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+--- Thread: Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? (/showthread.php?tid=17908)
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - lionel - 06-22-2009
First of all, I offer my kuddos to the Disco team for all your efforts. 4.85 is amazing!
Concerning the added server, yes I would support $'s for a second server to help reduce lag. Your option #2 seems like a nice solution.
I understand the player limit will remain at 200. This will not be an issue in the long run. Wait until the summer break is over and homework is assigned.:)
Also may I add a thought for the future development? I would like to see the player list reduced. Meaning eliminate showing the player(s) location and level. I think this would add some extra realism to when jumping into a system.
Then to add, (not sure if it's possible) make the player location visible only when other players are close to trade lanes in system (say 8k) and your ship is also within 8k for that system only. Therefore, no trade lanes in system.... no locations or levels are known. Anyway I think this would add to the effect that systems are big.
Later
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - Sevion - 06-25-2009
What about two physically servers running FLserver plus an tool which synchronizes the savegame-files of the players between these servers?
This is seen by so many other games, mostlikely MMORPGs, which gives the players the option to decide if they want to play on e.g. Channel#1 or Channel#2.
Wouldn't be a big deal, but I know nobody will give a sh.... on this.:)
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - Zomane - 06-25-2009
That suggestion may work, but also for abuse.
How?
Early in the morning when few people are on, or more people are on one server, a person would just switch servers and go smuggle without any danger..
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - Sevion - 06-25-2009
It's just like right now, early in the morning, when all officers are still in dreams of donuts.:)
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - pipsqueak - 06-26-2009
Its just the summer rush. 2 more months and the traffic will die down. Next time plan an upgrade around Christmas.
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - Bass_masta992 - 06-26-2009
' Wrote:Raising the limit beyond 200 on a single server is technically not possible. Flserver can only use 1 core so dual-core is enough (1 core for flserver, 1 core for supporting processes). We would need a dualcore CPU running at 5GHz or more. These are not available and most probably they are not going to be available in future. The only remaining option is overclocking. We currently have an Intel E8400 running at 4GHz (Original value is 3GHz). It's capable to run stable at 4,5GHz but last summer we lowered it to 4GHz for stability reasons. Once the mod beta-testing is over (and the crashes as well) I'll raise it back to 4,5GHz but even this frequency doesn't allow us to raise the 200 limit. Server will lag a little less and there will be slightly more NPCs, but it might also crash more!
Can't sorry.
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - Govedo13 - 07-15-2009
About the 200 slot limit and single core limitations.
Well look at that baby- AMD Phenom II TWKR Black Edition
It could last at 5,5GHz on water I think, there are a friend of mine who is testing it now says that.
here some more info:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1009/1/ :)
The costs of transferring from Intel to AMD will be high but there are many of players and I think that they will donate the money. With some luck you will be able to have 50 or 100 more new slots depends of the cooling.
:D
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - Friday - 07-20-2009
A fast enough machine could run multiple instances of FL, and a portal system could be developed.
On a half-serious note - you could make Liberty a server all by itself!;)Right now nearly 50 out of 100 is in four systems - New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado and California.
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - Agran Harper - 08-20-2009
I've read through some of the server related topics now and thought rather than opening up a new one, I post my takes in the already existing and appropriate thread. So lets gather up the intel;
FLServer is not multicore friendly, kind of "as expected". That still hurts, but I guess that is about the most important fact to view, and on the long run I believe it is vital to channel more effort into the creation of a self-written Freelancer Server Program, which supports multicores. That is... if that is even legal. Would it be against the EULA to create such a program in the first place and run Freelancer games with it? Anyways, this has nothing to do with any current plans to ensure more players if needed, like the simultaneously running FL servers which share one database. Don?t get me wrong, I second the idea and it certainly will suffice for the time being.
