Game Servers

Agrajag · #1 November 27th, 2006, 12:09 PM

If anyone feels like donating 1000-1500$ for a new PC, I'll gladly retire my current PC and use it as a server

EDIT:
Actually, my current PC will go to my dad, his old PC will be the server

Gandalf Parker · #2 November 27th, 2006, 01:07 PM

It actually doesnt take much PC to run quite a few games. Most peoples old retired desktop can replace your ISPs servers quite nicely. If you go and buy a server, all you really have to request is a powerful CPU and lots of memory. Everything else can be the minimum they will put in the machine ( cheapest crapiest versions of sound, graphics, hard drive, network card, etc etc) and no operating system.

As I remember, the conversation that you refer to came to a crawl when it was asked if anyone would volunteer to help run the server.

Maltrease · #3 November 27th, 2006, 01:24 PM

I imagine memory would be the biggest item needed to host a lot of games. Over 99% of the time a game isn't doing anything but waiting for the turn submissions.

Have you run any test Gandalf to see just how many can be run? If we really could get several hundred onto one machine it would certainly be a lot easier to keep that one running reliably and well, compared to 20 machines each running 10 games.

Finding administrators for the server is definitely a challenge. I'm far more likely to commit some money compared to my time. I'm curious though... looking at the solution Esben created, how much time did it really take him to manage things once they were setup?

If an admin was created to allow the "owner" of the game to restart it... or do basic file manipulation (if necassary) maybe it could be mostly self managed.

Arralen · #4 November 27th, 2006, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Gandalf Parker said:
As I remember, the conversation that you refer to came to a crawl when it was asked if anyone would volunteer to help run the server.

In fact, 2 people with different OS preferences volunteered (Cainehill-Linux and me-W2K/XP), but nothing was heard about it any more after that ... .

Btw., I wonder if the graphicless Dom server runs with ReactOS already.
Someday I'll have to set up a 3rd machine and try that out ... .

Gandalf Parker · #5 November 27th, 2006, 05:15 PM

I havent done any real tests. I cant bring myself to run JUST dominions on a server. I have two servers.

One old junky one that runs a large MUD named Shadowdale. And also runs about a dozen small blitz games of Dom3. It also does a bunch of cron work (generating maps and such)

The hot new server is running web service for a dozen domains, and email for about a hundred users. Plus many other services (ftp, irc, etc). There are 5 large Dom3 games running there. Three them are 1500 provinces and 79 nations.

Both machines would be put to shame by any new desktop anyone has gotten in the last year.

Esben Mose Hansen · #6 November 28th, 2006, 08:20 AM

Unless it's changed from dom2, RAM is the major bottleneck. As I recall, 20 games took about 500Mb or so. Of course, most of that is never used, so a huge swappartition helps.

Maltrease · #7 November 28th, 2006, 12:22 PM

Hmm..., that is actually encouraging. That would scale to 160 games with 4GB of memory (plus whatever you setup with the swap).

Gandalf Parker · #8 November 28th, 2006, 12:27 PM

Johan made some incredible improvements in the way the game handles memory. But then again, the maximums for the game all went up so it might have balanced out.

It should also be noted that these numbers tend to reflect text-mode/direct-connect. It cuts by at LEAST a factor of 10 if you try to run everything in gui menus. And in windows you lose many options. Also if you go pbem or ftp upload then the number of games goes way up (running dom3 only long enough to host, and not hosting them all at the same time)