Questions about general hosting costs, networking and AI
by Braedon "Ellimist" Hinchcliffe · in Torque 3D Beginner · 06/15/2010 (6:03 pm) · 2 replies
Attempting to crunch some numbers to see if T3D is viable for a certain project.
Basically its a shooter game where we would develop the game with different instanced zones. An instance of 1 zone would be loaded if 1 or more players were in that part of the city. So basically it would be a big city split into many smaller maps. Persistent player stats such as rank and kill count will be stored in a mySQL server which would be separate and displayed on another separate web-hosting server.
So basically I assume that I would be able to hold around 40-100 players in a zone once vehicles and some faster action is added (similar amount of networking as the game fallen empires). Also im estimating each server can hold about 5 city sectors or about 10 smaller storyline instances.
NOTE: There is an error here. Obviously the world launcher handles login and so there should be a DBC arrow pointing back from mySQL to the world launcher (returning login and other relevent information)
For city sectors each sector will be mapped by the level designer. Hopefully the player base would not grow faster than the rate at which new sections of the city could be developed. There will be no incentive for players to gather up in any one dedicated server instance so hopefully the players will naturally spread out evenly in the different server instances. Otherwise game-play elements will be introduced which cause the players to spread evenly between different sectors of the city.
So the best deal I can get on server are
Dual Core - 4GB Ram - 4TB Bandwidth - $130
Quad Core - 8gb Ram - 5TB Bandwidth - $230
Quad Corex2 8GB Ram - 6TB Bandwidth - $350
Because each server comes with only a minimal amount of extra bandwidth im inclined to believe that getting more of the Dual Core servers is a better option than less of the higher end server.
So my question are as follows.
1) How many instances of the dedicated server could be run on a Dual Core server at 2.5ghz with 4GB of ram. Just your best guess is fine.
2) Does T3D send packets only in a proximity to other players? We plan to limit the combat to small 3v3v3 team based game-play. I need to know because the bandwidth cost of 9 players sending packets to each other is obviously massively different than 100 players sending packets at all times.
3) Slightly off-topic. Answer if you have some experience please. I am thinking about AI as it will be a large part of the game. If you were expecting to use about 5 AI npc's per active player in each map would you have each server instance control all the AI (about 200 per instance, many with basic patrol AI) or would you have to have a separate server to run the AI processes.
Anyways thanks to anyone that answers. I am simply trying to get an idea of the costs of running this type of server setup for T3D in comparison to some other engine options.
Basically its a shooter game where we would develop the game with different instanced zones. An instance of 1 zone would be loaded if 1 or more players were in that part of the city. So basically it would be a big city split into many smaller maps. Persistent player stats such as rank and kill count will be stored in a mySQL server which would be separate and displayed on another separate web-hosting server.
So basically I assume that I would be able to hold around 40-100 players in a zone once vehicles and some faster action is added (similar amount of networking as the game fallen empires). Also im estimating each server can hold about 5 city sectors or about 10 smaller storyline instances.
NOTE: There is an error here. Obviously the world launcher handles login and so there should be a DBC arrow pointing back from mySQL to the world launcher (returning login and other relevent information)For city sectors each sector will be mapped by the level designer. Hopefully the player base would not grow faster than the rate at which new sections of the city could be developed. There will be no incentive for players to gather up in any one dedicated server instance so hopefully the players will naturally spread out evenly in the different server instances. Otherwise game-play elements will be introduced which cause the players to spread evenly between different sectors of the city.
So the best deal I can get on server are
Dual Core - 4GB Ram - 4TB Bandwidth - $130
Quad Core - 8gb Ram - 5TB Bandwidth - $230
Quad Corex2 8GB Ram - 6TB Bandwidth - $350
Because each server comes with only a minimal amount of extra bandwidth im inclined to believe that getting more of the Dual Core servers is a better option than less of the higher end server.
So my question are as follows.
1) How many instances of the dedicated server could be run on a Dual Core server at 2.5ghz with 4GB of ram. Just your best guess is fine.
2) Does T3D send packets only in a proximity to other players? We plan to limit the combat to small 3v3v3 team based game-play. I need to know because the bandwidth cost of 9 players sending packets to each other is obviously massively different than 100 players sending packets at all times.
3) Slightly off-topic. Answer if you have some experience please. I am thinking about AI as it will be a large part of the game. If you were expecting to use about 5 AI npc's per active player in each map would you have each server instance control all the AI (about 200 per instance, many with basic patrol AI) or would you have to have a separate server to run the AI processes.
Anyways thanks to anyone that answers. I am simply trying to get an idea of the costs of running this type of server setup for T3D in comparison to some other engine options.
#2
As far as RAM goes its possible to pay an extra $20/Month for 8GB. I would probably do that anyways if I didn't think that the CPU's would max out before the RAM would.
Thanks for the confirmation.
06/16/2010 (12:23 pm)
Alright seems like everything is as I hoped it would be.As far as RAM goes its possible to pay an extra $20/Month for 8GB. I would probably do that anyways if I didn't think that the CPU's would max out before the RAM would.
Thanks for the confirmation.
Associate Konrad Kiss
Bitgap Games
2) This is referred to as object ghosting and the radius in which objects are ghosted to one client is the same as the visibility distance right now. Of course these should be separated. They are not that hard to separate either.
3) It wouldn't really matter. Having an external server control AI would cause a LOT of headaches later on. Having its own server control each AI would be a viable solution. The resources an AI takes vary greatly. For a game like yours, you'll need to make sure that it's as fast as it can be. Ie. no script AI, as much events based as possible with short and rare think loops.
We have been hosting our own servers for more than a year now - about 5 very strong boxes for development. We've seen two hardware failures since then. In the end, we will go another route, because scaling and hardware management has proven to be a serious problem even through the development phase. We're evaluating Amazon's EC2 right now and rewrite our Login / Master servers to be able to start new EC2 instances and stop them on demand. We will still be hosting our www, login and master servers on our own, but the part that needs to be scaled will be hosted with Amazon probably. This is not a small task, but it is a lot better than having too many or too few servers on launch day - or even a month after. And not having to care about hardware is a true bliss.