Game Servers

Maltrease · #1 November 26th, 2006, 01:04 PM

Has there been any more discussion on setting up an "official" on non-official game servers?

I would be curious how many games a decent server could handle. Drop in a cheaper Athlon 64bit chip and 4GB of memory and see how many games it can handle reliably. Could it do 50? 100? More?

I'd be willing to pay a one time $10 fee or similar for the ability to host my own game on a server and control the settings. I'm running one on my media server at home now, but my IP address is constantly changing. Not a big deal for 1v1 duel, but if I wanted to host a larger game it would be a real pain.

It would be awesome if shrapnel would set something up like this. However if they aren't I'd be willing to contribue funds to someone that will take it on (hint hint Gandalf or Esben) particuraly if by contributing you are buying a "share" in the server to host the games you want with the mods you want.

hako · #2 November 26th, 2006, 03:29 PM

I am starting my prayers so shrapnel will provide such a server... of course, so my prayers will be listened I don't mind some donations...

Tyrant · #3 November 26th, 2006, 03:50 PM

There are free web services that will give you a fixed name for your dynamic dns. It's very easy. Here's one that i have used- www.dyndns.com

Maltrease · #4 November 27th, 2006, 11:49 AM

Thanks Tyrant I will look into that.

I'd still love to see some kind of official server so I don't have to be the one to make sure its running or some outtage to my consumer level broadband holds up a game for a large length of time.

I know there was some discussion shortly before Dom3 was released. I'm not sure where it went or if the cost were to large... I'm curious how many people would be willing to drop a few $ to help get the ball rolling if the "cost" was a large factor in it not happening.

Agrajag · #5 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 · #6 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 · #7 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 · #8 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 · #9 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 · #10 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.