General Question - Servers

[Nek'rahm]

Okay, I'm sure I'm gunna get flamed for "ugh, not another will-we-host-Uru-on-servers question again," but this is different than before.

Okay... assuming we DO try something like this... how much effort would this take. Like, what needs to be changed to make the Uru:CC Ages Multiplayer instead of Singleplayer? How much would the server cost and how much would it take to operate it? Finally, what would have to be done to make a fully open multiplayer server startup? How would we go about the Login and stuff?

Just wondering :/

[pappou]

Yeah, i wonder about that too.
I know it is part of the ongoing discussion in GoW, but it gets submerged under tons of details.
From what i gather, servers are no problem; game players buy into them now, all the time, some for $5 a month; this was one of the arguments for shards, right? I think i heard that the number of servers depends upon the bandwidth of each server -- which is what you are really buying, Right?

However, do all the big questions come up in working out the multiplayer platform (is platform the right word here)?

Can that be summarized?

[andylegate]

I can tell you that the majority of the scripting for Uru is originally set up with multiplayer in mind. Making Fan Ages multiplayer will be a learning experience for many of us aspireing Age creators.

As far as the cost and what it would take to make it fully open, you'll have to ask others.

I would imagine that the answer is "a great deal of work and money"

[Nek'rahm]

Ahh I get it. They intended for Uru: CC ages to be Multiplayer by just porting em over to Uru Live and Until Uru. This means that the old Ages are already coded for Multiplayer.

Only Age that isn't is Nexus. That'd be the first place to start. The Cleft would be another good one too, specially as Uru Live is concerned. Until Uru kinda changed that around a bit >_>

Nexus would definitely be a good place to start.

[teedyo]

Well, you actually have it backwards. URU: ABM(PoTS/To D'ni) was created specifically for multi-player online use for URU Online. The CD version was modified and distributed as single player while URU Online was going down in fireymarbles. Until URU was in no way part of "The Plan".

Why would you feel the need to make the nexus multi-player???

[Nek'rahm]

It's not. Nexus has coding specifically for Single Player. Ages like Gahreesen have coding specifically for Multiplayer. By comparing the coding of the two, we can find out what makes an age Multiplayer and apply it to all further ones -_-

[Chacal]

First you must understand that having multiplayer-compatible Ages still gives you only clients. It doesn't give you a Uru server.
The only way you can build a Uru server is to analyze the traffic in and out of your client, which tells you how the server reacts to events you send to it. Then you can start programming a server which acts the same way.

Back in 2004-2005, Almlys and others did just that. They captured packets from Uru Live before it shut down and they built a server. This was the Alcugs project. It got sidetracked when Cyan decided to offer the Uru Live server code to the community, so we could run Uru servers (called "shards") while Cyan kept control of the authentification server. This was Until Uru. A few people could afford to set shards up on physical servers (computers) with good bandwidth (not your home-based computer).

Operating a server is expensive in setup and maintenance time. I run several game servers, those are reasonably stable and bug-free, big commercial games like BF2, TF2, UT3. In theory they should run without human intervention, in reality I'm always fixing something. Ask a shard admin what running an unstable game like UU meant. Operating a server requires a high level of knowledge of operating systems, scripting, networking, security, etc.

An Uru server will need several parts that must work perfectly together: a server engine (for managing events, making decisions, managing the database), an auth server (login), a data server (one or several layers of logic on top of a DBMS such as MySQL). An architecture has to be prepared for the services to work together, and it must be scalable (load balancing, redundancy, etc).

Operating a server is expensive in hardware and network costs. Getting 100Mbps of upload and download into one box in a data center costs hundreds of dollars a month. Only providers get that kind of bandwidth. So you can run a server if you are a provider or if you're willing to rent one and foot the bills (or have someone else foot the bill, which was probably the case for most shard admins).

[D'Lanor]

Back in 2004-2005, Almlys and others did just that. They captured packets from Uru Live before it shut down and they built a server. This was the Alcugs project. It got sidetracked when Cyan decided to offer the Uru Live server code to the community, so we could run Uru servers (called "shards") while Cyan kept control of the authentification server. This was Until Uru. A few people could afford to set shards up on physical servers (computers) with good bandwidth (not your home-based computer).

Actually many UU shards were home-based computers. Sometimes even old unused spare computers that people had lying around in a corner were turned into UU shards. And of course it helped that UU ran on a low overhead OS like Linux. So it does not need to be expensive, but you will have to be realistic about the playerbase you can support in a setup like that.

btw, alcugs never got sidetracked very far. There were alcugs shards alongside UU shards. In fact alcugs is currently your best bet to run a shard, although I won't go into the legalities of that.

[Nek'rahm]

yeeeeeea

Okay, andy was right. Enormous amount of time, money and understanding

[Aloys]

The main problem in running Uru (or UU) is that it's a bandwith killer.. I'm not sure what's the metric these days, but I remember at Ubi during the Prologue (2004) there was some benchmarking going on to assess the server needs for Live, and our guy responsible for these kept pulling his hair out, saying an Uru client needed around 20kbps of bandwith (on an average day in the City). Which is just way too much considering how 'little' there is going in Uru at any time: A couple avatars walking around, probably some chat going on, and a couple cones moving.. 20k sounds way too much for this amount of info.

Chacal: Just as a comparison, would you have any idea how much bandwith a BF2 client eats up per second on a loaded map? (32 players)