A Challenge for GG that would help a lot of us out...

#1 I like the idea, but unless someone at GG happens to have a server and plenty of bandwidth sitting around it could get expensive for them, so it's highly unlikely. What would be interesting would be some sort of community project to do something like a Second-life thing with Torque(Not the whole everybody gets a world to develop, but a simple online place run with Torque where people and just wander around and chat). It would be an excellent demo of what Torque's networking can do.

#2 If they don't have a spare computer and a hi-speed connection I'd be pretty surprised...seems like a small investment to make to showcase your product.

#3 I really like the idea, very interested in a persistent game state demo. The server should show uptime too!

#4 The servers not usually the issue. Bandwidth can be quite expensive, and just sticking a server on a spare office computer or whatever isn't the best way to showcase networking capability(though if they are just wanting to showcase it's stability then perhaps an average-joe PC as the server would be perfect), but personally I like to see how well a network design works by seeing how smoothly it runs when maxing out the number of clients connected.

EDIT: I agree with Rense about the uptime display.

#5 In central Minnesoata I've got a 20 MB fiber connection for $100.00 a month...they must have something similar in Las Vegas.

#6 How good an upload rate is that? A typical 20MB/s connection only gives you maybe 30-100KB/s upload which isn't really good for serving anything. There are 20MB/20MB fiber optic connections available, but $100 sounds rather low for something like that.

#7 Is that really 20MB or did you mean 20Mbit.
I'm in Amsterdam with a 90Mbit/sec connection, getting 6MB/sec max though. The uplink is around 1.5MB/sec. I could host a server! ;-)

#8 @Rense: That's a pretty nice connection. I'm curious as to whether he meant 20MB or 20Mbit as well. In Dundee I had a 100MBit connection in a testing zone which could actually download 10-15MB/s(Very wide fluctuation since it was a testing zone and could easily clock over 100Mbit. Typical usage was probably 6-10MB/s though), but the upload was still no more then 1-2MB/s and while it is possible to serve with that, it's still not ideal.

EDIT:
|| Torque World FTW! :D
\/

#9 It's really 20MB, asynchronous fiber...If I do a speed test at speedtest.net I usually get around 15MB up and down
Vs DSL at 1.5MB down and .750 up...

But let's not get off-topic...How about hearing it for Torque World!

#10 Aye. Back to work. I'd really like to see a server example, with a stripped client to go with that.
I know the Torque limits and have no MMO illusions, but my main game ideas are all about persistent game state.
I guess only Torque owners should be able to login to Torque World.

#11 Speed connection is measured in Mb. Most likely if you are talking 10 or 20 you are talking 10Mb or 20Mb. 10Mb ~ 1.25MB per second. Some connections have bandwidth allocations per month and that is measured in GB/TB at times (or is unmetered). 10Mb connection should be able to handle well over a 100 connections though.

#12 Kind of off topic again Josh...but to clarify the issue of my bandwidth...I just did a test and I got 16034 kbps (2004.3KB/sec transfer rate) upload...that's about 2Mb per second...right?

Anyway...if bandwidth and a server are an issue I've got both and would be more than happy to host it for the next six months. I'm paying for it and it sits empty doing nothing more than serving up my band's website while I try to figure out all of the ins and outs of Torque's multi-player capabilities.

They could easily hook it into a FREE MSSQL 2008 Express database and limit the users to us. My buddy and I could provide the code for the DB connection.

So, I ask again, what's your feeling about GG setting up a world for us all to check out, test, gleen info from and chat in?

#13 Rense: Torque has no persistency layer and adding a performant, stable one that takes into account perma-scheduled scripts on the users is not even remotely trivial.

Without that persistency above stats and username is impossible and the "stats level" of persistency requires a single script with http connections, some kind of a database communication layer through php / cgi or alike and server scripts for the data that are meant to be stored. Doing this should normally be trivial complexity wise and mainly a matter of storing meaningful data from the server.
We did such work back with Forbidden Magic (TGEA -> TGE -> TGEA)

An article of interest for any kind of architecture like these might be this one

Also, Torque is not layed out as client + server architecture, its a client-server architecture that allows the whole thing to run without the input-media output layer (client frontend) as "dedicated server". But the opposite is nowhere as simple if possible at all if you want it on the source level. On the script level you just cut all scripts that are pure server side logic.

As for the general idea: Fallen Empire: Legions or Lore: Aftermath on IA anyone? ;)
Just having a server up to see when its dieing makes no sense as that heavily depends on the game and how its layed out, so you would likely not learn anything more usefull from it than you can from the two Torque games on IA

#14 @Marc - yeah but the question is...what's your feeling about GG setting up a world for us all to check out, test, gleen info from and chat in?

#15 While a persistant game world is a whole other bag of worms, having some real testing of a dedicated server would probably help. A lot of issues seem to slip through the cracks in that area as I don't believe a lot of inviduals are using it and I am not sure how much time is spent testing it between releases.

The networking in Torque is still geared toward a dialup modem as it sits. You can make some changes to it, but you tend to max out around 12KBps because of packet size restrictions.

Also, the IBM link is pretty useful. There are a variety of ways to do it, but the thought pretty much with persistant data is you are going to need some kind of data store and way to unjoin/join to other dedicated servers. A bit more than what is needed for a testing exercise, but it is important to understand the differences.

#16 The reason we use IRC for our official chatroom is because most IRC clients are lightweight and use hardly any of a computer's resources. Thus you can leave it open while you're working, without taking a performance hit. Using T3D as a community chatroom is impractical at best.

#17 Agreed, as a virtual chat area it would be more than an overkill. I wouldn't even consider joining in there.
People who just want to sit in a useless resource eating 3d chat can just as well join SL instead



But should the networking be updated for broadband restrictions at some point I think predefined sessions a la the IRC hours to get enough players onto such an official test might surely be a good idea (though with the mentioned Q&A plans who knows if it is still needed)
Without work on the networking I don't see a reason for a test. The networking is known to work and its rock solid. Anyone who messes with it on his own is meant to do his own testing and benchmarking ...

#18 I was referring to the monthly IRC get together not leaving a chat client open all day while trying to work. I wouldn't do that with any chat client. So...no can do? Is that the official GG response to the challenge?

"The networking in Torque is still geared toward a dialup modem as it sits." You have GOT to be kidding me...right?

"Torque Powered now geared for lightning fast dial-up!"

That just doesn't sound right...someone has to be mistaken.
Say it ain't so.

#19 The networking roots back to Tribes 2 which was indeed the first (and likely only) shooter to ever host 256 player TDM on dialup connections.

you can naturally get quite a bit higher if you set the connection settings (rate and size), but the optimizations and settings by default are still very much targeted at the settings from TGE days

a network system itself can not be targeted at anything specifically. The UDP specifications are always the same.
its just a matter of the settings when it comes to how much traffic and latency you accept.


and the irc hour that way would be totally useless, sorry.
it would be hard to impossible to communicate in a meaningfull way

#20 stock:

$pref::Net::PacketRateToClient = "10";
$pref::Net::PacketSize = "200";

Dialup- FTW!