Mbit boardband (soon I'll get 100 down and 10 up) and my old computer (got a new one a few weeks ago) which I won't mind to set up a TE server on. It has a 1.33 Gz celeron processor and 768 MB SDRAM. The harddrive is unfortanly rather slow, 4200 rpm, but if the TE server wont need to use the harddrive when it is runing that should not be a big problem.

I have yet to make a new frech and clean installation of linux on the machine and setup some virtual machines before I would open it for access from the internet. It might take up to some months untill that is done.

That machine would have a primary task that is fileserver for my university work. Storing work so that I can access it from uni and from home, compile a latex doc from uni once a while or so.

Oh.. and I am on dynamic IP, but IP changes rarely.

Post by **orudge** » 02 Nov 2005 22:18

I can help out with servers if need be, when we get to that point...

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 13 Nov 2006 21:04

It's all well to discuss 16 players but I think the amount of players sustainable by a server should be the limit. The limit for amount of multiplayer should be the map size. It's ridiculous to play with 16 players on a 1024x1024 map. In OTTD that map size works well for 6-8 players but that's about it. I suggest we keep games with 16 multiplayer slots as the maximum.

XeryusTC · Post by **XeryusTC** » 13 Nov 2006 21:08

I think 16 is about perfect, I can't imagine that you can get more than 16 players to play on a server at the same time, or you must have a very popular server. Note that his limit will (probably) also count for single player games, which means you can have up to 15 AIs, which would be plenty.

aarona · Post by **aarona** » 13 Nov 2006 21:29

I do not see the need to impose limits. (Thats not to say we can't use a "suggested" number)
The code will allow as many or little. (It's not that hard...)
Other external factors should then determine practical limits.

Purno · Post by **Purno** » 14 Nov 2006 07:23

Hyronymus wrote:It's ridiculous to play with 16 players on a 1024x1024 map.

Well, if someone wants to play that way, he should have the possibility, IMO.

Locked until the DD discussion arrives at this issue.

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