Torque serving 100+ players and more...

Hi everybody.
I just found some time to post my thoughts here, on GG.

First of all I want to congratulate all who contributed to the Torque Game Engine, it's just AMAZING one!

Second: what I am talking about? Huh??? :)
Yeah, here we go!

As some of you know already, I'm working on AfterWorld project.
It's about MMO game, post-apoc style, FPS mostly.

During last months the registration for alpha-test was closed. So, a few days ago we decided (what a BAD idea!!!) to open registration!
In a first 2 hours(!!!) we had about 100 new accounts registered.
After some time we had about 40 players online on our "test server". Huh? Not much you say... Yeah, if take into account that it was PIII 1.3GHz computer with 512 RAM.. with 250 AI objects running on a single mission...

After 8 hours we have found, that most of our traffic been eat by our "testers". Blah! Total amount of registrations at that time was about 500...
So, we decided to move the game server from "home computer" to the co-location on local ISP.
During "move" suddenly the database got damaged (yeah, by bad, haven't made a backup) so we reverted a bit "back" and started again on new server.
P4, 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM on 100mbit pipe
Right after server startup we got 60++ players. In a few hours the limit of 80 was reached, and here problems began...
I've reset AI object to amount of 127 and..... server was handling 120 players with NO problems. The MAX amount of players online was 121... So..
Taking into account that it was not optimized network on heavily modified TGE1.5 (actually 1.4 + TLK + manual merge into 1.4.2 then 1.5 with TGB and ArcaneFX), and ALL AI "thinking" is done via scripts... All I can say - Torque FOREVER!

Quote:server is Online
Users: 121

Here is a "city" with about 25 players on screen. On a single mission I have about 50 FPS here, with all these players online I had 32 FPS. So, my Torque handles really good so many players on screen at once, isn't it?

So, after about three days I've closed registration, as we got "enough" registrations (about 1000 subscriptions).

Sure, we have a lot of annoying bugs.. but, who hasn't at alpha-stage of development? Huh!

And more... Please, PLEASE, DO NOT PLAN any huge stuff during holiday season!!! Haven't got day's off for about 2-3 weeks already (yeah, it's Indie developing), and I'm too tired these days... Just finished setting up scripts for automated reboot/startup of physical and game servers and plan to go offline till 2nd of January.
Here in Russia we have days off from December 30th till January 2nd.
You know this snowy forest and these white bears offering you vodka on the streets, this is not a game guys...

So, happy holidays, and thanks to Max for a nice car-model:
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