Number of players per server?

[SheepDip]

50 Players is nice, and obviously the maps will be developed around a certain playercount. As we've mentioned the U3 architecture supports 64 as a maximum - but this would require a behemoth of a server in certain situations (vehicles).

As long as the gameplay as enjoyable as RO, and as long as their are about 30 players as a minimum I doubt I'll be phased.

 

[Hans Ludwig]

Big slot servers are always more popular than smaller slot servers.

I hope that TWI pick a reasonable max player limit that a wide amount of server can support with their hardware capacity. In ROOST we had too many servers going for 40-50 players while they could at most handle 32 players.

A lot of server admins try to do what populates their server, and if having a laggy pos server with more slots populates easier than a smaller good server then they will opt for that. So I hope that TWI puts something in place that ensures that enough servers can be of good quality.

It doesn't matter if you had a quad core server, RO only allows for one processor. That's the reason infantry maps can do about 50 slots (29th ID) and tank servers (JollyRodgers) can only do 40 slot max. Anything over that, even on dedicated servers, will result in lag.

 

[Zetsumei]

It doesn't matter if you had a quad core server, RO only allows for one processor. That's the reason infantry maps can do about 50 slots (29th ID) and tank servers (JollyRodgers) can only do 40 slot max. Anything over that, even on dedicated servers, will result in lag.

I know that RO doesn't utilize multiple cores. But that doesn't change that a lot of servers run more slots than they can handle.

Although UT3 supports 64 players max i've never seen any 64 player server for it filled up without lag. UE3 supports multiple cores. Things like physics, netcode, hit calculations could be offloaded to separate cores. But the big things like audio and graphics won't be utilized by a server in the first place. So I wonder if UE3 will be any easier for big slot servers.

 

[Makino]

Although UT3 supports 64 players max i've never seen any 64 player server for it filled up without lag.

Could be that UE3 has higher bandwidth needs than the server has or they are just sharing more game servers on the machine.

 

[gyps]

50 players seems to wrok pretty well for RO so i would expect HOS to support simular sort of numbers, As already pointed out large server are nearly always busy - which implys many of us want large player servers - which i pretty sure TW will have taken into account when planning this


the only thing with big player no's is high band width usage could become a problem for server owners as most have some kind of band width limit on usage and some will be on shared servers which may account to some degree for lag.

 

[Zetsumei]

Could be that UE3 has higher bandwidth needs than the server has or they are just sharing more game servers on the machine.

Bandwidth is usually not the issue when you have a dedi server.

The simple reason is that per player a game generally only uses like 10kB/s of bandwdith. So with 64 players the upload of a server is only 640kB/s. As a single person I often download files of a download server with 20000KB/s. Although bandwidth is expensive its usually not the limiting factor for player slots. Its mostly either an engine or hardware limitation.

Usually multiple games are hosted on a dedicated server. But you need to remember that there are often loads of smaller slot clan servers for multiple games that can be used to fill the holes. A good server company takes account to the usage of said servers.

 

[gyps]

Clan i belonged to in DOD had it's own rack mount server so we never had to share server with anyone.

But i know that where it was housed many had about 4 or 5 servers on each box .

Co Lo we had bandwidth limits true we never reached em but depnds how much band width this version uses ?

 

[Extension7]

You mean EXACTLY like Battlefield 2's system? It worked just like that -- you had 16-32-64 variants of all maps.

Yeah!, At least that system worked ._.

The variants of the maps could make good use for small communities and clans to "Practice" and have their own private match with a small amount of people with out having to wonder around a huge map to fine one guy.

It could also make use for people who want to work together as one team.

So I say 16 to 50 players. Then again, we don't even know any maps size specifics yet T.T

 

[gyps]

we may know more monday as thats the show start date

 

[Hans Ludwig]

I know that RO doesn't utilize multiple cores. But that doesn't change that a lot of servers run more slots than they can handle.

Although UT3 supports 64 players max i've never seen any 64 player server for it filled up without lag. UE3 supports multiple cores. Things like physics, netcode, hit calculations could be offloaded to separate cores. But the big things like audio and graphics won't be utilized by a server in the first place. So I wonder if UE3 will be any easier for big slot servers.

Most game servers are shared. And to top that off, they are pretty much bare bones, entry level servers at that. I have no doubt if someone ran a true dedicated server like a few in Arma2, you could easily have 100 slot server running this game.