BUT - creating a very own FLS program also allows you to implement exactly those features you want to have in the future. Besides that, its your child, and you can make improvements any time you like without the need of third-party progs to reroute. There are plenty of people in this community, and I?m almost certain that there are a few willing to put their effort into this task (if it isn't already in the works, that is. sorry for overreading then:$)
But since I don?t want to base my idea on a thing that is not even real, let me go back to our original FLserver and base it off that way. I'd like to take a step ahead and go a little further with that. As far as I can remember, it is possible to launch the FLserver several times on ONE machine, and each instance can be connected to seperately. Since they are all started on the same machine, they share 1 database, yet providing different instances. Okay, now how about that... let me paint you a picture;
Judging from what I read, the only issue with the player count is CPU power. So lets assume, we sit in the same sandbox and I craft you a castle; we have an AMD quadcore with 3.2 GHz. We launch 4 instances of the server and assign each of them to one CPU core. Those 4 instances are connected via the brainstorming effort written above; player jumps from one designated system to another, crossing borders, and is actively transferred to the next server.
Now, let me take that another step further. Imagine, I build another castle, right beside the other one. So we have TWO quadcore 3,2 Ghz machines, with a total of EIGHT instances of the FLserver running and both databases are connected via the grand idea that was already proposed in this thread.
Me being a hardware tinkerer myself am not fond of overclocking alltogether, so I try to avoid it as far as possible. Yet I understand the current state of affairs fully, but just you know from where I aim; I try to avoid increasing performance if it would sacrifice stability. 250 players online but lots of laggs and shutdowns and errors and whatnot are not as good as having 200 players playing more fluidly with less hassle. Thats just my take though. Back to the sandbox!
I believe 8 instances are enough to sufficiently cover the Sirius sector and even ensuring that large amounts of players are able in one spot, while others still can play on the other side. Perhaps they can be connected via pooled chat-channels that handle the messages from one server to the other? This can be increased by whatever means necessary. Of course it costs money, not to mention the juice from the socket at the place where the servers are standing... but let me remind you, right now I'm in sandbox mode:)Bloody Hell, the absolute fiction would be to have enough computers standing in a room with enough instances of the FLserver to run each SYSTEM on one seperate server and a huge database network that juggles the necessary data between all of them. That would be kind of an overkill, but well... a little overkill is good for the nerves, isn't it:)
Also I would find it imperative to remove as much load as possible from the server itself. I rather go so far and propose a solution we offered our business customers; one machine is their working horse, and that one is connected to another computer that has all the security loaded. The internet access is plugged at the second one, the security boarder, and this one connects to the main computer where the work is done, essentially chaining them together. Firewalls and antivirs (especially the cursed Kaspersky and Norton...) take away plenty of loads, so I am confident to boost performance by "outsourcing" them from the server machine, so nothing else but the OS and FLservers themselves are running.
The next evildoer is the OS itself I fear. From the upgrades thread I learned, that Discovery runs on WinXP 32bit. The processor that is used is 64bit compatible and upgrading to a 64bit system will give a significant boost to performance, I?ve seen that myself on my very own machine. That, and of course the increased amounts of RAM for the noted ramdrive ((which is a good idea I might add. I love to use ramdrives myself with 8Gig of Ram:))). Overall, I am uncertain how much Windows itselfs drags the performance down. Since Freelancer needs Directplay, and thus DirectX, I have no clue how and IF it would work on Linux. Please note, I have not the smallest idea what Linux is capable of nor what it cannot do, so I wait to be advised by you. As far as I heard (but only heard I have to sadly add), Linux would have the advantage to completely shut down itself and thus not using noticable amounts of resources while the FLservers are running, right?
But back to the sandbox; in a nutshell, upgrading to a 64bit OS of winXP would do good. I am not confident to look at Windows based Systems higher than XP. Vista itself still gives me the creeps and Windows 7... well, its basically just an overhauled Vista. Both need way more resources than XP, and even XP is not very resource friendly compared to Win2k, but that is out of question. Ultimately I guess Win2003 Server would do the trick at its best, wouldn't it? Its at least 64bit compatible and more geared towards networking than XP is/was.
So I hope I did not stirr up some bad moods now by throwing uncanny amounts of text at you... but you have been warned in my thread in the welcome section:D
I only want to aid, thats all:)And if only 1 idea of 10 is good, then its at least a minor improvement:)
Admin Announcement: Full server, what now? - 11of10 - 09-02-2009
What about using an off the shelf software like VMware to virtually simulate an x86 superprocessor by it utilising multicore CPU? VMware can use 2 cores currently, at least that's what Wikipedia says about VMware workstation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation