ID:2155746
 
I just wanted to ask, what does everybody use for hosting their games?

I've always loved that BYOND allows for playing games online with lots of other players, but my main issue is, I've rarely been able to host a game, which is a big part of why my games didn't get as much as my developer love. For me to get excited about developing a multiplayer game, it really helps when I can see the multiplayer aspect in action! And see the enjoyment of others for my work, and any mistakes in the way I've balanced the game for multiplayer. Basically, I'd just like to figure out what the best way is for myself, or others in the community, to host their games.

This hosting problem seems to be because of Firewall and/or router issues, and I've looked through the Port Forward site and tried a lot of things, without success.

How do you host your games? Do you use a hosting service, or have you been able to host on your own?
I personally use Dream Daemon. It works like a charm. Ever since version 4.x was released, almost no one uses other methods to host anymore. I could be wrong however. As for your own hosting issues, your ISP could be to blame too. I've had that issue before. If your ISP isn't to blame, your router is... Or computers just hate you, one or the other. lol
BYOND games are hosted with Dream Daemon. Hosting through Dream Seeker means the world ends when the host logs out, which is almost never what you'd want. Once you get through port forwarding (just do it), it's very easy to do: choose your game, set the port to a forwarded port, and click the GO button.

I used to host Hazordhu on my own computer, leaving it on for as long as I could; it being an open world game that people were always playing, at the time (it had map saving, it was just inconvenient for players when it was down).

Eventually we bought a server to host the game for us because it turned out to be more reliable. They don't really add much else, as hardware these days isn't improving in a way that makes BYOND games run any faster. If you can't host it yourself find someone who can (at least for testing) and if you need something more long-term, consider spending a bit of money (and offering paid subscriptions or in-game purchases).

Now development stopped, the files were released, and people still sometimes host the game on their own.
These responses have been very helpful, so far.

I haven't yet checked with my Internet Service Provider, so thanks for that idea. I will try checking with them.

Also, I appreciate the point that for long-term use with steady development, it may be preferred by players that a 24/7 professional hosting service be on board.

Do you have any suggestions of hosting services that have worked well for BYOND users in the past? Which might be best for better performance or compatibility with BYOND, and which may be best for staying cheap? Any suggestions are much appreciated.
I don't use hosting services, I just host myself. Byond itself has it's limitations as to how much power it can accept, not use. For example, my computer runs a 6-core processor overclocked to 4.2Ghz with 32GB of RAM. Byond cannot even come close to utilizing that kind of power, so regardless of how much power a hosting machine has, Byond can only use a portion of that anyways as that's what it was designed with.

Essentially, if Byonds core uses a Pentium 4 (Single Core CPU) with 512MB of RAM, that's all it will accept from the users regardless of the users computers.

I will also add that 99% of people on Byond will disagree with me and argue with me. lol
BYOND can utilize up to around 3.2GB of RAM on the machine (32-bit limitations) and fully utilize a single core of your processor (single threaded).

That means if you have 32GB of RAM and a 6-core processor running at 4.2Ghz as noted above, BYOND will be able to access a single 4.2Ghz processor core and around 3GB of that RAM if needed.
And you don't you think that's pretty sad? It's 2016... Not 1996. It's time to improve. lmao
Improving would add almost no benefit for the amount of time it would take to do the updates, there's only a couple of BYOND games that push the CPU limits (and those could be improved in almost every case), and not a single one that I've ever seen push the memory limits without doing something vastly wrong in the code.

Not even games like SS13 are pushing the limits anymore, various optimizations on both their end and BYOND's end have resolved a lot of those issues. Larger games like Eternia that aren't decompiled messes of nonsense barely use 10%-30% of the resources their servers provide to them.

It's not as worthwhile as you seem to think, considering there's nothing that needs those kinds of resources, and I doubt there ever will be.
I'll add that it was attempted to expand to a multi-threaded format so that BYOND could at least utilize more than one processor core, but it turned out to be a massive timesink for zero benefit, just caused a ton of major bugs and ate a ton of time that could have been spent on other features.
It helps to have an idea of the memory capabilities that the server may need, as well. Thanks for the discussion. It will help me as I'm deciding how to host my games.