I know the Berserker (whatever it's called) was a 100 slot server. And we all know Arma2 is the only game in existence that requires a super computer to play.

 

[Zetsumei]

Most game servers are shared. And to top that off, they are pretty much bare bones, entry level servers at that. I have no doubt if someone ran a true dedicated server like a few in Arma2, you could easily have 100 slot server running this game.

I know the Berserker (whatever it's called) was a 100 slot server. And we all know Arma2 is the only game in existence that requires a super computer to play.

The wild bunch servers for what its worth run on state of the art hardware. Most game servers cannot host RO with more than 32 players.

The wild bunch purchased one of the latest and greatest servers and tried 64 players, and It wasn't really much of a success.

So unless you're talking about a server overclocked to perhaps close the 5ghz range on the latest iteration of xeon processors you wont see 100 players in roost.

 

[nike_angus]

I really want to play Berezina in a 64 players server.

 

[The Masta]

I really want to play Danzig on a 64 player server.

 

[Apos]

In present times where most of the fps games used to offer 16, 24 or even 32 player slots, 50 for HoS would be great and something what bring new RO on the top of PC fps games.

As was mentioned in this thread, it would be easier to run four 50 slots servers than one 64 slots. Of course much depends of optimization of network code, but it's not a secret that Tripwire can do magic with Unreal game code .

Also maps might be an issue if would be balanced or developed wrong. I really hope that Tripwire and future modders will offer various maps: CQF, open field like basovka, urban areas and epic struggles for tankers. But where is the point. Those maps should fit to 50 players gameplay. It's hard to do universal maps, but I believe that multiple option objectives and new gamemodes will fix that.

I'm only afraid of that what Tripwire has shown so far. Railroad station or Grain Elevator maps don't really look like 32+ players map. I hope that I'm wrong and new materials from Gamescom confirm that.

 

[Zetsumei]

Remember the TWB interview though:
http://www.twbclan.com/news/twbclannews3.htm

How large will the map sizes be?
As you are probably aware, there are going to be maps in Heroes that suit a relatively large number of players. However, TW have been doing some very neat things that make the maps

 

[ButchCassidy]

The wild bunch servers for what its worth run on state of the art hardware. Most game servers cannot host RO with more than 32 players.

The wild bunch purchased one of the latest and greatest servers and tried 64 players, and It wasn't really much of a success.

So unless you're talking about a server overclocked to perhaps close the 5ghz range on the latest iteration of xeon processors you wont see 100 players in roost.

Zets is correct we at TWB have at least 3 state of the art 1u Dell servers with either twin quad or dual core cpus which are a minimum of 3.2ghz per core in each one.
They also all run with 8gb of memory per machine with dual 400gb hard drives, all running on Winserver2008 64bit.

We run our 50 player servers on these beasts along with other games we support Like Arma and Killing Floor with very little concern.
However when we tried to run a 64 player RO server especially on tank or combined arms maps they struggled.
I believe this to be the biggest single restriction of the UE2 engine which uses only 1 main core to run the game and can pretty much overwhelm a single core when you think of all the info it is trying to dish out during an RO game.

However the new UE3 has multi chip and multi core support and I believe that servers with multi core especially will see a huge difference in the amount of players that can play in a single game server BUT TWI really do have their work cut out to tame the UE3 animal to fufill the promise of the engine in order to make the dream a reality.
I believe they can and that ROHoS will bring an even bigger battlefield to players than RO already has.

Roll on 2011 release.. I can't wait..

 

[Ender]

"They are shooting to max out players in a game at 64 (with quite large maps one would imagine) and there are ten maps in the game already."
[url]http://www.gamersdailynews.com/articlenav-2543-page-2.html[/URL]

So maybe will start out with 50 and after some tweaking will have 64... and maybe more

 

[Zetsumei]

Unlike the ut2k4 engine which by default got a max of 32 players UE3 got a default max of 64 players. So at least its designed from the ground up with higher player amounts.

Although for a dedicated server I wonder how much can be split up over multiple cores as visual or audio based aspects won't be showcased by a server anyway.
Which pretty much only leaves net code and physics so I wonder if a Dedi server will really use more than 2 cores.

So I wonder how much servers are relieved over multi core usage and how many servers will be able to run a 64 player server.