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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Why 256 players?

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Advancement Games
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 01:41
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Why is 256 net players the limit to how many people you can have on a multiplayer game at one time? I was just wondering that when I was reading the manual. I am trying to make a multiplayer game, but it is definately not working. PLEASE TELL ME! It is really perplexing!

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Chenak
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 02:07
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Its a direct X limitation, why would you need more than 256 net players anyway....
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Plazmeh
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 02:09
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Really, why would you need more than that? And don't you need to put in the IPs anyway?

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DrakeX
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 04:38
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well, i would assume that he's trying to make a MMORPG, as that seems to be in vogue these days. 256 players is probably fine for a small MMORPG. i mean, without proper advertising, you probably would have a hard time getting that many people informed about your game.

"when it's done" means "we have no idea, we forgot to do that; we were hoping you would all forget we promised <insert exotic promise here>"
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G Man
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 05:03
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The limitation is because realistically, there is only so many connections a host can support without serious lag. If indeed you are attempting an MMORPG, then you certainly must know about subjects like load sharing. That and obviously you understand that you are going to need a central database server to maintain all of the data that is being passed between your various players and that hosting nodes would need to access this data in real time for disemination to those players. So what database have you chosen for your central node? MSSQL, MySQL or perhaps something else?

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Cellbloc Studios
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 05:26
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And they are broken down into zones. Whereas each zone only has 256 players at one time.

Dear God, I hope this isn't another MMORPG attempt...that would make what? 156 attempts at MMORPG in the last 11 months? I lost count somewhere...

I don't know how many more post of "Multiplayer is not working over the internet, but fine on the LAN" I can take.

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Teh Go0rfmeister
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 05:41
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Quote: "I don't know how many more post of "Multiplayer is not working over the internet, but fine on the LAN" I can take."


people keep mentioning it, i keep telling them its cos of a 5.7 bug, and the god of the underworld or whatever his name is... annoying the hell out of me, i keep telling him but he just appears ion another thread asking the same question.

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Cellbloc Studios
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 05:50
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Needs to be a sticky on the Bug Forum titled "5.7 Multiplayer not working across internet, but fine for LAN, stop trying to make multiplayer games across the internet until fixed (Confirmed)".

I am testing the issue with 2 people right now. I personally have not got it to work, but others claim so. I do not know if they are running 5.7 or not. I am checking that possibility out.

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G Man
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2005 06:41
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Anyone who was seriously considering making an MMORPG would not code the hosts in DBPro anyways! The hosts have no need for the 3D engine... Why bog their performance with unneeded overhead? Clearly C would be Johnny on the Spot for that application!

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Advancement Games
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Posted: 31st Jan 2005 04:52
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I am not trying to make one of those games! I just was wondering why that would be the limit. You see these games out there that can support millions, but why 256? Just a question!

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Mr Pointless
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Posted: 31st Jan 2005 04:57
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Possibly because all player data's sent to multiple servers or something like that. I don't know.

Oooor... they write their own software to handle those connections outside of DirectX?

Originality is not dead, it just has an annoying tendency to fall asleep without setting the alarm clock
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Tapewormz
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Posted: 31st Jan 2005 07:14 Edited at: 31st Jan 2005 07:28
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Quote: "You see these games out there that can support millions"


What games are you talking about? There aren't any games out there that can support millions of connections. The only game that was in development that could support 10,000+ users on the same server in the same zone simultaneously was Wish...And that project was just recently cancelled as they believe it'll be too hard to break into the mmorpg market. The game was rich in content and fully featured too. It's a real shame.

There was 1 game out there that claimed to be the worlds first and only 1 million player mutliplayer game. It was called 10six and it was by segasoft. Like everything from segasoft (not sega mind you, but segasoft) it generated no interest and they never did get to test the 1 milion player theory before Sega pulled the plug on their PC devision and disolved segasoft. The game, posted their official puke statement in a press release on the front page of the site...All I could do was shake my head and laugh. The game did have alot of interesting aspects to it though. There was no monthly fee to play it either. That was cool.

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Blue Icarian Wings
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Posted: 31st Jan 2005 08:02
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1 Byte is made up of 8 bits (eg 1Byte = 0000 0000)

With 8 bits you have 256 different combinations possible

0000 0000
0000 0001
0000 0010
0000 0011

and so on, I ani't got all night to type em all out!

Makes sense to presume that the number of players is stored in a byte
(on a side note, byte is the smallest 'chunck' you can have, so the next size up is 2Bytes, 16bits or, 65536 combinations!)
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CattleRustler
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Posted: 31st Jan 2005 09:07
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EZ_Serv?
(link in sig)

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dre
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Posted: 31st Jan 2005 13:06
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just to tell u, even if u do have a LAN connection, ull need a very good pc ,ect to keep the game going smooth. itll be a real hastle with all the exchanging packets thru the host cuz thers no way u could use peer to peer. so really, going over 256 is pretty pointless.

dont expect lazy ppl to do amazing stuff (copyrighted)
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Element Designs
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Posted: 1st Feb 2005 02:25
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FF11... Supports way more than 10,000 people tapeworm

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Mystery Coffee Drinker
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Posted: 1st Feb 2005 06:29
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btw, I have gotten multiplayer to work over the internet, and am using 5.7

I am not doing anything strange.. just the standard DBP commands..

