Need some network answers please...
by Darryl Runyan · in Torque Game Engine · 04/01/2003 (5:34 pm) · 4 replies
Myself and 2 friends are interested in making an morpg. We do not desire nor dream of it being a huge massive miltiplayer environment. We are making it primarily to earn just a bit of money but mostly for our friends and such to play. We are looking at a target of no more than 500 players ever. I am not the programmer all I do is graphics, storyline and am in the process of learning to code. The game server will be on a Linux server with 1.8mhz processor and 512ram on a main backbone(we already have the dedicated server in place)
Now that you have a background here are my questions:
1: I have read all I can find in the forums and from my understanding Torque can handle 64 clients as it stands out of the box... correct? Does Torque as it stands have the items implemented in it to handle the creation of an account and instantly after creation allowing the player to log on?
2: If not.... what programs... backends or whatever will we need to make this happen? What we are basically wanting is for the person to create an account(they will have a 14 day free trial) and then log onto the game. On the account they can have 4 characters on it. What do I need to make this happen?
3: Is the server that we have going to be able to handle the 500 or lower player mark or will I need a seperate server to handle the database server?
I hope someone can answer these questions from a person that is trying to see if Torque is for them.
Thanks,
Darryl Runyan
Now that you have a background here are my questions:
1: I have read all I can find in the forums and from my understanding Torque can handle 64 clients as it stands out of the box... correct? Does Torque as it stands have the items implemented in it to handle the creation of an account and instantly after creation allowing the player to log on?
2: If not.... what programs... backends or whatever will we need to make this happen? What we are basically wanting is for the person to create an account(they will have a 14 day free trial) and then log onto the game. On the account they can have 4 characters on it. What do I need to make this happen?
3: Is the server that we have going to be able to handle the 500 or lower player mark or will I need a seperate server to handle the database server?
I hope someone can answer these questions from a person that is trying to see if Torque is for them.
Thanks,
Darryl Runyan
About the author
#2
Trakers can be downloaded at www.liquid.nq.net/trakers/
It may give you some ideas of how to set up your networking model.
04/01/2003 (6:40 pm)
For Trakers (a MORPG) that I created and got to beta in TGE, I used the httpObject to send data to a php webpage. Doing it that way I was able to use php to run filtering and CRC32 checking on the data being transferred between the character server and the game server.Trakers can be downloaded at www.liquid.nq.net/trakers/
It may give you some ideas of how to set up your networking model.
#3
What I think I will do, I have a program already that sets up accounts on my website. It adds the login info to a database and automatically bills, adds account time, and cancels an unpaid accoutn rendering it dead until paid. From what I see I can tell the engine to look at that database that my account software sets up for the user account login info.
As for the server load, of course I can set up a second server to run another "world" that would be no problem in my mind to do. Do the servers need to be hardwired in succession or can it be a totally different ip for the new world?
Please tell me if I am readin the replies wrong... and once again, thanks for the help.
Darryl Runyan
04/01/2003 (7:59 pm)
Thank you both so far for your replies... I think you may have helped me more than you know. From what I have seen I can tell the engine to look at "database X" to see about user login info, am I correct in assuming this?What I think I will do, I have a program already that sets up accounts on my website. It adds the login info to a database and automatically bills, adds account time, and cancels an unpaid accoutn rendering it dead until paid. From what I see I can tell the engine to look at that database that my account software sets up for the user account login info.
As for the server load, of course I can set up a second server to run another "world" that would be no problem in my mind to do. Do the servers need to be hardwired in succession or can it be a totally different ip for the new world?
Please tell me if I am readin the replies wrong... and once again, thanks for the help.
Darryl Runyan
#4
In my day job, I work for a Supply Chain Integration software company. We needed a system that would allow hundreds (theoretically thousands) of simultaneous access to groups of data all over the world. This is when I realized that what my team is doing is a system similar to an MMOG engine. Because MMOG system/concepts are already a tested idea ... I was able to easily sell this idea to my Project Director and were now actually undergoing User Acceptance Tests (or in gaming world - Beta Testing).
I'm telling you this because when you listed your expected no of users and the server hardware ... it made me smile. This is because you made me remember how I felt when I started the project and then what I felt when I realized how BIG an MMOG project really is when we were around 50% completed. :)
My suggestion to you is to review Microforte's Bigworld MMOG Engine. I suggest you look into their Server Overview diagram.
Good luck on your project. :D
Alex
04/01/2003 (9:11 pm)
Hello Darryl,In my day job, I work for a Supply Chain Integration software company. We needed a system that would allow hundreds (theoretically thousands) of simultaneous access to groups of data all over the world. This is when I realized that what my team is doing is a system similar to an MMOG engine. Because MMOG system/concepts are already a tested idea ... I was able to easily sell this idea to my Project Director and were now actually undergoing User Acceptance Tests (or in gaming world - Beta Testing).
I'm telling you this because when you listed your expected no of users and the server hardware ... it made me smile. This is because you made me remember how I felt when I started the project and then what I felt when I realized how BIG an MMOG project really is when we were around 50% completed. :)
My suggestion to you is to review Microforte's Bigworld MMOG Engine. I suggest you look into their Server Overview diagram.
Good luck on your project. :D
Alex
Associate Matt Fairfax
Night Heron Games
1) I believe the upper player limit "out of the box" is 128. There isn't an account system built in but several groups have already set this up and from what I understand it isn't a very difficult thing to do.
2) I've been told that there TGE has been successfully hooked to MySQL (a free database server). This would be very effective in handling an account system like you want.
3) I think you are going to run into more problems on the client end than on the server end. I know from expereince (Tribes 2) that things can get choppy with 50+ people on the same map. What happens if they enter a city and have a lot of other people on screen? You could possibly zone the world onto different servers.