How much can Torque handle?
by Braveheart · in Torque Game Engine · 01/12/2008 (4:38 am) · 10 replies
We plan to have a very large city in our game, plus every building being enterable with of course several floors and rooms complete with a lot of DTS objects for decoration (of course portals on the doors) with intractable doors and windows etc we also plan to spawn at least 100+ AI in the city. (AI powered by C++).
Now my question, can Torque handle all this plus about 100+ players without any lag?
The current FPS.Starer set up, how many clients could connect to a home computer hosted server before things would start to lag? Would having a faster and better dedicated host allow for more connections?
Now my question, can Torque handle all this plus about 100+ players without any lag?
The current FPS.Starer set up, how many clients could connect to a home computer hosted server before things would start to lag? Would having a faster and better dedicated host allow for more connections?
About the author
#2
Do the buildings have to have LOD's? We of course has portals. I remember reading somewhere once that the better the server hosting, the more the current coded FPS server would hold.
01/12/2008 (5:35 am)
Actually, we'd prefer not to use the MMOKit. For now anyway.Do the buildings have to have LOD's? We of course has portals. I remember reading somewhere once that the better the server hosting, the more the current coded FPS server would hold.
#3
Alot of it can be tweaked for whatever setup you are going for. Do you need realtime FPS style precision or could you settle with more of a rpgish style setup. Both can easly be done with TGE and tweaking things here and there you could in theory get upwards of 200+ players into a standard server setup.
I would not see the city scape side of it effecting the engine to much. Though I myself highly recommend LODing your buildings otherwise you will just be wasteing fps and cpu power. And when LODing your buildings we are just talking about the outside appearance. Because you plan to portal the interiers they are never going to be rendered until a player enters the building anyways so that wont be much of a issue. Theres not much use having a highly detailed building way off in the distance with catwalks, ect. when the player is not going to be able to make out the details at such a distance. Theres when the LOD comes into play the most.
01/12/2008 (8:44 am)
The networking side of Torque for the most part is extremly scaleable. Tests that I have seen have shown upwards of 128 players on a server with only a moderate amount of lag.Alot of it can be tweaked for whatever setup you are going for. Do you need realtime FPS style precision or could you settle with more of a rpgish style setup. Both can easly be done with TGE and tweaking things here and there you could in theory get upwards of 200+ players into a standard server setup.
I would not see the city scape side of it effecting the engine to much. Though I myself highly recommend LODing your buildings otherwise you will just be wasteing fps and cpu power. And when LODing your buildings we are just talking about the outside appearance. Because you plan to portal the interiers they are never going to be rendered until a player enters the building anyways so that wont be much of a issue. Theres not much use having a highly detailed building way off in the distance with catwalks, ect. when the player is not going to be able to make out the details at such a distance. Theres when the LOD comes into play the most.
#5
Reason for LoDing in this case: to make sure you don't see into the building from a given distance so it can "fall back" onto "cube like" outside part which saves you a lot of performance.
01/12/2008 (9:22 pm)
On the TDN and most likely the one or other resource.Reason for LoDing in this case: to make sure you don't see into the building from a given distance so it can "fall back" onto "cube like" outside part which saves you a lot of performance.
#6
01/13/2008 (7:02 am)
If i dont see the buildings, because they are outside my visibleDistance i dont need to use LoD, right?
#7
But if you have many of them in your visible distance you might better do it anyway unless you created the buildings in a way that they have "entrance areas" with no objects and the like and portaled that into an own zone so the "inside content" can be occluded while you are not within the house.
01/14/2008 (1:24 am)
Well then not :-)But if you have many of them in your visible distance you might better do it anyway unless you created the buildings in a way that they have "entrance areas" with no objects and the like and portaled that into an own zone so the "inside content" can be occluded while you are not within the house.
#8
01/14/2008 (4:07 am)
Ok, just one more question, im inside a building that have many rooms, if my room is in a portal zone, and there is another room with a lot of StaticShapes, TSShapes and what so ever in another zone, the portals will make all those diferent types of object dont get rendered ?
#9
but as I remember it, whatever is on the other side of the portal gets rendered within the viewing angle
of the player at that moment. So only what can be seen through that doorway is rendered, not the
entire room inside. That should inlcude any DTS shapes that are in there. Naturally it would be weird
to walk up to a doorway and see an empty room, then walk inside and suddenly a table and chairs
appears.
01/15/2008 (3:11 pm)
I've been working on a space mission lately so I haven't really played around with buildings for a while,but as I remember it, whatever is on the other side of the portal gets rendered within the viewing angle
of the player at that moment. So only what can be seen through that doorway is rendered, not the
entire room inside. That should inlcude any DTS shapes that are in there. Naturally it would be weird
to walk up to a doorway and see an empty room, then walk inside and suddenly a table and chairs
appears.
#10
What it does is consider everything within the zone you see to be potentially visible. zone you see = portals that you can see right now ...
Its clear that it does not work the way that the stuff is not rendered until you enter the zone, that would defeat the idea behind it ^^
01/15/2008 (3:13 pm)
That wouldn't be the way it would be handled with portal based rooms as well.What it does is consider everything within the zone you see to be potentially visible. zone you see = portals that you can see right now ...
Its clear that it does not work the way that the stuff is not rendered until you enter the zone, that would defeat the idea behind it ^^
Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
But 100+ sounds more like you are targetting an MMO where looking at the MMOKit ( http://www.mmoworkshop.com ) might be the way to go.
The amount of buildings there, assuming they are correctly done DIFs with LoD and portals, should most likely be less of the problem ...