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Chenak
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Posted: 1st Feb 2005 06:32
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@element:have you ever seen 10,000 people in one area in FF11, i seriously doubt it
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Nicholas Thompson
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Posted: 1st Feb 2005 16:33
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Its probably zoned. you only ever get about 256 people (maybe 512 or something) in one "zone" as you move out, you would seamlessly connect to another zone server? Just a guess...

I am 90% sure the DB Multiplayer command DO WORK over the internet, its just people have not ever used the right settings for the routers/modem/firewall, etc...

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Element Designs
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2005 23:34
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Theres been over 300,000 people logged in in one day on FFll dont belive it check there site

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Blue Icarian Wings
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2005 23:51 Edited at: 3rd Feb 2005 01:11
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at the same time?

edit: meaning I presume thats the number of logins of 24hr's, not all at the same time!
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Chenak
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 00:07 Edited at: 3rd Feb 2005 02:19
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LOL, 300,000 people in one server, in one zone, at the same time. nope, sorry its not possible yet im afraid. 300,000 spread across 30 servers or more during a whole day is what they mean.
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AtomR
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 01:08 Edited at: 3rd Feb 2005 01:11
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Yeah. It was over all their servers. I doubt I've ever been logged in with more then 200 users on the same zone.

What's with ppl and MMORPG's. Why can't you settle for a MORPG? Why does it have to be massive if you've never done an ordinary online game? I know that when I try to make an online game I will most certainly settle for 256 users. Honest

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Mac
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 02:01
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If anybody wants to test some multiplayer code I have an internet facing server here that has the Dplay ports open, I will gladly run your test apps on it for you, there is no reason at all you should not be able to connect to it. No router involved.

I must admit I am intrigued by the reports of internet play not working whilst LAN does, in theory if the host connection is open on the right IP address it should work perfectly.
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Three Score
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 03:06
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why dont u people just use winsock instead of stupid directplay

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Benjamin
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 03:41
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Because they don't know how? . Ah well, my DLL will be out soon enough..

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Pyro990
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 04:01
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Planetside can have 133 players per empire (3 empires) per (game) continent, each cont. has it's own server. (it was 166 players but they lowered it to spread out the battles)

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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 06:56
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Benjamin, do you have an estimated release date for your winsock .dll?

I'm about to start writing the server code for my little multiplayer space shoot at each other kinda thing and I would much prefer to do away with any directplay overhead.
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G Man
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 07:24 Edited at: 3rd Feb 2005 07:28
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Let's do a little math... Suppose you indeed had 300,000 players in one place at one time on one server.

Let's supposed each player's avatar would be composed of a simple model running about 1000 polys. So now, just to render the scene, you need to render or cull 300,000,000 polys per game cycle... That's right me-buckos three hundred million polys.

Now add to that the overhead of communicating the changes of location and orientation for those 300,000 player's avatars. Let's suppose (as a minimalistic approach ) that the locations are transfered as a triad of integer values (that's sucky precision for this use, but again we're going for minimalist numbers) and let's suppose that we are only sending Y rotational values as again an integer. Let's suppose only 10% of our 300,000 players are moving during any given game cycle... so 30,000 times 8 bytes for our 4 integers equals 240,000 bytes per cycle. Assuming your application has crappy performance and a refresh rate of 20 frames per second... we're up to a required transfer rate of 4,800,000 bytes per second... Now don't get me wrong. I'm spoiled I have good cable modem access at home and T1 access here at work... Let's say, we were getting the theoretcial maximum throughput from my cable modem (10 Mbps) which equates to 1,250,000 Bytes per second max! (you'll note that's a mere quarter of the number calculated above). Simply stated, it can't be done with a PC on the internet... Now a Cray on a gigabit ethernet is a different question... Question, does DBPro run on Crays? How many people can afford a Cray? Kinda limits the club don't it? So I guess the "Massive" part is a moot point then huh?

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Element Designs
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 08:36
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Well i went to look up about FF11 and i found out that they have 33 servers running each part of the world

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Element Designs
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 08:39
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But thats all besides the point who really cares about Final Fantasy im more into talking about Darkbasic and what multiplayer features it has

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Benjamin
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 08:49 Edited at: 3rd Feb 2005 09:01
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Quote: "Benjamin, do you have an estimated release date for your winsock .dll?"

Well, right now its usable, I'm just adding some stuff to make it simpler(and of course I'm adding advanced functions too). Right now hosting and joining is as simple as:



Do note though that it currently only supports client/server functionality, that is, all data gets routed through the host(server). This isn't a problem really, because it means less lag will occur through players because they only have to send their data once. Of course, if the server is lagging then it will affect everyone, but if you have a fast enough person acting as the server then it shouldn't lag.

