Large Scale Battles

ID:265770
 
Sep 6 2007, 1:25 pm
I was looking over a map I was making for an RTS (http://i16.tinypic.com/6aevoex.png) and I was thinking about different strategies and thought of how awesome a BYOND Shooter Game in that scale would be (at least 32x32 kilometers).

Something probably on the scale of Planetside.

However, that's extraordinarily large and there is no doubt that BYOND would choke and stutter if it had to handle the whole map at the same time.

===
So, I was thinking about different ways to handle this:
- Different Servers handle different portions of the map.
I could make clients connect to other servers if they
reach the boundaries of their current server's map area.
Problem here comes down to organization of servers and movement of vehicles between different servers.

- Instanced Map Areas. Map areas can be opened and closed
during runtime to minimize use of resources.
Loading and offloading map areas during runtime can cause a good deal of lag.

===


I know BYOND wasn't made to do this and this would be going way beyond the limits of BYOND.

Does anyone have any comments and suggestions?
Sep 6 2007, 3:58 pm
While loading in and out certain areas of the map may sound like a good idea, when the server is populated you are still loading the entire map, and thus gain no benefit. Maybe a system that closes off parts of the map as the server gets more populated, increasing action while reducing the size of the map loaded. Or, you could go the opposite route, and as more people join, you open more of the map, thus splitting up the population and reducing the action(And hopefully the data that needs to be transfered)

D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
I was looking over a map I was making for an RTS (http://i16.tinypic.com/6aevoex.png) and I was thinking about different strategies and thought of how awesome a BYOND Shooter Game in that scale would be (at least 32x32 kilometers).

Something probably on the scale of Planetside.

However, that's extraordinarily large and there is no doubt that BYOND would choke and stutter if it had to handle the whole map at the same time.

===
So, I was thinking about different ways to handle this:
- Different Servers handle different portions of the map.
I could make clients connect to other servers if they
reach the boundaries of their current server's map area.
Problem here comes down to organization of servers and movement of vehicles between different servers.

- Instanced Map Areas. Map areas can be opened and closed
during runtime to minimize use of resources.
Loading and offloading map areas during runtime can cause a good deal of lag.

===


I know BYOND wasn't made to do this and this would be going way beyond the limits of BYOND.

Does anyone have any comments and suggestions?
Sep 6 2007, 4:10 pm
In response to Strawgate
I think this idea can be greatly utilized with a cross-server global communication, and a more local communication. Why not make each continent(Or group of continents) it's own server, using this method you can easily create a sort of teleportation that will transfer you to a base on another continent, which instead of being on the same server, it would transfer you to another server. Putting a population limit on each continent could control lag, and you can reduce the playable areas of each continent based on the total number of players online.

I've got an example of it here for ya. http://files.byondhome.com/Strawgate/Continents.PNG
The green would be sections that would be open no matter the server population, with the yellow opening up when the server reaches x number of people, and the red opening up when the individual server reaches y number of people. You could also incorporate loading and unloading of unused sections.


D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
===
So, I was thinking about different ways to handle this:
- Different Servers handle different portions of the map.
I could make clients connect to other servers if they
reach the boundaries of their current server's map area.
Problem here comes down to organization of servers and movement of vehicles between different servers.