Bumping this thread with an interesting test. Though it may not seem relevant at first, this little side project will help out this game a great deal.
The problem lies in trying to accomplish an MMO using "pure" DBPro since DBPro's built-in multiplayer commands only supports up to 256 players at the same time. Here's the work-around;
Using multiple instances of DBPro executables running on the same PC, each instance can accommodate 256 players. Run four instances, and you can support about 1000 players. This has been tested and does seem to work (actually having 1000's of players is the next test to be sure).
It is at this point, we run into another roadblock; Multiple instances of DBPro cannot communicate very well with each other. They cannot share memory, nor can they share files. This leaves two possibilities I can think of; 1) Use the Multiplayer Commands or 2) Use the clipboard. There are several issues when trying to use the multiplayer commands, the least of which is that they can be very slow. This really leaves using the clipboard as the only remaining viable option.
Thats where this test comes in. We need a clipboard data sharing code and format that is fast enough to handle lots of data being transmitted back and forth between 5 to 9 executables (4 slaves +1 central processor, or 8 slaves +1 central processor for 1k to 2k players).
Before we get to the multiplayer stage, clipboard sharing will also allow us to create a Debug routine that will write Debug information to the clipboard, which can be displayed on a separate executable. So, even if this is not the solution for an MMO on "pure" DBPro, it will still have its use.
So, here's the test. Run both the Left and the Right executables. It doesn't matter which is run first. The default setting is 40 spheres sharing x & y coordinate information as well as red, green, and blue color information. So, that is 40x5 data points moving across from the left to the right. The Left screen has the FrameRate set to about 45. The Right screen is the test screen to see how fast the data can be read and interpreted, so the Frame Rate is set to 0. It's pretty cool to see the sort-of default timer-based movement on the right
.
Next steps will be to see if this can be sped up to accommodate 1000's of data points at a reasonable speed.
Oh, and sorry, no screenshots. When I take the screenshot, the clipboard is quickly overwritten.
Open MMORPG: It's your game!