Sending data is a piece of cake:



And receiving is also easy:



And, checking for new connections, which is what the server/host does:



Well ok, right now I am using DLL calls because I haven't yet added the INI file, but it'll be like I said . Connecting only takes roughly a second for dialup-ers, whereas with dbpro's net commands it takes about 10 seconds.

Multiplayer DLL on its way! Easy to use DLL for client/server multiplayer games.
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 08:54
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Good news, I'll wait a while and try out your winsock creation.
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Benjamin
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 09:02
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I should have made the proper post rather than making that small post then editing it . Ah well.

*BUMP*

Multiplayer DLL on its way! Easy to use DLL for client/server multiplayer games.
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Element Designs
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 09:08
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Wow it sounds awsome keep up the good work benj

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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 09:17 Edited at: 3rd Feb 2005 09:18
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Benjamin that looks superb.

Do you have any packet queing system in place?

I swear, by the time I start using your winsock.dll, I think less than half the code in my game is actually DarkBASIC, Huge chunks of it are EZRo, Newton API and NG already.
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heartbone
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 10:26
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In 2003 completed a networked multiplayer DarkBasic Pro game,
Easy Tank Commbat.

I just completed a three week project Dark Boxer.

I thought long and hard about making it multiplayer but after careful analysis I decided that the internet is too hostile of an environment for the program to function correctly because of the delicate timings involved.

Two player dialup 56K internet tanks firing cannonballs in DBP? No problem. Two player boxing, big problem.

The idea of a MMORPG in DB is ludicrous. Be sensible and design a MORPG first.

Mystery Coffee Drinker:
Quote: "btw, I have gotten multiplayer to work over the internet, and am using 5.7

I am not doing anything strange.. just the standard DBP commands.."
No doubt. Strange how this is ignored. Quite a board.

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Benjamin
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 10:46 Edited at: 3rd Feb 2005 10:50
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Multiplayer works for me too, but theres a few problems I don't like.

1. It takes 10 seconds to connect.
2. I can't seem to connect to more than one person.
3. Theres barely anyone I know that they work for.

Quote: "No doubt. Strange how this is ignored. Quite a board."

I believe its ignored because everyone knows that the multiplayer commands are so dodgy? I mean, sure connecting to one person is something, but what about connecting to 2 or 3 people? Also I think that 10 second delay really bugs other people too, because the window won't respond in that time and you think its frozen.

Quote: "Do you have any packet queing system in place?"

Well, provided that the programmer does a check for new data each loop there probably won't be a need for a queue, however I'm trying to think of a way I could do a queing system. Any ideas?

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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 16:27
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Hmm, maybe a simple stack? Nothing fancy and leave it upto the programmer to check to see if there is anything left on the stack, just something to stop packets disapearing if they are not received immediately.
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Benjamin
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2005 22:19
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Well, if packets aren't accessed immidiatly they sort of 'stack' with the other packets that come in anyway, I'll try and sort of some sort of system for managing that. Perhaps it would be wise to store them in an overflow buffer, then transfer them to the input buffer every time there is space. I'll have a think about it.

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Posted: 4th Feb 2005 00:04
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Probably safest, it's tempting to say make the overflow a lifo stack so that if you check it and there is something there you know you are pulling off the most recently received packets, kind of an after lag buffer, you don't bother reading it until you need to 'catch up' so to speak, but thats all a bit complicated!
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Advancement Games
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Posted: 4th Feb 2005 01:50
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That all sounds reasonable. I also have been hearing that the multiplayer stinks for DBPro! Why is that?

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Posted: 4th Feb 2005 02:14
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It's not so much that DBPro multiplayer stinks, it's the fact it uses Directplay which stinks, personally I have hated dplay ever since playing allegiance. The resource overhead when handling dplay sessions is also quite high, it works yes but there are much better transports. Although in all honesty it's got a lot better since the DX7 days which was when it really earned it's bad reputation.
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Benjamin
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Well if we did it the way I suggested, then all the programmer would have to do is use the recieve command until there are no more packets to read.

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Advancement Games
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Posted: 4th Feb 2005 02:21
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Benjamin,
That sounds like it is an easier idea! I think that when DBPro 6.0 comes out, that should be put in!

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Posted: 4th Feb 2005 02:33
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Benjamin, would it be possible to incorporate a packet prioritising system? With multiple 'urgencies' a packet with a higher urgency could get pushed up the stack.
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Benjamin
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Posted: 4th Feb 2005 03:11
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Sure thats possible

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Advancement Games
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Posted: 5th Feb 2005 01:41
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Well, if we were to use that method, how many people could be held, and will it work better?

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Zokomoko
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I would like to know that aswell.

how many connections could be made using your DLL ?
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Benjamin
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Posted: 5th Feb 2005 02:39
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I honestly don't know how many connections could be made. I'm sure its somewhere in the thousands, mind you, it wouldn't exactly be easy to test that

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